Tactical Retreats

Living to Fight Another Day

Hi (No) Wonder-ers,

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it for as long as my Broca’s Area functions:

Hustle Culture is a curse on our society and our collective wellness. 

All “sleep when you’re dead” ever got me was a stent in my heart (specifically in a coronary artery medical professionals call "the widowmaker") and a near-death experience before my 30^th birthday. At the time I was in surgical residency, the paradigm of which having been designed by well-known cocaine user William Halstead. Because Halstead bought into the “sleep when you’re dead” philosophy a century and a half ago, every medical trainee now gets to train like a cocaine user. Though self-neglect, sleep deprivation, and prodigious caffeine/stimulant intake are certainly not unique to surgical residency… Halstead set the tone for a work culture nearly killed me, and indeed has killed some. So yeah, Hustle Culture and all of its apologists can stay up all night kicking rocks.

I’ve previously written about how sleep deprivation can sabotage our intimacy, decreasing both erectile function and female sexual function index (FSFI).

Short Sleep Duration and Erectile Dysfunction: A Review of the Literature

The meaning of sleep has puzzled people for millennia. In modern society, short sleep duration is becoming a global problem. It has been established that short sleep duration can increase the risk of several diseases, such as cardiovascular…

PubMed Central (PMC)Fuxun Zhang

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jsm.12858

However, sleep deprivation is only the beginning of how Hustle Culture interferes with our relationships and intimacy. We (at least in the US) live in an age of 24-hour news cycles, quick fixes, and immediate gratification. Seize the moment! Carpe diem! YOLO!

The focus on now ignores that now is not always the right time, or the safest time. “Now or never” ignores the possibility that now might not be the best time to talk, or to do something emotionally high-stakes that requires some rest and composure. Just as a blizzard might not be the best time to drive on that road trip, or a smoldering kidney infection might not be the best time to go blasting that ureteral stone, so too it may be ill-advised to start a new relationship or sexual encounter during times of medical, emotional, or professional turbulence. Discretion is often the better part of valor; and conversely, trying to make something happen during suboptimal timing can set us up for failure, which in turn can contribute to an unfavorable sexual/relationship script, which can further set us up for failures that compound an unfavorable sexual/relationship script, propogating a cycle even more vicious than this run-on sentence. 

The flipside of this is recognizing that now might not be the ideal time for your partner(s) either, and not taking that personally. After all, it may well have less to do with you than it does with where their lives are at emotionally. Now may not be the best time for them to start that relationship with you, or to share intimacy, or to do whatever it is you’re fancying. No always means no, but it doesn’t always mean no forever (but then again, it might!). Life is difficult, and it’s rough out there. We need to give each other some grace and acknowledge that circumstances beyond our control can make it prudent for us to pump the brakes on relationships and intimacy. 

“The lover who rests but doesn’t lay, may live to bone another day.”

-Apologies to Tacitus

Patience is a virtue,

Merrit