I've written before about the long road on which I traveled to finally live my dream, which was to be able to do what I love most for a living: write.
Some people are fortunate in that it doesn't take long at all for them to become successful at whatever it is they want to do in life. But for me, it took many years of blogging, coupled with occasional guest stints at bigger sites, and then some paid writing opportunities in my spare time as a side hustle, before I turned being laid off at my administrative job of nearly 20 years from lemons to lemonade and dipped my toe into the water of a full-time freelance writing career.
Well over seven years later, I'm here again to tell the story of how, if one works hard enough at it and has the time to dedicate to it, their career dreams of being their own boss can come true, too. Except in this case, the success story isn't about me but someone I've had the privilege of knowing for several years who recently took their own leap of faith similar to the one I took in 2019.
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We have a landscaper who mom and dad used off and on for many years to take care of their lawn, and who we've continued to use on a sporadic basis after I moved back in to be mom's full-time caregiver in 2022.
The reason it was initially on a sporadic basis was that there was a neighbor mom and dad had, who did lawncare in his spare time, but who sometimes had to be away due to health issues and whatnot. At a certain point, he ended up having to retire from lawncare because he really needed to focus more on his health, as lawncare can be very demanding on your body.
We ended up hiring the other person to do the lawn maintenance every other week. For purposes of privacy, we'll call him Eddie.
Eddie, who, like me, also takes care of his mom full-time, has always been as good as gold, always going the extra mile, oftentimes without asking. Like sometimes he'll trim bushes around the yard when they need sprucing up, will trim back the crepe myrtle, etc, without needing to be prompted to do so. And unlike some lawn care services, he's rarely charged us extra for it outside of the times when the work we asked of him would have taken a lot more time to finish than just the standard stuff.
Eddie is such a cool dude that after a neighbor lost her husband, he volunteered to cut her whole yard (which is pretty big) for free as a show of respect for her and her husband, whom he had done odd jobs for, including occasional tree/bush trimming throughout the years. He is now doing her lawn on an every other week basis, too.
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Several other people in the neighborhood use his services as well, to the extent that he usually tries to coordinate visits so he can take care of the yards in one day, since he's got a good distance to travel to get here.
In some of our previous conversations, I asked Eddie if this was something he was doing full-time, and he informed me that it was more of a side hustle for him but that he hoped one day to turn it into a full-time one, because he really enjoyed doing lawn work and connecting with people around town. He liked that it helped keep him active and fit. Plus, he's a nature/outdoorsy guy, so a lot of what he does comes naturally.
On Eddie's most recent trip to cut our yard, I was unable to go out and talk to him because he was here early in the day due to the heat, and Mom and I were still just getting up and around for the day.
A few hours later, and well after Eddie was gone, I ran a couple of errands, and when I came back, I checked the mail. There was no mail, but there was a business card in it.
Eddie had made himself some business cards. They were simple, but sometimes that's all one needs to get the message across.
Curious, I asked mom to text Eddie about it, to please tell him we thought they looked nice. He sent back a smiley face emoticon, and he said he was going full-time with his side hustle in hopes of making it work. Mom texted him back and informed him that we knew he was going to do great, but that we hoped he would still have time to take care of our lawn amid all the new clients we were sure were going to be giving him a call.
He sent back another smiley emoticon and assured us he'd always be there for us.
We're praying for Eddie to be a smashing success. The world could use a lot more good people like Eddie.
