"After 12 years as a stay-at-home parent, my divorce forced a reckoning: I had to learn how to support myself and rebuild a professional life from scratch. I had become pregnant with my first child in my early 20s before I'd established a full-time, steady career, and after years out of traditional paid work, I struggled to see the value in what I had done. Questions about what I "do for a living" began to feel haunting."
"The mosaic career I've been able to piece together is a patchwork of projects, day job shifts, and side hustles. I write and edit essays in the spaces between hockey practices and dance rehearsals, research podcast guests from the laundromat at 9 p.m., and chase creative ideas that might grow into income streams as I try to fall asleep, furiously typing into my notes app, hoping none of my kids wake up in the middle of the night vomiting."
"Across the US, millions of workers are piecing together multiple income streams, whether through gig work, freelancing, or side projects, to make ends meet and pursue meaningful work on their own terms. Between 25% and 43% of US workers have taken on some form of gig or nonstandard work. And about one in 10 people rely on freelancing, temporary, or contract work as their main source of income."
A stay-at-home parent reentered the workforce after a divorce and had to support themself while raising three children half-time. Pregnancy in the early twenties prevented establishment of a traditional career, and years outside paid work prompted doubts about labor value and identity. Daily life once centered on invisible household labor; now work is a mosaic of projects, day-job shifts, and side hustles. Writing, editing, researching, and late-night creative work occur between caregiving responsibilities. Broader labor trends show many workers assemble multiple income streams through gig, freelance, and contract roles, reshaping notions of work.
Read at Business Insider
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