Fine, I’ll “Hustle.” But only a bit.

As I’ve written about before, I’ve long hated the “hustle” culture that came along with the gig economy and the 21st century wave of entrepreneurship/freelance work. And yeah, it’s that word. Because there are two primary definitions for the word “hustle” that I grew up hearing. One is to rush yourself, generally because someone else told you to do so, because it was usually a one-word command from an authority figure; as in, “Let’s see some hustle, Anderson!” The second use of hustle was to con someone, the act of a grifter tricking someone out of money, information, power, etc. If anything “hustle” is a word I most associate with Three Card Monty because, as a fictional magician once said, “… as soon as you walk up to the table, you lose.”

But in more modern parlance it usually means exploiting every avenue you can, networking and self-marketing in every venue possible, to sell products or acquire clients. It still feels smarmy sometimes though, which is why I avoided it, even when freelance was my primary gig for 10+ years. But, to quote Enola Holmes, “needs must.” Thus, I post here a cover letter I recently developed to try and help me find work, for the express purposes of being able to link to this letter, on every social media channel and online profile where I can think to do so. Please feel free to pass the link along, if you know of a place or person who might have work for me. And as long as you are, like me, just another person trying to get by without actually ‘hustling’ anyone, feel free to use the following as a template for your…