Should Your Side Hustle Just Be Your Hobby?
Conversely, when should your hobby become your side hustle? And can it become your main?
Seems like everyone started a side hustle during the pandemic. As a writer, I flirt with side hustles all the time. I got into gaming over the pandemic, so naturally I decided I needed to start a gaming website. I did a bunch of research for a novel set in Victorian London, so I created this website. After a while, though, I started to wonder, when should an interest or a hobby become a side hustle, and when should it just stay your hobby?
The normalization of remote work destabilized the traditional workplace paradigm, forcing companies to rethink everything from cybersecurity to real estate. Meanwhile, workers reevaluated their lives, quiet quitting and fleeing city centers in favor of small-town living and in search of better quality of life. Many pursued side hustles. It felt akin to the advent of the internet: the gatekeepers had been bypassed, or so it seemed. People didn’t need that 9-5 job anymore. They could turn their passions into their jobs. Right? RIGHT?
Some people did. Others ran themselves ragged trying to balance their day job and their side project. As a writer who must reconcile a day job with extracurricular writing (like most writers), I can identify with this burnout. You can make the transition, but it may take a while.
Take Giovanna González-Chávez, known as “Gigi, the First Gen Mentor,” as an example. She created videos on the side of her day job at a bank. One of those TikTok videos blew up, which led to a lot of other opportunities and media attention. Today, she is a full-time financial educator, content creator and, as of this year, an author.
That transition took years. She was saving up for a trip that ultimately gave her the financial cushion to take the plunge to pursue content creation full-time.
“Had I gone viral on TikTok three years ago when I was still living paycheck to paycheck, quitting a job wouldn’t have been an option.”
(Check out my interview with Gigi)
Therein lies the crux of the issue. For your side hustle to become your main hustle, the stars must align. You have to be patient, consistent and tenacious, but you also have to catch a break—and when the break comes, you have to be ready to capitalize, as Gigi was.
Related question: Is it worth it? As in, is it worth turning a hobby or interest into a business? Is it worth putting in that kind of sustained effort, at what can be great personal cost, for something that is far from guaranteed? Only you can decide, but there are a couple of factors I submit for your consideration:
Is your side hustle giving more than it’s taking, or vice versa? Is the attempt to monetize sucking out all the joy from what used to be a passion of yours, or is it giving you additional purpose?
If you knew your side hustle would never become your main hustle, would you still do it?
Gigi was never going to stop creating content for her community, just as I will never stop writing. I don’t know if my novels will ever break through, but I know I’ll never stop trying, regardless of the outcome. I have, however, had second thoughts on the gaming website.
So, dear readers, do you have a side hustle? Are you trying to make it your main? Leave your thoughts below.
Visit PabloAndreu.com for more of Pablo’s writing.
I love this perspective and I can personally relate to the challenges of finding balance. It’s not easy juggling a full-time gig that you’re invested in with a passion project. Late nights, weekends — you end up working 7 days a week. Some days (on the good days) though, it feels so worth it, to be able to do the things we love.