Goodbye Grind – Hello Side Hustle!

Welcome to the era of flexible schedules and creative income-earning!

It’s no secret that the advent of living in the age of the Internet transcends food videos and selfies (though we love both!). Thanks to the Internet we are all privy to the perks of the sharing economy – and there are many. For starters, we can work when we want to, and are no longer beholden to the rigid nine-to-five models of the past. This means that new moms, for example, are liberated to work on schedules that make sense for their family needs.

The sharing economy also allows us to work from our homes and on our terms, which creates all kinds of space in our lives. We now have time and space to take care of ourselves, so that the prospect of, for instance, taking a yoga class in the middle of the day no longer feels relegated to something you only get to do when you’re on vacation.

When we start to see our side-hustle as something that we can do on our time and on our terms, we free ourselves to explore what it is we truly want to do. If you are ready to start discovering new income-generating possibilities for yourself, the key is to get creative, scour the Internet, stay open-minded, and try your hand at things you might not have readily seen yourself doing.

Read this article, for example, by Inc., which lays out 30 easy ways to make money.

That all said, we also need to remember that nothing is perfect, and even the so-called gig economy comes with challenges. This article in Wired lays some of them out. But as Wired reports, all obstacles aside, “Your children are young, and your parents are old, only once. And the traditional image of a career as a ladder, a race, or a scramble to the top that cannot be interrupted is an idea worth overthrowing. On-demand work can also mean on-­demand time for caregiving, for women and for men. The technology has changed enough to make it happen.”