Side Hustle Highlights: Language Teaching

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Last week I talked about my adjunct job mentoring students in an online MFA program, where I work with students during the Fall and Spring semesters to show them the ropes of what an editor does. It’s a cool job that pays decently, and it’s helped me grow as a teacher and professional while also helping me make some good contacts.

This week, though, I want to highlight two of my other side hustles: teaching English as a Second Language online, and teaching Japanese in person. Both are steady sources of income that help me sustain my freelance lifestyle, and both help me use my teaching skills in ways I find interesting and stimulating.

So, without further ado, here’s how the side hustle teaching game works:
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Side Hustle Highlights: Online University Teaching

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Somebody asked me the other day whether I was still teaching after I left my university job in Japan last year.  However, their actual question seemed to be Are you teaching full-time as your main job? which of course is a solid No.

I thought about the best way to answer, and finally replied with Yes, but not as my main job.

Whille I get most of my income from editing jobs these days, I worked as a teacher for a long time, first as a tutor and substitute teacher in New Hampshire, then at a private school in Japan, then in grad school teaching undergrad essay writing, then again in Japan.  I worked other jobs in between, of course, but over my working life I’ve definitely spent more time teaching than doing anything else.

Teaching is fun and interesting to me because I enjoy tackling the problem of how best to present material to students, and how to help them build their ideas in interesting ways.  The editing and coaching work I do uses a lot of those same principles as I help writers express their ideas in the fullest, clearest way possible, Continue reading »

The Freelance Life vs the Employee Life Part 2: The Drawbacks

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Last week I dove into the differences in mindset that separate freelance workers from regular full-time employees: things like how you view your job, how you schedule your time, and how you relate to coworkers. (If you missed that post, definitely check it out before you read this one!)

I had a lot to say (and the post title definitely grabbed people’s attention!), but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the negative aspects of working for yourself as well, since it’s not all wine and roses.

Interestingly, when I talk to full-time employees about differences in our working lives, a lot of them are quick to point out the cons of self-employment, which they’ve clearly given a lot of thought to.  In some cases, though, I think they focus on the cons because they don’t know how they would handle them if they were working for themselves.

I recently heard an entrepreneur on a podcast say that even though starting a business in the internet age is easier and involves less risk than at any point in history, people still feel scared to try it.  That’s because they’re stuck in a pre-internet mindset, where working for yourself involves a lot of start-up capital and could cause you to lose everything Continue reading »

The Freelance Life vs the Employee Life Part I: The Benefits

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Since coming back to the US last year after three-plus years of living abroad, I noticed a lot of things had changed.  And one of those things was the people around me.

More specifically, I noticed a lot of my friends complaining about their jobs.  They talk about problems with their bosses, suffering through boring meetings, dealing with checked-out coworkers, and even worrying about layoffs.  My friends who work for big companies in particular talk about things like salary negotiations and jumping ship to make more money at a different company.  They also talk about retirement like it’s the end of a long, harrowing journey where their work will finally be over.

These are all things I don’t deal with in my own work, so I often feel left out of these conversations with little to add.

That’s why I wanted to write this post about what makes a Freelance Life different from a Regular Employee Life.  I’m less interested in technical details like taxes, getting paid, and how freelance workers get jobs, and more in the mental experiences that separate regular employees from freelance creative workers like me Continue reading »

Giving Up The Dream…

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This week’s post is a really important one.  It’s also a difficult one for me to write, and might hit close to home for a lot of people.  So, fair warning.

When we grow up, we’re surrounded by images of what a friend of mine recently referred to as The Dream—an image of the way our lives are quote-unquote “supposed to” look like.

The exact specifications of The Dream will no doubt look different to everyone, but it usually goes something like this:

 

What is The Dream?

In the way of life I’m calling The Dream, the person has a stable, full-time job they can consistently work without fear of being laid off or having to change jobs.  Said job pays a salary that’s not only enough to live on, but enough to save for retirement and afford amenities of decent quality, including furniture, vacations, late-model cars, and consumer electronics.  The salary from said job also allows the person to buy a house that’s relatively new, relatively large, and has some amount of property (most often Continue reading »

More Creative People Should Talk About How They Pay Their Bills: Notes on Stephen King’s “On Writing”

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When I started this blog waaaaaaaay back in 2016 I’d just gotten out of grad school, where my focus had been developing myself as a writer and honing my craft.  Back then, I’d been getting a lot of advice on how to be a writer: Write every day, write in the morning when you’re fresh, research agents who’ll want to read your work, find critique partners, revise multiple drafts, and so on.

If you were to follow all of this advice to the letter and make writing the focus of your life, it would certainly add up to more than a full-time 40-hour-a-week job—though no one ever came right out and said it like that.

My problem was that while aspiring writers were ostensibly developing their crafts over this 40-hour-a-week period, how were they supposed to be earning money?  Were they supposed to be independently wealthy, so they didn’t have to work?  Were they supposed to be working a part-time job?  Or were they not actually supposed to be devoting that much time to their craft, and carving out time on evenings and weekends instead? (And if they did it during their evenings and weekends, how would they find the time for family and friend relationships???)
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Bad Bosses Blame Their Employees for Mismanaged Workplaces

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A while back, I worked at a Day Job that was really, really busy.  While I was there the workload went up exponentially, though we only had a small increase in staff.  That meant we had slightly more people doing a LOT more work, which meant way more work for all of us.

During that extremely busy time, my boss dealt with the situation by checking in that we were constantly on task and not goofing off.  “Utilize your time well,” was her favorite phrase (complete with pretentious use of the word “utilize”), and she repeated it over and over at meetings.

