Second Generation Side Hustle

My son’s head bobs up and down in the backseat.  We’re weaving in and out of traffic on Lake Shore Drive on the way to one of our condos.  The tenant is leaving in a week, and we have a showing with a perspective from one of the social media sites.  My thoughts jumble as I’m trying to explain to him the concept of the Cap Rate, and I look in the rearview to see him ogling his mobile phone intently.  If I could just impart the importance of the side gig.  if I could transition his way to the second generation side hustle.

Get off the screen!  I sputter.  That thing’s gonna rot your brain.  I’m trying to teach you something here!

His spacious thirteen your-old eyes shoot daggers through the back of my head.  He rolls them obnoxiously (which he thinks I’ve missed because he doesn’t see me staring at him in the mirror).

I’m buying something on Ebay!  This is important!

I want to scold him.  But I can’t.  The rules behind our kids on a budget plan is that once we give him his yearly allowance, we can’t tell him what to do with it.

Building a Business

I’m sitting on the couch slaving over a blog post.  Applying the final lacquer and gloss, I call my son over to view my accomplishments.  I have all sorts of wisdom to impart about growing viewership, maximizing content, and monetization.  My mind a blur, I almost forget that I called him over and he hasn’t come.

He is standing in front of the kitchen table.  An electronic gaggle of miniature pieces and parts socializing with an array of tiny plastic and metal tools.   He has been engaged thusly since he secreted away the package he collected from the front door on his way home from school.

My eyes flitter back and forth between the computer screen and his waifish body hunched over the dissecting table.

You’re gonna clean up that mess you’re making before dinner?

My voice a little too harsh, still sensitive by the lack of interest in his old man.  My dream of the second generation side hustle is slipping loosely through my befuddled hands.   I want to scald him with the fire that burns inside me.  I want him to recoil from the energy and rage.

And than I want him to catch it.  Stoke the fire, add a few logs, and build his own furnace.

Burning the Midnight Oil

I drag my deflated body up to the bedroom at the end of another long day.  My consciousness already dulled by the near continuous pinging of input.  Phone calls, emails, texts, blog comments.  I hunger for the sweet release of sleep.  Turning the corner of the staircase, I see the light emanating from my son’s room.

I just made a hundred dollars on eBay!

His face is triumphant, and with one sentence the annoyed sneer is washed  from the lethargic muscles encircling my half-baked forehead.

He shuts down the computer and starts to collect the disembodied pieces of a pair of apple watches.

I look over quizzically, too tired to connect the dots which he has carefully been laying out for me all day.

I bought a perfectly working apple watch with a distorted and cracked face.  Then I bought a horribly defective one with an intact face.  I learned on you tube how to transfer the screens and presto!  

I doubled my money!

Second Generation FI

The second Generation side hustle is alive and thriving.  I concentrate so much on teaching my son and daughter what I learned.  But maybe this is ludicrous.  Maybe I can’t drag them along my path to success.

Instead, I can live my truth.  They may decide to follow or circle back in the opposite direction.

It’s a mistake, however, to think that they aren’t watching.

Their adolescent minds are absorbing everything.