What will you shed and what will you grow into during this Year of the Snake?
2025 brings in the Year of the Wood Snake (yisi shenian, 乙巳蛇年), symbolizing a complex mix of yin darkness and introspection and yang transformation and rebirth. Nüwa (女媧), the Mother Goddess of Chinese folk religion who created humanity out of clay, had a human-like head and snake-like body. In the Chinese zodiac, snake years follow dragon years. Snakes are sometimes called “little dragons” (xiaolong, 小龍), and the skin they shed are called the “dragon’s coat” (longyi, 龍衣). Snakes are seen to be intelligent and adaptable, observing patiently for the right time to strike… and shedding their skin to accommodate growth.
There has already been a lot of darkness at the start of this snake year. The brutal slash and burn, chaos and confusion sown by Trump 2.0 has directly impacted the immigrant, LGBTQ+, global public health and scientific communities that I am a part of. We worked non-stop through Trump’s first term to protect health care access, and then through the pandemic. The anti-science culture that has emerged and now in power is causing grave moral injury, undermining our values and life work.
The way I fought and worked through the last round is not sustainable. It came at a considerable cost to my health and relationships. Indeed, studies show that the more we work, the higher our risk for strokes. Modern devices have made it possible to be “always on” 24/7. Working and being flooded with information all the time kept me busy and distracted from the angst building up inside. Hustle culture provided the allure and illusion that the harder I worked, the more I could fight, fix and achieve. But in the end, my habit of hustling and grinding left me feeling exhausted and depleted. I treated my body and mind like a machine, optimized and commodified to produce work for others.
This time around, eight years later, I am giving myself space to be more introspective and less reactive. When I left full-time work as a physician, I thought I would automatically feel more relaxed and embrace being over doing. I thought my creativity would automatically be liberated, and I’d have lots of art to share. Welp, that didn’t happen. Instead my hustle habit translated into working non-stop on the many personal tasks I neglected during my medical career, “optimizing” my health, and pressuring myself to produce art worthy of selling. It was a self-defeating cycle. Exhaustion is kryptonite for creativity.
you do not have to be a fire for
every mountain blocking you.
you could be a water
and soft river your way to freedom
too.
-options
Nayyirah Waheed
I am finally realizing that in order to grow out of this restrictive productivity mindset, I have to shed hustle culture. I am slowly learning how to create and implement boundaries so I can embrace rest and have the space to focus on what’s most important to me.
This is much easier said than done. I grew up in a workaholic immigrant family living in a capitalist system that values us only for what we produce. For my parents and grandparents, it was a habit born out of colonial and wartime necessity. Hustling was assumed and expected. I hustled in elementary school, when I took paper from my art class and sold origami during recess to make ice cream money. I hustled during my teen years, working odd jobs and gunning for scholarships to get a ticket out of rural America to a faraway college. I hustled during my medical career for grants, titles and recognition.
For a long time I defined myself by my work and held up the “busy badge of honor.”
- “How are you?”
- “Busy!”
- “What do you do?”
- “I’m a doctor.”
My patients taught me the costs of prioritizing productivity over care and empathy. In my early days as a primary care provider, I was ashamed of constantly getting reprimanded for my slowness and not seeing 20 patients before 5 pm each day. I tried to meet the clinic’s productivity goals by hammering through a task list for each patient and setting a timer to finish up 10 minutes into each appointment. My patients rebelled. My timer would go off, and I’d try to wrap up and leave. Patients pulled on my white coat to get me to stay and listen to them. They followed me into the hallway and the next exam room. I was mortified and asked an experienced colleague, “Is this what primary care is? Is there anything else we can do?” To which she replied, “This is it. We can’t do anything about it.”
Eventually I decided to rebel and do something about it. Along with other advocates in the HIV community, I found funding to justify 30-minute visits. I started to center my patients’ priorities by asking them a simple question:
What matters most to you right now?
Their responses illuminated needs I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t asked:
- Paying for gas for my car.
- Finding an apartment so I can live with my son.
- Explaining to my family I won’t give them HIV when we eat together so I can have dinner with my grandchildren.
Helping people with what matters most to them was one of the best things I did as their doctor. It built trust. It felt right and good. It took extra time, including time that was not compensated or recognized (and in fact sometimes punished), but it was totally worth it. Instead of hustling and prioritizing productivity, I prioritized relationships: being present, listening, supporting.
I am no longer seeing patients at a primary care clinic, but what I learned from my patients has deep resonance for what I do now.
Slowing down, stopping, listening, resting, reflecting, metabolizing, responding intentionally… These are the actions I will take to shed hustle culture so I can focus on my health, relationships and community. I will treat my body and mind as my sanctuary. I will have long meals with my family and friends. I will take daily walks through my neighborhood and chat with neighbors. I will call my art shop Sophy’s Slow Studio. Things will take time, I will make less money, I will be OK. Actually, I will be better off: more rested, more connected, more adaptable, and more creative in navigating these challenging times.
In this Year of the Snake, I will shed my hustle mindset so I can grow into a life that prioritizes what matters most to me.