A side hustle that eats every weekend isn’t freedom yet. It’s a second boss.

Work you picked yourself can still own your week. The pitch of a side thing is control, and the trap is that the obligation becomes self issued, which makes it harder to push back on rather than easier. You will never get a complaint from yourself about missing a day off. You just lose the day, and then the next one, and call it ambition.

Count the hours it actually took last month. Give it set hours the way a job has them, and pick one day it does not touch. If it cannot survive being contained, better to learn that now.