2024 08 10

Haley forages in Humboldt Park. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It is the weekend and I woke up today thinking about side projects and side hustles. I’ve always had a bunch of things I’m interested in pursuing beyond my main job of photographer. I guess as a freelancer this is probably more appropriate. But lately I’ve been getting the sense that second jobs and side hustles are becoming more of the norm than an exception. This is merely an anecdotal observation and I don’t have fancy facts or graphs to back this up, but I’d bet many of the few people reading this would agree with me. Is this caused by people all-of-a-sudden being more well-rounded and curious or is this out of necessity as we find ourselves struggling to make a living through traditional career paths? Probably, it’s a bit of both, with social media opening up previously difficult channels of selling and marketing, thus enabling anyone to more or less do any business out of their own home.

What worries me is the idea that we’re all more or less passing around the same $100 to each other and nobody is actually building much wealth in exchange for all of the time, effort and energy they sink into their side hustles. I try to only pursue ones that will help me grow and develop as a person, not simply make a quick buck. But that, too, might be a bad strategy in the sense that not going all in on an idea will surely lead to failed execution. Filling up an Instagram shop full of stuff and then not even looking at it for six months; opening a photo studio without focusing on telling people you have a photo studio available to rent; offering fine art prints for sale without bringing them to art fairs and street fests so people actually see them and have a chance to buy them. I think maybe it’s time to go all in on one of these.

-Clayton