All the side hustles that made me $$ in 2024
And what the heck I'm doing in India
Issue # 47
Hello my sparkling moonbeams,
I’m in India. I’m still getting settled into the routine of the yoga teacher training I’m attending. In short, it is much harder than I expected it to be, with eight hours of classes a day, six days a week. Luckily for you, I am a tragically beautiful over-achiever who drafted this newsletter before she even embarked on a four-day journey from Vancouver to Delhi. Enjoy! Next week, I hope to write more about my life in India!
I am currently in Rishikesh, India, a beautiful town in the Himalayan foothills beside the Ganges river. This town is a famous pilgrimage site that is said to be the birthplace of yoga, and that is what brings me here. I am completing my 200-hour yoga teacher training at Rishikesh Yoga Association.
I did yoga for the first time when I was 10 years old. I checked out some books and videos from my local library and learned all the basic asanas (physical postures) in my room, without fancy yoga clothes, equipment, or even a mat. I continued throughout my adolescence and dreamed of attending yoga teacher training one day to deepen my practice.
After high school, I was determined to alleviate poverty and save the world, which led me to do a course with an international Christian organization. When I went to do this training and the leaders saw me practice yoga they warned me of the evil I was inviting into my life by performing this Hindu ritual. To me, yoga was just an exercise, it was a way to feel good in my body and increase my flexibility. I was unaware that asanas (the physical postures) were just one of the eight limbs of (one kind of) yoga. The leaders of this base were also unaware of the philosophy and history of yoga. All they knew was that it was practiced by many Hindus and therefore not permitted for Christians. They told me that each pose represented a different Hindu god, and by getting into that posture, I was becoming a channel for that deity’s energy. Therefore, I was welcoming demonic spirits into my body because any God that was not the One True God was actually a demon. I didn’t follow this train of thought, but I gave up my yoga practice because I could tell it made people uncomfortable. I didn’t pick it back up until three years later when I was working at another YWAM base in Brazil under leaders who didn’t have such extreme views.
I was supposed to complete yoga teacher training last time I was in India in April of 2020, but obviously that plan got shot to hell when a worldwide pandemic took over. Since then, I’ve been working, saving money, and waiting for the *perfect* time to leave the country again. Completing yoga teacher training in Canada was never really an option for me, since it’s cheaper to fly to India and complete the course here than it is to do a 500-hour training there. Luckily, I got a job that allowed me to take a four-month education leave to come to India, and my graveyard shifts will be waiting for me upon my return.
About a week before getting on the plane to India, I realized that this is the first time I’m traveling abroad for myself. Not because I’m volunteering or interning or being a missionary or attempting to save the world in any way. This is perhaps the most generous thing I’ve done for myself, allowing myself to spend time and money to fulfill a life-long dream that is purely for pleasure.
In this beautiful year of 2025, I hope you can allow yourself the same generosity. I hope you take courageous steps to chase after your dreams. And I hope you know that you are worthy and deserving of achieving those dreams.
Testing some side hustles so you don’t have to
In 2024, side hustles made up approximately 1/5 of my income. I have a decent-paying fulltime job, but with the cost of living being so high, my side hustles make up the majority of what I can put aside in my savings. Here are all my hustles, starting with the most lucrative, to the least. My dream is to eventually get serious enough about one (or a few) of these side hustles to turn it into a full-time gig.
Rover
By far, the biggest supplement to my regular income is petsitting through Rover. Other than one dog daycare gig this year, I exclusively did housesitting gigs where I’d look after dogs and cats and pretty much live my normal life, except get paid for it and live in a nicer house. While it was annoying to spend so much time away from my own dog, it is a pretty easy way to make a bit of extra cash if you like babying dogs and cats like I do.
