I had resisted it for a year. "Side income" felt cringe. Then a neighbor asked if I could watch her corgi over Labor Day weekend. Two nights. $127. I cashed the check and something in my head rearranged itself.
The number was not the point. The mechanism was. For the first time since I'd gotten my first paycheck at 16, a dollar had shown up in my life without a manager signing off on it. That was new.
I went back inside, opened a spreadsheet, and started writing down every thing I could do on a night or weekend that someone might pay for. The list was longer than I expected.