Grindin'

the grind, the wounds and the myth of resilience

Having a solid crew is vital; friends who listen, but don’t judge; who keep it a solid buck with you even when you're outchea, wild egregious, giving all the wrong words life. I’ve said it before, regarding the group chats I’m in, which are lifelines. Most of my folks are musicians, artists across various mediums, or artist-adjacent; they understand the multi-layered reality of creating things from the aether and ideas. They are familiar with the legacy of creative practice and what that work currently entails. They get the grind, the anxiety, the brilliance, and the burnout.

At a recent real-life meetup, I was chopping it with the homies, sharing something I’d worked out in therapy. I casually said, “yada yada… a holdover from trauma,” and kept it moving. My mans stopped me mid-sentence like, “Yo, that’s a fire book title.” he wasn’t wrong; I promise, god be speaking.

I’ve got a rack of holdovers from my traumas, especially when we talk about art, the construct of hustle, and the wounds I, and possibly we, normalize. Because for real, for real, this art, creative, making something out of nothing life, isn’t normal. I just hopped off touring with Ambrose Akinmusire, one of the most prolific and compelling composers I know, and a really good human; we had a string of conversations about the unnatural process of being an artist, specifically within this business of music. The mental space it demands, the self-delusion required to chase the upside; the time we sacrifice to the gods of our own understanding; all of that, coupled with the chaos and unpredictability of trying to live as well adjusted as possible, balancing family and such, while actively pursuing greatness as an artist.

For me, art is catharsis, not an intellectual pursuit; it’s 90% internal work that manifests outward. The rest is all grizzly; dealing with the detritus of life shit. It’s the interstitial between the grind and the personal; building toward success, navigating critique, navigating self, paying bills, life doing the absolute most, and enduring a stream of challenges that have little to do with the actual art.

Art is subjective; yet we still choose to live in that liminal space between logic and fantasy, hoping to connect. Hoping our work reaches someone. Anyone. Enough people to matter. With the understanding of "mattering" being a whole other bag of unresolved and unaddressed traumas that may eke their way into some latter post in these here substacks.

Given all of that, we keep creating, working through the holdovers of our respective traumas; the incessant need to define ourselves by our grind and hustle; wrestling with ideas of rest; questioning at times if we’re ever truly enough. Culturally, throughout the African diaspora¹, hustle isn't just ambition; it’s survival. In my house, we were taught to work hard not just to succeed, but to prove that we had that thing; the intangible jont; that enables us to thrive irrespective of external forces or internal obstacles. There was no gap year for the kid; there was college or a gap job. My parents equated overachieving in the workplace to Black power, drilling into us that the job should hate when we’re not there; that we should be more efficient, smarter, and overachieving; because we have to be twice as good as a counter to the deeply embedded global perceptions built on anti-Blackness. Y’all know the ones; that we’re lazy, undeserving, or incapable; that we don’t earn our place, but are placed there by the liberal graces of others.

Le sigh.

As a result, all of my siblings and I are workaholics who don’t call in on Mondays or Fridays. Like many navigating systemic bias, we overcorrect; we build tenets into our ethos that give us gas in the tank, but young, the fuel is tainted. I’ve found that I started to equate resilience and tenacity with identity, I feel to some degree that those of us who throw ourselves into our work are guilty of sliding this yoke over our necks. We often believe we’re working smarter, accomplishing more, yet either consciously or subconsciously, still feel like we’re falling short. Then we find ourselves trying to measure up to a version of ourselves built entirely around the grind, a monument to our resilience placed on foundations poured from our respective trauma.

In the U.S., that narrative of hustle is deeply woven into our culture. Hustle becomes evidence; it becomes armor; it becomes an offering. For me, it’s what keeps me going; constantly grinding, always building. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is a lie from the pit; yet it’s been a mantra of mine for many moons. It’s been the tainted fuel that’s benefited my career, but like the boy D’Anthony Carlos say: At What Cost?

When I was having panic attacks over finances and a plummeting credit score, I was grinding. I didn’t want to go back to the 9-to-5. So whatever opportunities were available, I shot my shot; pitch decks on tap, cameras in hand, business plans attached in emails, strategic partnerships, client lists, teaching, consulting, grant writing, content strategy; everything and anything, while still making a rack of music, honing my skills, and staying active. Working smart, too; or so I thought; believing that “smart” work was running myself raggedy to connect all the dots.