Freelance work for non-profits
The other main way I make money outside my 12-9 is freelance contracting work for other non-profits. CEDAR Outreach, a homeless outreach non-profit in Abbotsford where I used to do a lot of social media work and website development work, hired me back this year to update their website as their programs were expanding. The Cascade, UFV’s student-run newspaper, brings me on to teach training workshops for new staff. And I just started another contracting position for Rivershed, a local environmental non-profit, doing community engagement work by tabling at local events. This type of communications and community engagement work is what I would eventually like to do full-time. Maybe I’ll get my act together and get more of these freelance contracts in 2025.
Tarot Reading
Another little side hustle I started this year was a tiny biz called Wildflora Tarot. I only started reading tarot cards near the end of 2023, and I figured the best way to learn was to read a bunch of people’s cards. So, I got a tent on Facebook marketplace, booked a few gigs at local music and community festivals in the summer, and set up shop. It’s not a very lucrative venture, considering the amount of time and effort that goes into it, but I love connecting with people in this way and will continue to hustle at more festivals this upcoming summer.
PCRS Training
During my mental breakdown of 2023 when I quit my job and was on the hunt for a better one, I took this employment skills course from PCRS to fill time and to get the tiny allowance that they give us for attending class over Zoom twice a week. If you found a job and kept that job for 3 months, you got a $400 bonus. So that was a nice little surge of cash in one month.
The contents of my desk from my last workplace.
Facebook Marketplace
By far the most annoying way on this list to make money. I hate communicating with people on Facebook Marketplace and responding to a million “Is this available?” messages and then getting ghosted and then arranging a time for them to pick up the item and then getting ghosted again, etc. But for the occasional item that I know will sell fast, I will put the effort into selling it
Substack Newsletters
I made a bit of extra cash from a few paid subscribers on this newsletter as well as my other newsletter, Wildflora Tarot. When you consider the amount of time and effort I put into this newsletter, I’m making pennies an hour, so it makes more sense to see the occasional paid subscriber as a “tip.” It would be fucking sick if this newsletter blew up and I could make a living from the written word, but until then, I’m glad you’re reading these words, whether you’ve paid to be here or not.
Research Participant
I signed up to be a research participant for this market research company. I fill out probably two surveys a week that are emailed to me, and I only got chosen to participate in one survey this year. I was paid $225 to basically record a week-long journal of my cannabis usage, and give detailed descriptions of the cannabis products I bought, why I bought them, etc. I was also chosen to be a taste-tester for some new probiotic soft drinks, but the amount it paid would just cover my gas from Vancouver and back, so I opted out.
Life Modeling
Another tiny bit of cash I made this year was life modeling for a local figure drawing class. I only did this activity twice. I got weird, almost condescending vibes from one of the volunteers who led the class, so I wasn’t motivated to continue. It was pretty easy money though, just striking poses while listening to an audio-book on my headphones for 3 hours.
Got to India safely after a four-day journey. The cheapest plane ticket I could find to India involved the most layovers I’ve ever had. I left Vancouver at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 28th. I had a short layover in Calgary, then a 17-hour layover in London, then an 8-hour layover in Istanbul, and then another 8-hour layover in Delhi, and I finally arrived at the Dehradun airport at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 31st. Four entire days later.
Started Yoga Teacher Training. Like I mentioned above, I started my 200-hour yoga teacher training course. I will write more about my day-to-day life here in the next newsletter. It started with a fire ceremony, and since then it has been endless classes, asanas, and sitting cross-legged on the floor.
I made friends. Everyone doing and teaching the yoga classes is exceptional. I even made some friends to hang out with in the few precious hours we have that are not sleep or class.
Saw the sun rise over the mountains. Instead of sleeping in on our one day off, we had an early morning excursion to climb up a million flights of stairs to view the sunrise over the mountains.
Got some dog cookies to feed the local dogs. There are dogs roaming the streets everywhere here, so of course I got a little bag of dog cookies to make friends with them.
Thanks for reading What Am I Doing With My Life.
If we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting - I’m Andrea Sadowski, a writer, photographer, and silly little guy. If you enjoyed this post, here are a few ways you can connect with me:
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