In the everyday cacophony of careers, education and day-to-day necessities, side hustles have an unusual relationship with time. In a 2019 survey of side hustlers’ incomes by Bankrate, they noted:

Working Americans spend an average of 12 hours per week completing tasks related to their side hustle…

Reserving approximately two hours a day for side hustles is a sizeable amount. Although many ventures share overlapping challenges, their experiential developments are scarcely identical. The flexible working schedule that allows one person to engage in freelancing is not always suitable for someone else.

In lieu of the pressing needs from existing obligations…

Vignettes were never quite
my specialty, the wrist-flick
pull, dart throw
necessity of pinning

dragonfly seconds to
a cork board. So much so
I swam instead
between recollections,

spelunking for those
olive-sharp moments I
might polish off, microscope,
check and check again.

Where did I lose you?
Surely the puppets were
too soon, mimic chatter
in our backseat theatre

growing up. Perhaps I pulled
too many sliding doors
in sibling yearning, sculpting
checkpoint hallways you

studded full of deadbolts.
But I should’ve known
one-way mirrors
always were your favourite.

Or were they? Cramming
meteor dents from conversations
that never happened with
radio…

After a year of Zoom-based interactions, the means through which we express ourselves and interact with others has changed significantly. To mark the impromptu transition to the cyber realm, I have catalogued ten of many unexpected observations.

1. Every background is a hidden object game.

With all respect towards privacy taken into account, backgrounds make an ample first impression. Details like book covers, room décor and wall hangings hint at someone’s interests. On a scale from “deep-cleaned” to “disorder”, the amount of effort devoted to backdrop prep suggests how people might handle their image.

Depending on the situation, a heavily curated office space or casual living room setting…