Is adulting only about a career or a 9 to 5 job?

Now that I have been a 9 to 5er for nearly 3 years – much more if you count internships, I have mastered the work life routine, and feel like it is time to level it up. Not necessarily by quitting or something, but by having that « 5 to 9 » mindset that will allow me to focus on me and on things that aren’t 100% related to work.

For the past few days, I have been watching, reading about and witnessing people having side hustles or freelance activities that allows them to continue working in their line of work, but differently; in a way that makes it less dreary. I have also seen people who pursue other activities or hobbies, unrelated to what they do for a living and allow themselves time to do them.

All of this made me realise that there is more to adult life than just the get up-go to work-sleep-repeat routine. It takes time and organisation to have energy and space to come back from work and do something other than eating and sleeping, but I think it is definitely time to do more than just working 9 to 5.

For me, I think it would most likely be something revolving around freelance work in communication and image consulting as well as mastering photography as a hobby. These would involve skills taken from my line of work and directed towards project that I would chose to work on, firstly for family and friends and without the pressure of results, numbers and management. It would also involve taking time to cultivate hobbies. All in order to take my mind of off my 9 to 5 in order to life not only revolving around work. Who knows, in the long run it could all evolve into another stream of income for me in these times of crisis?

And of course there is also blogging here!

Anyway asking myself « is there something more out there? » is most likely a rhetorical question, because or course there is always something more out there. However, here it’s more about is there something more for me to gain by broadening my horizons, my skills, knowledge, experiences, actions, etc. outside of the work routine.

There is more, now it is just a matter of organising life to fit into my worklife, without the 9 to 5 overpowering everything else.

What are your thoughts on this? Please let me know.