Working hard for the money (and ketchup)

If I’ve learned one thing from my time on social media, it’s that everyone is supposed to have a side hustle.

I was feeling lazy the other day and ordered some fast food to be delivered via DoorDash. My argument was that my foot hurt too much to hobble from the couch to my car, so I needed someone to drive it to my house so I could hobble from the couch to the front door. Technically, the garage hobble would have been a shorter distance. But I’m justifying it because it was my driving foot that hurt, and…okay, I was just lazy. Moving on.

So anyways, I ordered some lunch and limped to the front door to pick it up. While I’m eating, I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed and see an ad for DoorDash. (Second thing I’ve learned from social media: Google is creepy and knows too much about my life.) Specifically, it’s telling me what a great side hustle it would be, claiming it can pay me more per hour than my actual job that requires a Master’s degree.

My first thought? I wished I had asked the delivery guy to put some ketchup packets in the bag so I didn’t have to hobble to the fridge and get cold ketchup for my fries. (Yes, I’m going to whine a lot about my foot in this post.)

My second thought? “Hey Cat,” I asked The Cat as she aggressively tried to steal my food. “Do I need a side hustle?”

(In case you were wondering,The Cat has no opinion on the matter. She just wanted my fries.)

If you’re on Facebook or any other type of social media, you’ve probably seen lots of ads for potential side gigs. They might be in the form of Big Brother/Google spying sponsored ads like the one that I saw. Or it might be from your friends letting you know about their wonderful business opportunities.

Here’s the problem, y’all. I think if I tried to take on any of those jobs it would be a disaster.

Let’s start with DoorDash and other driving based jobs. First of all, I hate driving. HATE. I do have an excellent car with amazing mileage, but I’m hoping for that car to last me a few more years, and I’ve already given it a vigorous workout over the last twelve years. Most of my career has been spent driving. First it was driving all over creation to meet with various high school kids and try to convince them to go to college (when really an overwhelming number came to my presentation just to get out of class). Then I became a social worker, which I foolishly thought would put an end to my long days of driving.

I’ll give you a hint: it didn’t.

Sure, I didn’t have to drive to random high schools anymore and give sales pitches to teenagers. Now I get to drive people around town to food pantries, doctor’s appointments, county offices, etc. Or I get to drive to their houses for home visits.

So no driving. I spend too much time in the car as it is.

Judging from Facebook, my other side gig options are as follows:

Selling leggings. Please don’t revoke my woman card for this, but…I really never got on the leggings bandwagon. I’m all about them jeans, y’all.

Essential oils. I tend to be very hit or miss when it comes to scented stuff. Some aromatherapy things are just fine. Others give me instant headaches. I never know what it’s going to be. If I tried to sell any sort of scented stuff (candles are also a big part of the side hustle industry), my sales pitch would be like “do you like to gamble? Well, this scented thing might make you relax. And this might give you a headache so bad that you throw up. I really don’t know which is which. Go ahead. Live dangerously. And please pay me lots of money to live dangerously.”

Arts and crafts. My attempts at making anything crafty usually devolves into nervous swearing and burning myself with hot glue guns. So I don’t think anyone would want to purchase any craft I had a hand in making. Maybe I could put my acting and/or marketing talents to use here and instead of selling the craft, I could make a YouTube channel where people could watch me fail miserably at making said craft. That could work, right? I mean, if a kid can make millions of dollars having a channel all about him opening presents — yes, that’s a real thing — surely I could make some dough cursing at a crotchet needle.

So unless some other side hustle industry comes along that’s more suited to my talents, it looks like I’ll just stick with my day job. Which is okay. I like my day job. It involves some tedious stuff like mountains of paperwork and data entry. But at least I don’t have to worry about wearing fashionable leggings, stabbing myself with a sewing needle, or puking from exposure to scented candles.

Any of y’all have a side gig (or work from home business)? What works for you? Tell me all about it in the comments. I’ll read them once I get back from hobbling to the fridge for a Dr. Pepper.