What are your favourite side-hustle ideas?
A lot of people have a side hustle. Usually it means paid work done alongside your main job. Sometimes the reason is economic. A person’s main income may not be enough to cover housing, food, education, debt or family responsibilities. For others, a side hustle provides some extra money for savings, travel, a house deposit or retirement. It can also be a way of experimenting with another vocation without giving up your existing job.
For me, though, the interest is not really money. It is meaning-making. And it usually has something to do with words.
I have written recently about my passion for helping people write their life stories as a gift to their families. What interests me most is not expertise but encouragement. Most people already possess the stories. What they often need is some structure, a little encouragement and a reason to begin. Sometimes they simply need someone to help them believe that their life is worth writing down.
For the last few years, I have also been writing poems after Sunday sermons. It began as a way of reflecting on what the preacher had said. I would try to capture the essence of the message in poetic form.
Then it became something else. It became a gift to the preacher. A way of saying, “I heard you. I was listening. This is what stayed with me.”
Then it became a gift to the congregation as well, giving people another way to think about the sermon after Sunday had passed. People have been wonderfully encouraging. One person told me, “This is always so encouraging.” Another said, “That’s amazing, a real gift.” One preacher told me, “You said it better than I did.”
I don’t think that is really the point, of course. The point is that people find joy in knowing that someone listened carefully enough to give their words back to them in another form.
Last Sunday I visited a friend’s church. Her husband was preaching. I went to the early service, so I didn’t see her. But when she heard that I had been there, she told her husband that he would be getting a “sermon poem” and that she was looking forward to reading it. When I later sent it through, she replied: “Hooray! Thanks for sending this around!!” I loved that.
Perhaps that is my side hustle. It isn’t monetised. It doesn’t have a business plan. I have no ambition to scale it. It is simply something I do alongside the rest of my life because it seems to matter.
Life stories and sermon poems may look like very different things, but underneath they are much the same. Both require attention. Both say to another person: your words matter. Your reflections are significant. You are worth listening to.
So perhaps my side hustle is not really about making money. It is about making meaning. Paying attention to people and giving something back in words.
What are your favourite side-hustle ideas?
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