As a means of making income while I learn a new trade, I decided to become a Lyft driver. Now, after a month of legwork, I'm finally driving. After a few days of driving, these are some early and brief impressions of what it's like to be a driver.

• I am not getting passengers nearly as often as I'd expected. The couple times that I've been out driving, there have been stretches of up to an hour without any requests sent to me.
• You are all but forced to use your phone while driving. When I get a request, I'm driving around to increase my chances of getting chosen. When I get a request, I have to:
  1. Open the Lyft app if it's not already open.
  2. Tap to accept the request.
  3. Do some cursory observation of the route and destination. I'm not sure if there's any way around this really, other than waiting stationary for requests to arrive.
• Inane conversations with strangers are difficult (at least for me). This is a skill I'm going to need to develop, and am looking forward to being better at.

It is clear that there is much more strategy involved in driving than I expected. I thought I would be pinged with ride requests pretty often while I was out driving, but that's not the case. Being in the right place at the right time is important, and not easy.