How I Left My 9 to 5

I’m not a morning person. Never have been. Never will be. And that early morning commute was killing me. But…I did it out of necessity.

The cards I was dealt in life were tricky. Mostly jokers. But that didn’t stop me. I’m a bit of a jester anyway so I took the hits as they were given.

Every morning was met with a moan as I grumbled on the way to my closet to coordinate an outfit,  that was definitely not me, coupled with shoes that were always “ouch”.

It was the dreaded workwear that all of us are familiar with. The uncomfortable slacks, the button up shirts and the sometimes required polos that just don’t work with someone who has breasts.

Man, I hated polo day. Mostly because it had to be paired with khakis and whenever I went shopping after work, random people would ask me for help thinking I was one of the store’s employees.

“Laxatives!” a guy shouted at me once while I was just trying to buy toothpaste and wearing a read shirt. (Guess which retail store I was at!)

“Uhhhhhhh….?” was all I could muster, #1 confused by the fact that a stranger had just shouted at me (albeit in a way as friendly as shouting at a stranger can be) and the obvious Number Two. (No pun intended!)

After staring at each other blankly for a good five seconds, he figured it out “Oh, sorry. Your shirt. I thought you worked here.”

Wherever you are, my guy, I hope your issue was resolved.

So yeah, dressing as an employee of popular retail stores and actually not working there, not my jam, especially in a blue, ill-fitted, polo that was supposed to signal prestige and excellence but only left me feeling like a frumpy awkward mess. Anyway, moving on…

And despite the strict arrival time to work, it was a known fact to all of my co-workers, my boss included, that when 7:50 hit, I’d be strolling in around 7:55.

I never could do the whole “just get up or leave five minutes earlier” thing. Anyone who says that simply does not understand the nightmare of trying to set the perfect eyeliner. Unfortunately, neither did I because I just had to call it a day and accept the fact that my students were going to call me Emo for the next eight hours because my makeup skills rivaled that of an eight year old. (Yes! I used to be a brick and mortar teacher. “Used to” being the operative words here).

I hated early morning classes, as much as my students did. Probably more. And I definitely see no reason for torturing some them with Algebra or any other subject that requires brain power at 8 in the morning, but we’ll save that for another day.

Thankfully, I taught art.

The daily routine of dread, stiff work clothes, puffy eyes (being a night person I refused to give up late night shenanigans), constricting shoes, and typically dreary and cold weather coupled with a grumpy attitude, (damn…maybe I am emo!), was enough to get me to reassess my life.

Afterall, I was getting shit pay for doing five jobs that should have brought in the income of six.

But, for some reason, I kept doing it. Society and work culture convinced me (through mind manipulation, obviously) this was “normal”, “just the way it was”, “something everyone has to do” , and “I should consider myself fortunate for doing it”.

You know, the whole bullshit quote that teachers are fed and many start to believe: “We do it for the outcome, not the income.”, coupled with the mini hand sanitizers we all got during the holiday season from families thanking us for what we do on a daily business. Which, I guess, is actually a pretty good gift considering a lot of us were plunging toilets, wiping noses, cleaning up vomit and dealing with the day to day germs that caused us to call out sick while we were hanging our heads over the toilets throwing up ourselves. So it was definitely a win to have all those little bottles stashed in my desk.

I appreciated every single token of esteem families and students gave me as a teacher. I truly did. I loved getting cookies and gift cards to Starbucks, even if I am a Dunkin’ Donuts girl and all the other small acts of kindness they gave me. And after the first three hours of “zombie walking” through the motions, I loved my job.

Most of it.

My coworkers and I became family. A very dysfunctional, hilarious, fun and engaging one, but one no less. Sure, like everyone, we sometimes couldn’t stand each other but at the end of the day, we got each other’s back. We knew and respected how hard we all worked. And because of their awesomeness, and how much I loved my students and their families, I wore horse blinders for about eight years to block the reality of how much I was genuinely being underappreciated. overly worked and underpaid.

Until…the global event that woke me up…

The Shut Down!

Covid.

Covid had other plans for me. And having an at risk husband, assessing working in person became a reality. And honestly, it changed my life.

All of ours.

And for my family, the better.

It’s absolutely terrifying to leave your job. Especially, if you don’t have a back up plan. I sure as hell didn’t but had to do what was best for my family. And ironically, leaving my job, was it but only after the school rejected me first when gave them a few requirements I needed for me to stay on.

Yeah, they didn’t bite.  They didn’t even nibble.  All of that building me up as being a vital part of the school’s system ended up just being a catalog of false promises. Like everyone else, I was dispensable. I’d be lying if I said them rejecting me, after promising me the world in terms of being a school employee, didn’t sting a little. As a matter of fact it stung a lot. Not because of the money factor, Lord knows I was not getting what I was worth, but the fact that they convinced me how much of an asset I was and used that to motivate me to go way above my paygrade only to drop me like a hot potato as soon as I manned up and made a few simple requests.  And while I ended up gaining from the rejection more than I could imagine, I like to believe that they struggled to find someone to replace me. Not in body, but in work level, creativity, spirit and mind.

Yeah, they took a hit by letting me go. I was basically free work capturing the essence of an art teacher, counselor, performance art teacher, photographer, multimedia specialist, related arts coordinator and more for roughly, oof…adding in the time I didn’t clock in, about $4.00/hour…tips not included.

Dang, my husband claimed more disability than I got paid for those six jobs that should have brought me in six figures. Am I bitter? YES!

The first few days of lockdown, while not convenient and full of dark and scary undertones, were the absolute…BEST! My family and I were ecstatic about the weeks of what we called “snow days” off in my house because our boss rarely, if ever closed school.

Our night owl personas blossomed and before we knew it, we emerged as the beautiful “work from home” rockstars we were destined to be.

