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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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 »

Should You Shift Your Sleep Schedule with Daylight Savings Time?

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Yesterday was Daylight Savings Time, where everyone in the US turns back their clocks an hour and reverts to Standard Time. While recent bills passed by both the Senate and numerous states suggest it’s likely that our years of changing the clocks are numbered, the tradition is here to stay for at least a while longer. Meanwhile, changing the clocks has gotten me thinking about my sleep schedule, and what sleep habits are best for me as a creative person who makes his own work schedule.

Quick rewind: I spend kind of a lot of time talking about sleep on this blog.  One of my most popular posts chronicles what happened when I went to work on two hours of sleep (Spoilers: It sucked), and more recently I’ve realized that spending the time it takes to get enough sleep is a great investment if it means I can use my remaining time productively.

More importantly, when I consider what kind of daily schedule I want to keep, first and foremost is the idea of when I’d like to be getting up and when I’d like to be going to bed Continue reading »

5 Advantages of a Flexible Work Schedule

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A few weeks ago I shared my Awesome Work-From-Home Freelance Writer/Editor schedule and talked about how I structure my workdays in a way that makes sense to me.  Writing in the morning, handling email and admin around midday, and working on editing and marketing in the afternoon has helped me create a really useful workflow that makes me feel comfortable during my workday and get more done.

There are a ton of other advantages to being self-employed, of course: not having to deal with horrible bosses, navigate toxic coworker relationships, deal with pointless Day Job shit, or fight the pressure to care about your company when you really don’t.  Avoiding these downsides is pretty awesome, and it’s helping me feel better about my creative work/paid work balance.

One HUGE advantage, though, is that when you work for yourself, you have a flexible schedule.  That means you can schedule your own work when you want to, as long as it gets done Continue reading »

My Awesome Work-From-Home Writer/Editor Schedule

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Over the years I’ve held a lot of different Day Jobs, all of which required me to be there during set hours.  As a result, I’ve had to schedule my writing and creative work for whatever time I had left over.

This led to some interesting workarounds over the years: for example, I went from working mostly after dinner when I worked in an office to working mostly in the afternoons when I taught in Japan, as well as sneaking in whatever creative work I could during my free periods.

You might remember, though, that before I moved to Japan I spent about three months without working any Day Job at all, and during that time I had free reign over my time as I revised MFA Thesis Novel and edited a writing anthology.  During this time I set my own schedule of working on the novel in the morning when I felt fresh, taking a long break, then doing whatever other email or editing work I had to throughout the late afternoon and evening Continue reading »