Years later at a different Day Job, I experienced something similar.  At this particular Day Job I was responsible for waaaaaaaaaaay more work than a reasonable person could do in a 40-hour workweek, which led to a lot of stress and confusion.  To make matters worse, my boss often expected me to be in two places at once, and would regularly add extra tasks on to my already enormous workload.

This time, I tried explaining to my boss that there was simply too much work to do.  However, when I did, he always pivoted and said that I needed to manage my work better, stop wasting time, and learn to prioritize.  Continue reading »

I Used to Lie During Job Interviews: Here’s Why

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The other day I was updating my CV in preparation for a part-time gig I picked up through word-of mouth.  In the opening section I wanted to summarize the work I do, and after some trial and error, I came up with this:

I’m a working fiction writer and editor/writing coach with experience in EFL (English as a Foreign Language). My teaching experience extends to Japan and across cultures, while my editing work extends across both fiction and academic scholarship.

When I think about the work I’ve done, and the work I’d like to be doing in the future, this statement feels really natural to me—as in, it sums up my experience accurately, and isn’t just an exaggerated image I put down so I can get jobs.

That got me thinking more about previous years, when every time I wrote a resume or went to a job interview, I tried to craft an image of myself that the company wanted to hear.

In short: I used to lie about myself and my career goals. Continue reading »

Finding Meaning in a Day Job, Career, or Creative Work

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Having a meaningful life is pretty important.

Think about it: If your life isn’t exciting, interesting, stimulating, fun, important, influential, or engrossing, what else is there to look forward to?  Mindless consumption of entertainment?  Repetitive chores and routines?  The empty pursuit of money and material wealth?  Those don’t sound very good to me.

People, I’ve found, find meaning in all kinds of ways.  Many find meaning in family relationships: finding a romantic partner, having kids, raising their own family, or connecting with parents, siblings, or other close relatives.  Society places a lot of value on family too, like how the nuclear family is super important in the West.

A lot of people grow up with the impression that family and romantic relationships are the best way to make a meaningful life (i.e., that family is the most important thing).  As such, many people have the impression that careers and paid work are only important in that they allow you to provide for a family.  In other words: Continue reading »

Speedrunning Legend: An Interview with Karl Jobst

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Karl Jobst is a YouTuber and streamer whose channel documenting video game speedrunning has tens of millions of views.  He holds a plethora of speedrunning records in Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007 on the N64, and was the first to beat the Dam level of Goldeneye on Agent in 52 seconds, surpassing a record that had stood for fifteen years.  His YouTube videos have covered astounding speedrunning feats, new discoveries, investigations into video game market manipulation by Wata Games, and the scandals surrounding gaming personality Billy Mitchell. The last of these videos led to his being sued by Mitchell in September 2021, for which he is currently awaiting trial.

Karl and I first met in 2000 on the GameFAQs.com Goldeneye 007 page when we were both fourteen and writing strategy guides for the site.  We corresponded by email, then fell out of touch for over twenty years until I found his YouTube channel.  I reached out to him as a blast from the past, and over Zoom we discussed classic gaming, positive life changes, and finding the balance between money and passion.

 

Part I: As Soon As We Did It, I Was Hooked

 

But I Also Have a Day Job: How old were you when you first got into video games?

Karl Jobst: Two and a half.  Some of my earliest memories are of playing a computer game, specifically Ultima V.  It’s a very complex game, and I don’t think the modern generation would even be able to play it.  Back then they didn’t really hold your hand and guide you.  It required a lot of proactiveness and investigation.  I probably wasn’t doing it right, because specifically my earliest memory is of me dying in the game. Continue reading »

Guest Post: Is Paid Work Legit and Unpaid Creative Work a Hobby?

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Ian here—Martha Engber is a writer and personal trainer whose books include Winter Light from Vine Leaves Press (2021 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Young Adult Fiction), The Wind Thief, and Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up.  Martha and I met during the 2021 Vine Leaves Press online reading for the SMOL Small Press fair, and here she explains how her revelations during the COVID pandemic helped her balance her paid work with her largely unpaid creative work.

In December 2019 I was helping my sister babysit her new granddaughter in Houston, Texas when I received an email acceptance to publish my novel, Winter Light.

I allowed myself a full day of inner quiet to fully enjoy the achievement. At the same time, I’d already had two books published and understood that the moment I signed a contract, I’d spend the next eight months working hard to set up marketing for the book.

Once I signed the contract, the panic set in. I say panic because at the time I was working 45 high-energy hours a week as a fitness instructor and personal trainer at a corporation in Silicon Valley. Continue reading »

Writing and Candy Wrapper Fashion: An Interview with Timothy Schaffert

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Timothy Schaffert is the author of six novels: The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (2002), The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God (2005), Devils in the Sugar Shop (2007), The Coffins of Little Hope (2012), The Swan Gondola (2014), and most recently, The Perfume Thief (2021), in addition to being a professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He’s also an illustrator whose candy wrapper fashion series (selections from which appear throughout this interview) appears regularly on his Instagram and Twitter.

I first met Timothy in 2014 when I took his graduate-level fiction workshop at UNL and attended the Omaha Lit Fest, which he founded in 2005, and directed until 2015.  More recently, his candy wrapper fashion drawings caught my attention, so we sat down over Zoom to talk about MFA fiction workshops, finding the time to write, and how exactly he gets those candy wrappers to stick to the page.

[Cover photo: Candy Wrapper Fashion #356: The Ladies of Beverly Hills 90210] Continue reading »