We were on the east coast, living in a west coast lifestyle. Late mornings, late nights, rolling out of bed wearing the clothes we wore yesterday. It was glorious!

Online everything. Online school. Online work. Online streaming. Online entertainment. A gamer and introverted family’s dream come true.

And while life was very convenient and our mental health soared. Trying to turn an online side hustle into a career wasn’t easy.

I had three things going at once while looking for more, which was actually three less than the roles I was given at the school but I knew if I could do six at school I sure as heck could work that hard from home to make something, somewhere, somehow work!

My kids were schooling online and killed it! My husband enjoyed us being around more. And who doesn’t love snuggling their pets while working.

Mr. Sprinkles and Mr. McFlerken definitely approved.

But juggling three online jobs had its challenges. Not just because they were jobs but in order to make any of them work it took a crazy amount of hours, research and dedication, with no pay, to get there. The risks were huge.

Side Hustle #1 Teaching Art Online
After weeks of constant advertising on all social media and filling my friends’ FB news feeds with my “ads”, my search for independent work started out fairly well. I acquired roughly fifteen online students from across the globe. Some of them I knew personally, others not. The best part though was that ALL of them were motivated. For the first time, I had students who legit WANTED to be there, wanted to learn, wanted to make art, and were 100% awake too. It was crazy and I was already making 6x the pay per hour than my work at the school (when you factor in the “free” work I did that didn’t go unnoticed but did go unpaid).

The pay alone was enough to convince me that, YES! I can teach for the outcome AND the income, and without a single lick of shame.

So, in order to pull this off. It was fifteen hours of teaching, two hours of advertising a day, and seven hours of planning, seven days a week.

So thirty-six hours dedicated a week to Side Hustle #1!

Side Hustle #2 Teaching Children to Speak English in China

A coworker of mine clued me in on VIPkid. A platform that hires people in the United States to teach their children English online.

The hours suuuuuucked. The application sucked. The interview process also sucked. And the style of teaching in this overly exaggerated, awkward, and goofy way sucked even more.

I hated it.

I spent weeks preparing for my first day, bought products to teach with, and even set up my first online classroom complete with a cheesy sign that read Teacher Maryam. The whole shebang.

I was determined to get hired and yes, even work in the wee hours of the day, which we all know I hate the most. And sadly, I kept getting rejected. After three or four tries I adapted to their very uncomfortable style of teaching, which just wasn’t me. It was awkward, uncomfortable and just made me feel weird and like a fraud.

When I finally got accepted, I felt like I achieved my goal, never scheduled clients and quit the next day.

Thankfully, I realized quickly that the nightmare I was about to enter was not me and never would be. While others thrived and survived like heroes on the platform and did remarkably well, I knew I was not capable of being this animatronic, overly smiling, toy wielding, teacher of a shell at odd hours of the morning and night.

The breakdown?

Two-hours a day practicing and preparing for a job I ultimately didn’t even do.

So fourteen hours plus thirty-six from Side Hustle #1 …brings us to fifty hours a week and I still added a third Side Hustle to the mix!

Side Hustle #3 Outschool: My Saving Grace (and current main income).

NGL, this was tough. But it was lightyears better than “the orange company” as many call it that I quickly fled.

I had heard about Outschool from a student of mine when I was teaching at the brick and mortar school of yore. She brought me Pokémon art from an online art class she took on Outschool. I remember thinking her learning Pokémon art online was pretty cool and checked Outschool out very nonchalantly that weekend and even half-assed applied

My first time application was so much on a whim that when I was rejected I just chalked it off as a side order of spam when it arrived in my inbox. I didn’t have time to dedicate to it anyway with all the free work I was doing for the school. I had to continue being that teacher martyr, after all! Needless to say, my first application had very little effort.

But this time was different. After all the time I spent trying to get hired by VIOKid, because I clearly had issues with being rejected, I was ready to take Outschool seriously. Not wanting to teach English as a manic robot was definitely a motivation to make this work and put forth actual effort and within about a week I was accepted!

I was still teaching art online and was still working on getting VIPKid going (before I decided it was time for me to reject them) and started listing art classes on Outschool.

Oof.

Things started of slooooooow. Super slow.
And in Month One I made ZERO Dollars.

But that didn’t stop me. I allotted two hours a day for advertising just like I did my solo art classes. And worked on creating new classes, lesson plans and reading up on marketing, starting a business and branding through books and blogs. It is safe to say I spent roughly twenty hours a week just planning to build a business on Outschool.

Which brings us to fifty hours plus twenty… seventy hours a week on all three side hustles and no days off…for months! Almost two full time jobs.

After running as fast away as I could from VIPKid I shifted my twenty hours on Outschool to thirty- four and was spending every waking moment learning, building, researching and teaching all from home.

This schedule went on a few months and slowly things started to pick up on Outschool.

Month #2 I brought in 17 learners and a measly $416 bucks.

Month #3 things dipped. I lowered my prices and had forty-five learners but only made $352.10

It wasn’t until Month #4 that things took a crazy turn and my income hopped to over $3000 that month.

By month five I saw promise in Outschool, ditched my solo online classes and continued to dedicate all seventy hours (advertising, branding, rebranding, pivoting away from art, doing research, lesson planning and actively teaching) to Outschool in December 2022.

By doing so, in December my numbers doubled! By January 2023, they nearly tripled from my first good month (November 2022). I sacrificed weekends, days off, sleep, and even family time to get there and here I am in 2024 now working seventeen hours a week and making more than twenty times per hour of what I made teaching at the school, where the outcomes apparently meant more than the incomes.

And yet, here I am, still teaching, still loving it, and reaping the benefits of both the outcome and the income all at once.