It’s officially been over one week into my new job, and I thought I’d share a little something about this. On Pepetoe I speak quite a lot about work, and of course update all my lovely readers and my recent happenings, but I still feel like this is an important post to share. Over the next coming weeks, as I settle in to the role, I think I’ll share a bit more about this topic of hustle culture and finding my feet as a 20-something marketing girl in the big corpo world!

Throughout my life, I’ve been under the impression that self-worth should be tied to a lot of things (a lot of harmful things) – but a lot of that has been under the term of success. Whether it was during school with exams, or on a hockey pitch scoring goals, or now in the career world. Failure was something that I couldn’t do. Mistakes were something I couldn’t make. As I grow older, wiser and more mature, I’ve realised that this is very far from the truth.

Despite what we see online, this idea that we have to succeed in everything we do, and living our lives to “the fullest” means excelling in all avenues, I think we, as the society, have got it wrong. For those of us in our 20s – graduating, starting out in the career world – it’s hard to navigate how we’re “supposed” to live our lives. We can’t party too much, but then we also can’t hide away and isolate ourselves. We can’t doss around and go travelling for three years, but we can’t work too much either. There’s little space in the middle. There’s no room for us to figure out what we want, as individuals.

However, I think, together, we are starting to change this narrative. We’re starting to learn that hustle culture isn’t actually sustainable. The 5am club isn’t necessarily real. And sticking to a fixed routine, a career plan, a 10-year life plan, isn’t what we want. We want the room to find ourselves, to work everything out, to try new things, to make mistakes, to learn from everything we’ve been through, without the pressure of needing to “get there” by the time we’re 30.

When I entered the career world, I took with me the same pressures and expectations as I had growing up in the world of academia. I worked late, I got up early. Hell, I even worked on the weekends! I didn’t allow myself to take a break. Maybe it wasn’t all me – maybe it was social media and society telling me that I should be doing that, and maybe it was also the workplace cultures of my first couple jobs. That’s all changed for me now.

Going into this new job was very different for me. Not just because it’s a new industry, and far from fitness and wellness (which we all knew was a trigger for me and maybe not the best idea!). But also because the culture is different, and I am different. I no longer hold this pressure on myself to get everything done, and on my own too. I ask for help. I lean into rest. I know when to say “this can wait until tomorrow,” because I know that’s not me sounding “needy”.

I’ve stopped letting urgency define my worth.

It’s scary choosing peace. Especially when you’ve been programmed to chase prestige – fancy job titles, high-pressure roles, big names on your CV. But I’ve learnt that none of that matters if you’re not mentally or emotionally safe. If the Sunday Scaries consume your entire weekend, if burnout becomes your normal, if you no longer feel proud of who you’re becoming… that’s not success.

This job feels like a career reset, but also like a mindset shift. I’m not entering this chapter looking to prove anything. I’m just showing up. Doing my best. Listening to my gut. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like enough.

– xo Pepetoe