Day Job + Side Hustle

Working your dream day job and having a side hustle can be both rewarding and challenging. For myself I am working my dream job (or my 9-5 as some will say). However, when I am not at work what do I fill my time with? I don’t play video games, and I hardly watch Tv anymore. I would love to hang out with my friends, but when you become an adult with a “real job” it’s really hard to match up all of your schedules. Now I have recently bought a house so every once in a while there is a small project to do here and there, but most of it is cleaning, laundry, mowing the lawn, you know the everyday stuff. Then when I have the free time I like to spend it designing and building things. I always tend to ask myself the question. . . How can I make this better? Or How could I make this work? Like how can I better organize my shop, or how can I make the process of making a ring box better and easier?

Now with all of these projects can come some extra cash. Turning your hobby into a source of income revenue means you can earn extra cash doing something you love. However, managing your time and energy to juggle both can be tough. It's essential to prioritize and ensure you don't burn out. So for example my day job is not your typical 9-5. Now due to the nature of my job I can’t say too much, but the schedule fluctuates greatly. There are days were I work mornings, or I could be working our normal shift which spans 2:30pm - 11:00pm. Then you get those special times of the year where we are working on our big events and those projects work on a span of a month or 2.

Let’s take a trip back one year. I was working on one of our biggest events of the year. The 4th of July. Now for my job the planning and building for this event starts about mid may. This involves programing, planning, scheduling, building, load, and a ton of coordination. To which all take careful time management and making sure you have your plan down pat as to stay on on your deadline path. Alongside this I was still running StudioKay. Now with the tasks of my day job priorities began to take a big mental toll. It would only get worse to turn into one of my biggest time management challenges of my entire life. In the middle of all of this StudioKay was seeing a massive influx of orders. It became a busy selling season very fast. My day job was taking up about 6 days of my week so whatever little time I had on my day off was spent working on orders. As well as any free time before or after work. Some days I would be up and in the shop at 6am or would head to the shop at midnight as soon as I would get home from work. There would be about 9 open orders at a time and they would just keep coming in. BUT WAIT!!! How about a plot twist. Now here is where it gets interesting. On top of a very busy day job, and a massive influx of orders I was also neck deep in the process of purchasing my very first home!!!!! Now I am a single woman. No one else to help. I was doing all of this on my own. The mental strain of making sure my event at work ran smoothly, getting orders out on time, and now running the paces and swimming through the paper work of purchasing a home began to take its toll. Now the world was going to keep turning whether I could keep up or not. The only thing to do was to push through. With all said and done, the 4th of july went smoothly, all my orders got out on time, and I got the keys to my new house and new home of StudioKay.

Staying organized and planning your days helps to maintain a balance between your day job and side hustle. To say that any of this was easy would be a massive understatement. All was done but the mental insanity that overtook at times was overwhelming. But pushing through only made me a stronger and more agile person when I came out on the other side of all of this. So it is a gamble to make your hobby at home into a business. When you love to do something the second you put money into play you can lose your passion for it most of the time. Luckily I am still running strong and always thinking of new ideas to add to the shop. So balancing a day job and a side hustle takes dedication and effort, but with passion and discipline, it's possible to excel at both.