You are 10 years old. You have no phone, no tablet, just a television network with epileptic power supply, bulky schoolbooks, friends who live streets away, your ball of wool and your crochet pin. You sit on the couch, working your way through the ball as your creation comes, slowly, to life.

It is a purse and you know your friends will fawn over you in school. You smile, fulfilled. The only question in your mind is what colour you will use next — maybe that bright yellow your aunt brought from the market, or the soft blue you have been saving.

Now, you are 24. That ball of wool that once brought joy and promised peace now carries pressure and bills. The pin must craft something exceptional or how else will you supplement your 9-5 that barely covers rent. You know hobbies shouldn't need profit margins, but your salary has not caught up to the cost of living and you don’t love the air under that pedestrian bridge in your area.

You know hobbies should remain hobbies but can you help it when your fragile neck is under the weight of a bleak financial future?

The Side Hustle Isn't Optional Anymore

Somewhere between our parents' generation and ours, hobbies stopped being hobbies. Your mother baked because she enjoyed it. You bake because rent is due and your clients are yet to pay. Your uncle painted on Sundays for relaxation. You paint on Sundays because inflation just hit 25% and your employer is "restructuring."

The numbers tell the story our parents don't always understand: youth unemployment across the continent hovers between 15 to over 50% depending on where you are. Even those of us with degrees and jobs find ourselves with salaries that looked reasonable on paper in 2020 but now barely cover the basics.

A one-bedroom apartment that once cost N200,000 annually now demands N600,000. Transport fares have doubled. That data subscription you need for work has climbed too. Your salary is still performing the same tired routine from three years ago.

So we adapt. The girl who sketched in her notebook for fun now takes portrait commissions on Instagram. The guy who learned guitar to impress his crush now teaches online lessons. The friend who wrote poetry to process her feelings now ghost-writes captions for small businesses at N5,000 per post.

When "Do What You Love" Becomes "Love What Pays"

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from turning your escape into your employment. You open your knitting, your painting, your writing, and instead of relief, you feel dread because now there are deadlines. There are clients who want revisions.

There is the constant pressure to post, to market, to optimize, to grow your following because visibility equals viability equals survival.

The cruel irony is that we are doing exactly what the entrepreneurship gurus told us to do. "Find your passion and monetize it!" they said. "Multiple streams of income!" they preached. We listened. But they forgot to mention that when everything becomes work, nothing remains sacred.

They did not warn us that we would start resenting the things that once saved us.

The Math That Doesn't Add Up

Sometimes the side hustle math is brutal. You spend four hours crocheting a bag. Materials cost N3,000. You price it at N8,000 because anything higher and people say you are expensive. Someone haggles you down to N6,500.

You have made N3,500 for four hours of work — N875 per hour. But you take it because N3,500 is still N3,500. Because saying no means a gap stays empty.

We are not building empires with our side hustles. Most of us are just plugging holes. We are the ones making our first, second, third thousand, over and over, just to stay afloat.

What We're Actually Losing

Our parents ask why we are always tired. "You young people and your phones," they say, not understanding that our phones are our workshops, our storefronts, our offices. They tell us about how they managed with one job. They don't see that their one job could pay for rent, savings, and still send money home. Our one job barely covers one of those things.

The sad thing is that we are not just losing money, we are losing the margin to be bored. Boredom, they say, breeds creativity but do we even have the opportunity to be bored and experiment without any financial consequence?

The photographer who used to experiment with weird angles now only shoots what sells. The writer who loved long, winding essays now writes punchy threads optimized for engagement.

We are all becoming excellent at giving people what they want that we are forgetting what we wanted in the first place.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Maybe the saddest part is how we have internalized it. We don't even resist anymore. Someone discovers you can do something and the first question is "Do you take orders?"

We ask it of each other too. "You're good at this, you should monetize it." As if worth can only be measured in naira and kobo. As if joy needs a business model to justify itself.

We have learned to pitch ourselves in casual conversation. "I do graphic design" means "I'm available for hire." "I bake sometimes" means "I can make your birthday cake for a fee." We can't just be good at things anymore. We have to be good at things for sale.

And the tragedy is that we are right to do it.

What Comes Next?

Now, I do not have a perfect solution for you. I can't tell you to "just quit your side hustle and reclaim your joy" when your side hustle is paying for your brother’s allowance. I can't tell you to "prioritize rest" when rest doesn't pay rent. The personal finance advice that works for people in stable economies sounds like fantasy here.

What I can say is this: you're not failing because you can't make your hobby profitable enough.

Maybe the revolution is not in refusing to monetize but rather, remembering we didn't always have to.

Your 10-year-old self made that purse for the joy of it. Your 24-year-old self makes purses to survive. Both versions of you are doing the best you can with what you have. Neither is wrong but both deserve better than this.

For now, we make do. We monetize and survive.

And sometimes, late at night when the orders are done and the DMs are answered, we pick up that ball of wool one more time, not for money, not for content, just for us. Just to remember what it felt like when our hands were free.