I needed money, so I picked up a side hustle: Door Dashing. It was fun at first. I did it whenever I felt like it, driving around with my music blaring, pretending it was freedom. It felt better than sitting in a parking lot all day. And the instant‑deposit debit card? That felt like magic.
I thought I was making enough to scrape by. Every day I dashed for whatever I needed in that moment — gas, food, a little extra for tomorrow. It worked in theory. In reality, I was just chasing the next immediate crisis. Living in my car left me with endless hours to fill, and driving around seemed like a good way to stay busy.
Eventually, I realized I wasn’t getting ahead. I worked long hours and had nothing to show for it. My back and my butt were constant reminders that I was wearing myself down for pennies. The tips were awful — people already paid extra for the food and the Door Dash fee, so tipping seemed optional to them. Sometimes I got nothing at all.
DoorDash pay? Worse than awful. They paid a tiny amount, but only for the time you were actually traveling. It was my gas that got me to the restaurant, my gas that got me back to a busy area afterward. I was literally paying to work.
Some nights I had to do one last delivery just to earn enough gas money to drive to the place I planned to sleep. That’s when it hit me: I was poor and desperate — the perfect combination for failure.
In the end, DoorDashing didn’t move me forward. It just kept me in motion. After long days of driving, all I really earned was enough gas to keep going the next day. I wasn’t saving money, wasn’t getting ahead, wasn’t building anything. The work only paid for the cost of doing the work itself.
What felt productive at first turned out to be a cycle that kept me stuck, proving that staying busy isn’t the same as being smart or stable.
Still standing, no longer driving,
K.