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WORK/LIFE

The Tyranny of the Side Hustle

It feels like you have to choose between your money or your life.

Bev Potter

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Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

My co-worker left a high-paying job with a major, nationwide law firm in the big city because of verbal abuse from her boss.

Welcome to being a legal secretary. Verbal and sexual abuse from your (male) boss just goes with the territory.

Now she gets verbally abused in a much smaller office in a pastoral, small-town setting. So I guess that’s a win.

I just found out that both she and her husband are working for DoorDash to make ends meet. This is in addition to her side hustle of coaching competitive cheer.

Ah, the tyranny of the side hustle.

Surprisingly, according to Webster’s Dictionary the term “side-hustle” first appeared in the 1950s. Webster’s added it to the lexicon in September 2022.

I joined the world of side-hustlery (see, I can invent words too) in 2020, just like everybody else when the world fell apart and we all had an internet connection and too much time on our hands.

Little did I know my new pursuit would morph from being something light and fun to being the source of my greatest anxiety.

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