I haven't driven for rideshare (or a delivery service) in a couple months and have taken a recent break from working to reflect on life and get back into a career track again. Having lived on my own for awhile without a job, in order to maintain independence, I had to do something. But what did I do? How did I survive without having a scheduled job for 2.5 years?
When I first lost my job, I had some money left in my savings account, as well as some remaining checks to receive from the job. While that was all dwindling away, my friends told me I could make a living driving for Uber and Lyft as my new fulltime job. I thought I was doing fine, but I was burning a hole through my wallet and then some. My car needed a lot of repairs and gas cost a pretty penny. Having to full up several times a week and taking away the value from my car, I wasn't aware how much I was spending. After awhile of driving, I also wasn't taking care of myself because I felt the urge to chase paper. By that I mean I was driving myself to exhaustion and driving for unsafe amounts of time to make as much money as possible. I also gained the 60 pounds back I worked so hard to lose. I felt like I was fishing for scraps and not getting anywhere. Rideshare was winning and I was losing...
Eventually, I decided I needed to cut back on driving. The amount of money I lost exceeded the amount I made and I needed to find other ways to make money while excessively job hunting. Job hunting sadly had no use. I would find some jobs I'd take in any respect such as data entry, dog walking, and verifying background checks. Sadly, I took all of those jobs for the money and not for the passion and lost them all pretty quickly. In the interim of many failed jobs, I would take a bunch of day jobs from people I knew (luckily I know a lot of people), doing crazy things such as working a street fair at a friend's Mexican food and ice cream stand, cleaning houses, working merch tables for music shows, hanging posters, delivery driving, helping people move, and much more. I also sold a bunch of my belongings for some spare rent money. Sometimes, a few people, including my parents, would throw me some financial bones, but not really; I did not depend on help from others. It soon hit a point where I needed to drive to a minimum...
Down the road towards the end of my pure gig shindig, I "did not want to drive no more" and needed to find something else to do. While continuing to job hunt and do odd/day jobs, I eventually discovered the world of gig apps. A gig app is a website that runs on a mobile platform (application) where you can look up and pick up day (or multi day) gigs by clicking a button. Some of these apps are Shiftgig, Jobble, and Wonolo. There are also companies (staffing firms) that host day gigs such as Arete. For awhile I was able to survive solely on odd jobs and gigs, but it is quite the unstable and not necessarily sustainable life. I was in a lot of debt, I needed help (I eventually sought help from a social services place) because I was barely getting by, and I was "making too much to receive government assistance". I also couldn't afford insurance or to pay my student loans back (they're in deferment). It was super lame. I'd get thrown a few financial bones here and there, but not really. I'm sure people were sick and tired of hearing about me struggling for so long.
By the end of this stint, I was worn out, unhappy I had no stability, I gained a bunch of weight, I wasn't taking care of myself, and I eventually hit a dead end when the apartment I had got bedbugs. I completed a few endeavors in my field of choice, but most tasks I did were in the $11-15 an hour range, which isn't a ton of money. I eventually had to move back home, but could have continued to make it on my own had it not been for that. My rent was also extremely inexpensive.
Would I recommend this life to other people? Not really unless you were an entrepreneur or did higher paying gigs that didn't send you into debt... But I survived and that's all that matters!
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