The Side Hustle : What to do when you need the extra cash
Last night I stayed up in bed until 3am thinking about how I was going to survive this quarter of the month where I have to pay my rent (40% of my salary) and pay my credit card, and I thought about this premise:
Take this situation among my friends, 20 to 30 somethings who have a side hustle a.k.a the gig you work in addition to your day job.
For example,
Karla Cruise plays live music and sells paintings and drawings on the weekends, while working as a creative director in Esfandiari, a quantified marketing firm in Monterrey, Mexico.
Guada Gaxiola sells vintage garments with Selena prints on them with her design brand Ciencias Naturales, while working with her coffee company Adhoc Cafés Mexicanos de Altura.
I write for the internet on the weekends (I don’t get paid for this) and work on content design projects, because if you don’t freelance on the side… “What kind of urban-dwelling Millennial are you?”.
Making money out of art isn’t easy.
Previous generations have also coped with such semi-tragedy; probably every human ever has been a sort of actor-waiter at some point. Take Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe working on their art and at bookstores in 1969 as an example. Or mexican 3D artist Grand Chamaco who works in advertising but makes his art part of his creative career and every day job.
In any case, those of us who are employed are lucky. Working as a community manager, graphic designer or even a Facebook engineer might not be the dream job. But your side hustle can help you explore new areas you can later implement in your job, it can boost your creativity, it can give you a sense of purpose, but mostly it can help you gain financial independence.
But What’s a Side Hustle?
A side hustle is something you do to earn money outside a traditional job.
Maybe that’s an economic necessity for you.
Maybe it’s an act of rebellion against “the system.”
Maybe it’s just plain fun.
In the best-case scenario, your side hustle can be like a lottery ticket, the one that perfectly blends money and love, because when it works it’s not work.
