Unlearning the Hustle Habit: GO DO LIFE!

Time is something to be savored

When I left the U.S. for Palermo, Sicily, I thought I was escaping hustle culture. That’s not to say that people around me who live here don’t work hard. They do!

I think a lot of folks are misunderstanding the expression, Dolce Far Niente aka The Joy or Sweetness of Doing Nothing but maybe that’s a whole write up for another day. But the point is that it’s not that people here don’t work hard, they just have a completely different relationship to work and their jobs. They aren’t defined by their work. Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living in casual conversation but that’s only after they ask me how I’m able to live in Italy as an American and I respond that I work remotely.

And half of the time when I say that, they don’t follow up with a question about what I do for work. What I do to make money to pay my bills isn’t a central component of a conversation here like it is in the States and I often think about why. I have learned a lot through observation that part of the answer is that the people I’ve met and who I live near are not defined by their jobs and hustle culture the same way we are. They have other more important things to think about like friends, relationships, families, and of course my favorite topic, FOOD.