Creative 101: How Many Side Hustles Do I Need Until I Make it My Main Hustle
Credit: @ajadang
by Elena Chen
Everyone seems to have a side gig nowadays. They sell skateboards in their free time, play hockey semi-professionally, or run a “small” Etsy shop that brings in thousands of dollars every month. Some people rent out their apartment, their car, or their jewelry. But a side hustle doesn’t exist without first a main hustle. And just like the main chick, nobody seems as interested in what you actually do for a living when your “under wraps” side hustle comes to light. What about those of us who don’t actually do any one particular thing for a living? Those of us who run on side hustles?
In the era of the Self with a capital “S”, the contemporary consciousness has become increasingly accepting of prioritizing the self and actualizing the desires of the self as a way of life. We speak nonchalantly of leaving a job, partner, country or language in the name of self-actualization. Self-actualization can come as: “This isn’t the job for me”, or “I just don’t think we are compatible”, or “I want to be in a place where I feel I belong”. I see myself embracing this paradigm of self-actualization and I have indeed benefited greatly from its widespread acceptance.
My search for self expression and for self-actualization has led me to live and work in some of the most interesting fields in the most metropolitan countries in the world. I have always believed in expressing myself and in pursuing my “dreams”. The only thing I didn’t anticipate amidst all my enthusiasm for self-actualization is the confusion I would experience from being so free to be myself. I wanted to do it all. I wanted to be a carpenter and an anthropologist and a nurse. Recently, I found myself wanting to be a teacher, an artist and a cook. If my aim in life has been to do what feels right to me, then it has always been to do it all, as much as possible, ASAP.
I would fall into bouts of burnout from trying to do it all, cut down, and the process would start all over again. Hence, I started to do things on the side as a way to placate this fervent desire to do so much and to support myself as I attempt to maneuver myself around the narrative of self-actualization that has been both a blessing and a curse.
illustration by Meredith Schomburg
In 2020, when COVID was still ablaze, I began part-time working at a restaurant. In my spare time, I would comb through my local thrift store and post items I found interesting to try and sell online (fashion, as another medium of self-expression, has been a long time staple in my toolkit of self-actualization). Later, I picked up crocheting and started to curate my brand on Instagram. I loved commerce and never thought to do it as a career but here was my unique opportunity to dabble in it alongside my thrifting reselling business.
credit: @_crochetc._
Within the first year of starting my crochet brand, I had picked up some traction and sold some custom pieces and pre-made items. It’s a thrill to see something I handmade stitch by stitch appreciated by someone who loved it enough to exchange something they valued for it. I started a Youtube channel and used my video editing skills from another job to see what I could do. On Youtube I focused mostly on fashion content and posted shorts as well as long-form content. I continue to write here on DNAMAG. I am also studying French for an upcoming move. Sometimes I’m baffled at how I came to this place in life. I think my mishmash of activities, the patchwork of my side hustles, have become my life. Whilst on paper it may sound like something to be envious of, it also comes with mounds of uncertainty and instability. I am intermittently but consistently met with a voice that second guesses this way of living. “I should settle down”, “I need to grow up”, and “How much longer can I do this for” encircle me.
Yesterday, on my way to a coffee shop downtown, I started engaging in some small talk with my uber driver who had just let me into a very sleek Tesla Model X. He divulged that he was running an AirBnB and drove Uber after work for the Transpac which is a biennial yacht race from San Pedro to Hawaii. In preparation for this race, he would need about $100k. Money for the crew, money for the sails, money to enter the race and money for another crew to bring the boat back to California. Here was a man who ran side hustles for his passion. I think of myself as side hustling with my passions. And then there are those of us who have just found what works for them and don’t have any side hustles. As I’ve gotten older the desire for anchorage has also grown stronger. I don’t know how much longer I would want a multi-hyphenate life. I also find it so hopeful to know people who have never retired from that life.
Beside work, we have been juggling multiple identities long before the concept of side hustling came to be. Someone can be at once a child and a friend. At work and at home. This multitudinous form is enriching. We code-switch and translate when we face others but also when we’re completely alone. If my patchwork professional life is an indication of anything, I hope it’s that we should all just give it a go. If there’s something you want to do, try it. If you want to make something out of it, try it. If you want to be ten things at once, it’s possible. Try, with whatever means you have, to express yourself whichever way you know how. Gently, without haste, you grow roots that run in many circles, and the dichotomous categorization of “main” vs. “side” won’t seem as important anymore. It might be financially rewarding or it might bring you into a community you didn’t know you wanted to be a part of. It might do both. What it will definitely do is that it will open up your world and you will have more that matters to you.
