Hustle culture is built on the toxic lie that the human body is an unlimited ree that success is directly proportional to how much sleep we sacrifice, how many fires we personally extinguish, and how hard we can push through physical exhaustion
But when you live with a chronic illness, that math breaks down completely. Your cellular composition doesn’t care about Q4 targets, shifting algorithm metrics, or client deadlines. It forces a hard boundary
I know because I tried to fight against this reality.
In 2015, while still a college student, I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and hyperthyroidism. The diagnosis was a huge physical and emotional setback, but instead of slowing down, I did exactly what the dominant business culture told me to do: I doubled down. A year later, I founded my digital marketing agency, B.D.Y. Consult, and spent five years fulfilling dozens of client contracts all by myself—running headfirst into the grind fueled by equal parts ambition, denial, pure adrenaline, and fear that my health condition would be a professional liability if I admitted it to anyone.
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But all this pushing caused my thyroid to deteriorate into a severe, chronic condition
Within a single year, I had to undergo major surgery twice to remove the organ. Suddenly, the engine running my business, my own physical body, was out of commission. B.D.Y. Consult was thrown into jeopardy, forcing an existential question: How does a business survive when its founder physically cannot show up?
That crisis became my turning point. It forced me to abandon the hustle myth and embrace an operational philosophy I call “involuntary essentialism.”