What we don’t always notice is that when our hustle is rooted in trauma, scarcity, insecurity, imposter syndrome, etc., it stops being just our drive and starts becoming self-sabotage. That kind of grind wears us down, pulling us further from who we are, as we shroud ourselves under the performance of productivity. And over time, we start pushing back against the very things we need to maintain balance. This is when rest, safety, and peace stop feeling like a given and start feeling like things we need to earn. That’s when the hustle shifts. It’s no longer about freedom; it’s about survival. And somewhere in that shift, these concepts of rest, safety, and peace start to feel like weakness instead of what they are: essentials.

I’m the speed limit years old and still excited about creating all the things; my cylinders are firing with more clarity than 10 years ago. The difference between then and now is time; time spent experiencing life’s lessons and unlearning the bullshit we were socialized into thinking. Even as I push against both internal and external forces, I’m like: man, I got a lot of baggage that don’t look like baggage. Being a workaholic is not normal. A lot of the bruises, scabs, and scars I’ve developed are just trauma responses; psychological keloids as a proxy for the pain I’ve normalized and accepted as part of me.

Nah.

I, like many, am just getting hip to mental health and therapy language; finally finding the words to address our traumas and the language of healing. Wholetime; sametime; some of this is just too much. Everybody ain’t gaslighting or unpacking; and everything ain’t a trigger; though folks know how to push a button. I’m just saying.

I’m thankful for the language, though, I’m lowkey siced for the ability to articulate what it is. That alone has helped me understand that some of the weight I carry isn’t mine to hold; it’s just pain and trauma I’ve normalized. I’ve been wearing my wounds like medals; treating trauma as proof of strength, rather than what it really is; damage I’ve adapted to. We fold the wounds into our identity; into the work; and call it growth, without understanding the heft until we try to put it down. And sometimes, letting go is more stressful than maintaining how we’ve always moved.

sometimes letting go is self-care
sometimes letting go is love.

I/we need to stop mistaking our scars for character. Being resilient shouldn’t require us to be broken first. The stories we tell ourselves, and those told by society, celebrate overcoming adversity, but rarely challenge why that adversity was there to begin with. Hustle culture thrives on this distorted illusion of strength; that what doesn’t kill you and all that. I mean, I’m here for hard work, and I believe that whatever you want, you most def need a combination of faith and work, I believe that no one should outwork you when you have a dream and want to make that dream tangible. I also feel like grinding ourselves to the gristle is unhealthy, and traipsing around flashing our unhealed trauma doesn’t make us superheroes; it just makes us tired. That cape is mad heavy, so now we’re tired AND haunted by the spectres of pain we’ve been ducking. Normalizing trauma as a personality trait, as a badge of honor, is mad dangerous, because it keeps us from seeking peace, softness, care, and rest. Healing is by no stretch of the imagination, weakness; it’s revolution champ, especially in these spaces that profit from our burnout. Healing and rest in concert with being resolute about reconciling and unburdening ourselves from our respective trauma(s) is radical self-care, full stop.

In the inimitable and timeless words from Outkast’s Liberation…
Shake that load off.

easy
k

about:
KOKAYI
Artist | Author | Speaker | Producer | Preeminent Improvisational Vocalist, GRAMMY-nominated musician, and multidisciplinary fine artist, is a Guggenheim Fellow for Music Composition (the first emcee to have achieved this distinction). Host of the Interledger Foundation’s Future/Money podcast. Author of You Are Ketchup: and Other Fly Music Tales, creator of HUBRI$ and Blackness and the Infinite Potential Well, whose artistry and work reflect a rich tapestry of life experiences shaped by DC and the cultural innovations of the Black diaspora—an enduring legacy that continues to shape the world, often without the proper recognition. Here for all the panel discussions, podcast yakkin’, and keynote addresses, should you need me, holla.

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1. also see Latin, Asian, and other cultures deeply rooted in the spirit of capitalism or what Max Weber referred to as the Protestant Work Ethic.