I attended a wonderful holiday party this weekend. It was in a beautifully-decorated house. The food was abundant and delicious. The desserts were scrumptious. The family hosting the party was kind and gracious.
I had never met them before that night. Nor any of the guests.
The only person I knew there was another musician. We played for two hours: him on trumpet, and me on keyboard. We were part of “the entertainment” for the evening. At the end of it, we were paid a pretty nice sum for our musical services.
That's my favorite kind of holiday party. One that I'm paid to show up at. It's more than a little mercenary, but it's true. 🙂
Side gigs are indeed worth it. Daniel over at Sweating the Big Stuff agrees that they're worth it if you don't place a particularly high value on your free time. Once in a while I enjoy going to a party, but I'm definitely more for one-on-one conversations than big crowds. More often than not people are butterflying from one conversation to the next, so ehh … I can take it or leave it. The trade-off of being paid vs. being distanced from the guest book of the party is clear for me: “Show me the money!”
But it can get even better. The dirty little secret of this trade-off of side gigs vs. free time is this: Done correctly, down the road there doesn't even need to be a trade-off! Done correctly, the money from the side-gigging done previously just continues to flow in, passively … while you watch TV, attend parties, travel, whatever. I've started to see it a little bit even from this blog; I don't get a post out every day, but I usually get paid something every day, and that amount is bigger this year than it was last year.
Everyone has things that they enjoy doing, and that's fine. But if you're doing things that don't really give you much enjoyment, why not replace it with building up Plan B? You'll need that probably when you least expect it, and there's no way to get the time back spend on mindless, semi-enjoyable activities when it does.
Doing what you like is great, but if you can also get paid for it, I say go for it!
Seriously, everyone should try their hand at something other than their 9-5 job.
that’s right, when I started blogging it took a lot of time, but now I can do it and still have plenty of free time. At that point, maybe it’s time to explore more and start something else?