No Jobs, Just Side-Hustles | the corporate world isn’t for everyone

The everyday realities of living as neurodivergent adult are collected in Neurodivergent Moments Joe Wells & Abigoliah Schamaun – 24 autobiographical essays about work, relationships, travel, diagnosis and the bizarre logistics of life when your brain works a little differently.

The book – full title Neurodivergent Moments: Sex, Sunscreen, Turtles and How (Not) to Pack a Suitcase – pulls on the hit podcast of the same name. Here’s an extract – No Jobs, Just Side-Hustles – where Abigoliah describes the swirl of the gig economy, and what she found there.. not riches, but a community…

It’s where I thrive!

The gig economy that has emerged over the last decade or so is riddled with issues. There’s no health benefits. No upward mobility. No job security. But heavens to Betsy, it’s where I thrive!

Since college my jobs have been: janitor, lighting technician, newspaper columnist, bicycle messenger, yoga studio manager, yoga instructor, and comedian. My CV reads like that of a person who gets excited about the idea of the job but doesn’t consider the quality of life that job will afford. Are the hours weird? Is the pay shit? Sounds fun!

I’ve never held an office job. I’ve always gravitated to professions with no dress code and weird hours. This has suited my ADHD brain much better. I did try; for a brief time, I worked as an office temp in New York City. One afternoon I got a call from the agency asking me to go be a receptionist for an afternoon. I was already downtown so I thought I’d just pop into H&M to buy a blouse before heading to the financial district. I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t handle the office clothes. They were just so boring. I walked out of the shop with a neon pink mini dress for clubbing, called my temp agency and quit then and there.

Candy nipple tassels

In my last semester of college I worked two jobs. I was a bicycle messenger and also had an internship at a small, free newspaper called the New York Press. I’d write funny little reviews for strange products such as candy nipple tassels or review fun shows I saw over the weekend. I got paid $50 an article.

On days I wasn’t sitting at my news desk, I rode my bike up and down the streets of Manhattan delivering official documents in manila envelopes, jewellery and garment bags from one location to another. I’d come home at night with a dirt ring around my neck from the car exhaust. I spent the summer sporting the weirdest tan lines from my tank tops and messenger bag. It was hard work and I wasn’t very good at it. I’m not a very fast cyclist and despite New York being a grid system I easily got lost. But it was fun.

Sweat and mustard

There’s a whole culture to being a messenger. We see the things you don’t see. We know every service entrance to your favourite store. Stopping for lunch meant I’d do fewer deliveries therefore make less money. To save time, I’d often cycle down Eighth Avenue with a hot dog in my hand carrying a Chanel dress to a photo-shoot. I’d hand over the bag covered in sweat with mustard on my cheek. I was gorgeous.

All the jobs I’ve had have one thing in common. They have a tribe. A community. A messenger would ride past another messenger and nod in solidarity. A comedian always has something to talk about with another comedian. We may all come from different backgrounds but the job meant we could look at each other and go, ‘You get it’. In the arts and the side-hustle occupations you find an overwhelming number of neurodivergent people. They are jobs filled with daydreamers, procrastinators, and people with delightfully odd social skills.

You give up a lot of what society deems important when you work in the gig economy. But you gain as much as you give up. I gained fabulous stories and interesting people. The small talk is far more interesting. Yes, people still ask, ‘How are you?’ But the answer is always more creative than ‘Fine’. Ask a bike messenger, ‘How are you?’ and they might say, ‘I just sawed my handlebars off last week so it’s easier to drive through traffic without clipping wing mirrors’.

Once I was in a freight elevator with another messenger. He spotted the company name on my courier bag and asked who my dispatcher was. A dispatcher is the person who communicates with the messenger via a walkie-talkie from the office telling you where to pick-up and drop-off items. ‘Steve’, I answered. The messenger, a large, bearded man who looked like he’d probably done time at Rikers Island for violent crimes just smiled dreamily and replied, ‘Steve, he has such a warm heart’.

I still think about that. I never got to know Steve well, but the one thing I know about him is he has a warm heart and a good sense of humour. Once he sent me a run and as I looked at the order I realised it was for a 100 pound box that couldn’t be carried on a bike. I radioed in and pointed out that this was a truck job and he responded, ‘A real messenger could handle it’. I fired back, ‘Fuck youuuuuuu’, and he laughed. This was our office banter.

Die or be sued

In a standard office job you might have a bad day if the coffee machine is broken. Once I was so tired going through midtown I lost my balance and fell onto a bus skinning my left shoulder. In a standard office job your orientation day might be learning the computer system and having a lecture on workplace decorum. Messaging orientation was a four hour lecture on how you could either die or be sued riding a bike in New York. At the end of the class, they handed us our walkie-talkie, a helmet, and a bag and off we went.

Freedom

The corporate world isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t for me. If comedy and writing ever dried up, I think I’d go back to delivering paperwork to offices rather than work in one. I tend to find my people at the service entrance rather than the front door. They are often fellow neurodivergent people who, instead of thinking long-term about a good pension plan, live for the moment when you’re tearing down the street toward Battery Park on a sunny spring day. All of the sudden the buildings thin and you look over and see her: the Statue of Liberty. Freedom.

They know there’s more to life than a steady stream of income and free weekends. They know not to save the pink mini-dress for Saturday; when you can wear it on Monday. They get it.

Neurodivergent Moments: Sex, Sunscreen, Turtles and How (Not) to Pack a Suitcase will be published on June 18. The pre-order link is HERE.