The Importance of Side Hustles
A passion project can reinvigorate your professional life
Let me tell you about a time when we were lounging in our rent-controlled sarcophaguses and writing stories on stone tablets. Back then, we wore pantsuits and mailed out paper resumes. We had to actually call recruiters — a cruel form of torture for this shy introvert — and the idea of designing a career of our own making was a laugh riot. We were strategic about internships because they would put us on a linear career path, a path from which no one dared to deviate.
They told us everything would be perfectly fine as long as we did. not. deviate. Every year in passing was about succession and accumulation. By 30, we would have a house, 2.5 kids, and perhaps a little chow or golden retriever. A cat if you were that kind of family. By 40, we’d procure a hefty retirement plan and find ourselves in a constant state of complaint. We would go on like this, ticking off boxes until the grave. (The largest box of them all.)
But what if we swerved off the road? What if we woke one morning from our sleeping life and decided that this wasn’t what we wanted? What if we wanted to go off the reservation? What if we wanted to build a new road? Would we tell ourselves that we’d be okay with bearing the weight of the journey on our backs? What then?
