grindset hangover

hustle stopped hustling back

"i got everything i thought i wanted. i’m just not sure it wants me back." – tyler, the creator. hi guys sorry for the hiatus. this is my crash out post because this week has honestly been the worst week of my life. love u guys thanks for putting up with whoever i’ve turned into. but its okay because mercury is in retrograde and soon we will be up.

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idk i’m not really burnt out. not in the way people usually mean it.
i still get up. i still do my work. i still show up for my friends, still go out, still smoke and laugh and dance and mess around and whatever.

and unfortunately that’s the weird part because my life looks like it’s working, and i still feel like something’s off¹. i’ve been trying to explain this to myself lately. not burnout. not depression. just disconnection. like my body’s still clocked in but my soul dipped three semesters ago.

mit is extremely good at convincing you that high-functioning disconnection is completely normal. because you’re surrounded by people doing so much that it actually becomes embarrassing to admit when you’re not feeling it anymore. like when you’re sitting in your lab at 7pm doing exactly what you wanted to do five years ago and you’re just thinking— lol this can’t be it.

i learned early on that ambition is the currency here. and the thing about being somewhere like this is: everyone is exceptional. but also, everyone is exhausted.

we joke about it. glamorize it. trauma-bond over it. but deep down, i think a lot of us feel the same terrifying thing: we’ve built our identities around being impressive, and now we don’t know who we are without the performance.

and i really started writing this blog post with the title “i hate mit.” but i don’t think this is about hating mit. i don’t. there’s something electric about being here. pretending to work. copying a pset. 1am conversations about ai and god and gender and next house tempeh.

i still have very real fun and i still have many real memories.

and i still feel super stuck. and i think what i’m finally learning is that you can be grateful and aware of your privilege and also know that something just isn’t working.

because when every part of your life is set up to push you forward, what happens when you want to stop and smell the flowers?

and don’t get me started on job. there’s no exit door bruh. just more opportunities. more positions. more things to apply to, more oas, more superdays, more apartments to buy, more things to say yes to.

i’ve been thinking about how much of my motivation lately comes from momentum, not meaning.

i don’t wake up excited. i wake up because i have to. i don’t go to class to learn. i go because falling behind makes me anxious. i don’t go out to feel free. i go out because it’s the only time i feel close to forgetting how much of my life is meticulously scheduled.

and the best part? from the outside, it still looks like i’m THRIVING.

because if you’re still getting things done, there’s no reason for people to ask questions. and maybe that’s the most dangerous place to be: functioning just enough that you don’t feel justified in asking for something different.

i remember the day i got into this school. i was sitting on my bedroom floor in the exact hoodie i wore to every test i ever cared about. the moment those fuckass beavers started falling from the top of the page i started sobbing so hard. not because i was shocked, i had worked for it, but because i was so sure that this would finally be the place where everything made sense.

it’s not that it hasn’t been. it’s that it’s made sense in ways i didn’t expect. no one tells you that when you make it to the place you always wanted to be, you have to grieve the version of yourself that got you there.

bc that girl was hun. gry. she was vicious bro. she had dreams that weren’t polished yet. she pulled all-nighters with a weird sort of joy because everything still felt like it mattered.

i don’t think i realized how deeply this place would teach me to intellectualize everything. even the things that used to bring me peace. even myself.

i’ve spent the last year feeling like i’m running a simulation of my own ambition. technically, everything is working. i’m hitting my marks. i’m involved, i’m performing, i’m collecting lines on a resume that’s probably pretty impressive.

and yet, i keep coming back to this one question that’s been sitting heavy w me:

what happens when you stop wanting the things you’ve spent your whole life working for?

its easy to confuse exhaustion with excellence. there’s a certain pride in being overcommitted. people talk about being busy like they’re describing a flex. you’ll hear “i haven’t slept in two days” said with the same energy as “i just ran a marathon.”
you get used to the frankly horrendous rhythm: no sleep, high output, constant pressure and then you convince yourself that feeling nothing is just part of growing up.

i think i started to buy into it more than i realized.

somewhere along the way, motivation stopped being about curiosity or creativity and turned into avoidance. not because anyone forced me to. this is the life i built. but because momentum is a hard thing to question when it’s moving fast and everyone around you is sprinting too.

a few weeks ago i was sitting on my stupid mega bed, trying to finish a stupid reflection for some stupid scholarship. the prompt was “what motivates you?”

and then i just stared at the screen like “idk.” and then i got so scared.

because when you spend your whole life being the kid who’s going somewhere, it’s super destabilizing to realize you have absolutely no concept of what “somewhere” looks like anymore.

i’m hoping and praying i’m not alone.

we’ve sacrificed sleep, joy, spontaneity, creativity, even ourselves and we’re scared to admit that the payoff doesn’t feel like enough. that all the things we’ve worked so hard to earn haven’t made us feel more alive. just more cornered.

it’s hard to even notice it happening at first. because you’re still doing well. still getting the grades. still going out. but something inside you goes quiet.

i’m like trying to think of some sort of dramatic breaking point story but i actually can’t come up with one. there was no burnout spiral, no sudden withdrawal from life. it’s honestly been quieter than that. i just stopped caring abt class. my calendar was filled with meetings i didn’t even remember agreeing too. i was telling myself, “ok one more week” every week.

i started noticing how many of my choices were being made by default. i stayed in motion because stopping was scarier than continuing.

and that is finally the point of this piece: not the crash, but the drift.

the slow realization that success, when it’s disconnected from self, just feels like noise. that it’s possible to be doing well and feel completely misaligned.

and here’s what i’ve realized:

the opposite of burnout isn’t rest. it’s alignment. rest just helps you recover. alignment helps you feel something again.

maybe it’s not about quitting everything or running away or starting over. maybe it’s about redefining what effort means.

because effort doesn’t have to look like struggle. sometimes it looks like being intentional with your time. sometimes it looks like saying no to things that technically count as “opportunities.” sometimes it’s making space to remember what you actually like doing. not just what you’re good at.

the hardest part isn’t changing paths. it’s admitting the current one doesn’t feel right anymore.

which is unfortunately the reason for this post.

idfk i don’t want to “get through” college. i want to be in it. not just in the classrooms or the functions, but in the questions. the discomfort. the parts of myself that don’t care about being productive or efficient.

because when you think about it- none of us came here to tick boxes. we came here because at some point, we loved something. math, science, stories, people, change.

and somewhere along the way, that love turned into performance. and performance, eventually, turns into silence. we weren’t built to be tweaking over an algos pset.

so if any of this sounds familiar, hello. please help. but also like you’re not broken. you’re just running someone else’s race and believe it or not, you’re allowed to stop.

here’s what i’ve been learning i think:

• being good at something doesn’t mean it’s good for you. excellence without fulfillment is just performance.

• you don’t have to be miserable to admit something isn’t working. comfort doesn’t always mean alignment.

• motivation comes and goes but meaning doesn’t. find what keeps you anchored when all the noise shuts up.

• you’re allowed to outgrow the dreams that got you here. even the ones you worked your ass off for. letting go isn’t quitting. it’s choosing better.

i still believe in working hard. and i still believe in dreaming big. but i don’t believe in glamorizing the grind anymore. because it’s super easy to over-identify with your hustle when you don’t take the time to check in with yourself.

and i think the real growth is not in pushing through at all costs, it’s in knowing when to ask: is this still mine?

because if the answer is no, you don’t owe your younger self an explanation.

you just owe your current self permission to change. you’re just waking up.

1. it could lowk be the car crash. or cshow. or like my mental illnesses.