THCreate

I graduated from Seneca High School/Jefferson County in 2010. Graduating earlier than my friends, I went straight to working at a daycare with my mom, to Target, then UPS. I also worked at Gattiland [for a weekend], long enough to waste my time filling out the W-4 before realizing the pay was not worth it to deal with belligerent families.

I was able to focus my time on doing two jobs, Target and UPS. Not long after, I applied for a job in healthcare as a Transporter. I made my way to Lead Transporter on the nightshift in 2011 and enjoyed running a hospital on my own terms while abiding my hospital policy. In 2012, I was exhausted with the lack of pay and lack of appreciation from management, that I decided it was time to transfer.

By 2013, I worked as a patient care tech on a pre-op post-op cardiac intervention unit and learned so much over the years. It was amazing learning people’s stories leading them to my unit. I felt I really made a difference one patient at a time, no matter the patient’s background or demographics.

Eight years later, I pulled out of the healthcare field months after COVID started spreading, when no one knew anything about the airborne virus. Considering my daughter is epileptic, and my exposure to diseases and illnesses was high, I made a decision to leave the healthcare workforce in order to not coerce my daughter–or son– to become a statistic affected by any acquired viruses that I could easily spread to them. I hated my decision to leave the healthcare field and my coworkers, however, I put my family first and left the rest in God’s hands to provide.

With no luck finding remote work-from-home positions to accommodate childcare when virtual learning was mandatory, I started looking outside of the box and got creative. I focused on the talents I do possess and while not immediately profitable I kept at it in hopes to seek financial prosperity.

I started making YouTube videos with my kids and focused on content creation and sticking to topics with similar themes: fatherhood. I’ve always been an involved dad and that has never changed. I figured the world judges men, fathers in particular, and though I’ve always had a problem with putting our identities out there, I suppose I relaxed my mentality a bit with proper logo-implementation so I know my work when I see it so no one may copyright the works of my own. Men always have the shit end of the stick when it comes to parenting because statistically, we have seen that men run from their roles as a dad and that is disgusting.

Enter DoorDash and UberEats! I applied and within two days my background check was completed and I was on the road delivering people’s food or floral orders within minutes of receiving notifications on my phone. The biggest disappointment is Doordash is not all that profitable unless you are willing to hustle for 4-8 hours a day. It is also the type of job that requires you be diligent with how you save taxes for Uncle Sam. You don’t receive a company car or free gas so if you want to work, you have to grind for the pay.

The beauty of being a Dasher is having the autonomy to work when you want. Though, if you don’t work, you don’t eat, drive, pay bills, or keep a relationship. A typical day for me starts off with getting my children ready for school, Dash between 9am-2pm, have a brief lunch, and enjoy an hour gym session before I pick my children up from school at 4pm.

Whenever I don’t have my children or not working on content creation, Doordash serves as the perfect side hustle job because if you are me, you’d rather not work for anybody or around anybody.