Walking the dogs today I passed a woman with eight dogs, who all said hello and then moved on. I assume she was a professional dog walker, which reminded me of an acquaintance who recently quit their job in HE and is now running a dog walking business. It made me wonder, what would my side hustle be? Everyone seems to have a side hustle now. In this context I don’t mean being forced to drive for Uber because being a teacher pays so poorly, but rather those part-time bits of income that you sense people would like to be their main job if it paid well enough. Being a physical trainer, selling vintage clothing, making pottery, baking bread, running online communities, that type of interest based project. Something that could tick over some income if mortgages and crippling energy bills weren’t a thing.
I’m not sure I have one. I don’t think listening to audiobooks is a marketable skill. Buying and selling vinyl is a very overcrowded field and so far I’ve only mastered the buying part. Blogging is a possibility but they key to my relationship with blogging is that it’s personal, I’ve tried being the ‘official’ blogger for projects before and it doesn’t work for me. Also, I think these side hustles need to be distinct from your actual work, not just a recasting of it. So becoming an ed tech consultant is not admissable (it’s my blog post, I make the rules). I like making pies and pasties, but this is mainly for personal consumption.
It may be a good test, in relation to my last post, about having an identity distinct from work, in having a ready answer to the question: “What is your side hustle, that if it paid well enough, you would make your main vocation?” You don’t need to actually have it as a side hustle now, but theoretically it could be one. I’m going to seek an answer to that question. At the moment it is “walking guide around Tongwynlais, accompanied by Teilo.” It’s a winner, right?
