How About This Not-So-New Gig Economy?
I wasn't part of the gig economy when my uncle first started asking about it. Four years later, I've got all the answers he needs.
My uncle started sending me emails inquiring about “this new gig economy” long before I myself began resorting to gigs to pay rent. At the time I had a nice corporate job at a Fortune 500 company, so the rise of the gig economy seemed like a distant phenomenon that really didn’t affect me. “How about this new gig economy!” he’d say after tracking me down at a family wedding or reunion. Or he’d shoot me an email with a link to a Bloomberg article or something in which a reporter would use lots of impressive dollar amounts to say the same thing.
At the time, my role in corporate communications was such that I was in regular contact with a number of “mommy bloggers,” women who by traveling around the world and documenting their experiences had grown their online followings enough that companies like ours would hire them as temporary influencers. It seemed to me that the mommy bloggers had struck a nice little balance between the corporate and gig worlds and were capitalizing on the benefits of both. I admired this and wondered if I could do the same for myself at some point down the line. I didn’t have much in the way of a five-year plan, another glaring absence in my life that my uncle always asks me about. But the mommy bloggers gave me something to work toward.
My corporate contract eventually ended (in that sense I supposed it was just a gig all along), and I took a reporting job in Augusta, Georgia, which was two hours away. It was a decent job, but it didn’t take long for me to start pouring my savings into a bunch of new video equipment in an effort to kick off a new career as a videographer. Not that I had any talent or experience in that field. I would begin as an amateur, work my way up to side gig, and then go from there.
My foray into videography didn’t last long. During a one-night trip to Atlanta with a friend, his car was stolen right from under our noses, along with my computer, my friend’s phone, and all of my equipment. In the midst of the chaos, I completely forgot that my uncle was spending the night near Aiken, South Carolina, just down the road from Augusta, during a work trip and had made dinner reservations for the two of us. A few days later, I saw his email letting me know that he had waited for about 40 minutes before leaving the restaurant. I felt terrible. I responded with a sincere apology and an update on what had transpired over the last 72 hours. We also rescheduled our dinner at the steakhouse in Aiken.
So I found myself walking into the steakhouse without any updates on my five-year plan, which my uncle of course asked me about. I told him I was thinking about moving to Los Angeles, which is the thing you say when you don’t have a five-year plan to present at the rescheduled presentation that you didn’t show up for the first time. I don’t remember how he responded to that, but I’m sure he was very polite and supportive, even though Los Angeles seems like a place where five-year plans go to die. He did, however, stress the value of five-year plans in general, not just their importance for aimless 20-somethings but their overall helpfulness in adult life.
I do not remember the next time my uncle and I saw each other. I think it was at his then home in Charleston, but I’m not sure. I do know that a couple years later, the next time he reached out to me with a gig-focused email, I was far more entrenched in gig culture than I was when he asked the first time. “Hear you’ve got lots of ‘gigs!’” he wrote, two days before I was furloughed for global pandemic reasons. But yes, I had been able to snag some gigs. I’d gotten my first writing gig since moving to New York, which was an upgrade from my previous gig selling fuzzy socks from Canada. Now I’d finally managed to secure a full-time position in retail, which lasted for about two months before everybody in the world had to go home.
Luckily, the state had no issue paying me to stay in my apartment for the remainder of the year, which turned out to be the most lucrative gig I’d had since I was collaborating with mommy bloggers. And I did eventually get my sales job back after the world started opening up. Does it have more of a “gig energy” than it did before? Sure. I imagine a lot of workplaces do. I guess everything’s just a gig when no one knows what’s going to happen next.
It’s been a few years since I was able to nail down a full-time job in the field I studied in college. If I had been a really good student, imagine how robust my five-year plan would’ve been? I’d be wrapping up that plan right now, prepping an even better one that would carry me into my thirties. I’d also have so many updates for my uncle. I wonder how far off that path I am now? Hard to say. I’m at the age where my family members really start hammering home the grad school option. I barely made it out the first time. Taking another whack at it? Probably not the move. Think I’m gonna stick with the gigs and trust there will always be something. Hope that’s a good enough five-year plan for my uncle. I’m down to present it to him at our next steak dinner as long as he’s buying.