While others bemoan how this lockdown has incapacitated them, you can mint money, especially off these moaners. A countdown of careers that are flourishing like fungus.
5. Cultural Vultural Workshopper:
Count on your fingers, toes, strands of hair, how many online workshops you’ve been propositioned with — to make you draw, dance, sing, cook like a pro in four hours flat. You now have to discover a skill you can entice people to learn. You have shown amazing aptitude of late for binge-watching web series on your sofa, falling asleep into the chips. ‘Join my workshop,’ you can proclaim, ‘On Deep Relaxation of Mind and Body. Book now! Only one seat left (the sofa)’. Such truth.
4. Resume Rockstar:
If you can’t find a job, advise others on getting a job. Always works. Charge exorbitantly to fabricate their CVs. ‘Guaranteed to get you to the place of your dreams.’ (Sleeping on the sofa, watching daytime soaps is a dream, right? Remember, stick to the truth.) No one will question why, with your genius in creating resumes, you haven’t landed yourself a job. Panic, like love, is blind.
3. Love Your Bodyist:
Loads of people want to lose weight. Loads more are telling them how to. You can offer: ‘Lose weight naturally.’ (That takes months, you can keep charging.) Or create an exotic fad: The only-purple-food/ sweat-reabsorbing / intermittent bingeing/ Scandinavian/ Quiliwillian way. Spout science you’ve made up on the spot to back up ridiculous claims. ‘Three hours of eating your hair is the latest breaking-news diet. Find out how to, only here!’
2. Child (Parent) Expert:
We parents are a hyper lot, and if not, we can easily be persuaded to be. Over-commit in your headline: ‘Make your toddler the next Elon Musk — enrol now!’ Or ‘The 5 things only parents of successful kids do.’ (The five hours of your workshop – duh.) Anything to do with the offspring sets off our mush-hormones. ‘How to love your child more’ or ‘Parenting mistakes to avoid’ We will be sobbing our way through our stampede to enrol.
1. Top-Class Alarmist:
And the winner is a profession that has been collecting likes since caveman times, when he who sounded the alarm, perched precariously on a tree, banged his drum when a flesh-eating beast (or firefly) approached. Alarmists are in high demand in the social media era. You can start by re-tweeting panic willy-nilly, and then starting a YouTube channel to threaten: ‘You will die’ (insert appropriate cause from the following) ‘from unbleached vegetables, vaccines, immigrants, screen time… not forwarding this forward’.
If all else fails, enrol for my upcoming workshop on Finding Your Inner Fool. Enrol now, only one seat left!
Where Jane De Suza, author of Flyaway Boy, pokes her nose into our perfect lives.