I’ve been a self-employed independent creator for 10 years

I've found that as a freelancer while I haven't been working on cutting edge tech as much my social, project management, and business skills have all improved by leaps and bounds. This may be even more important than being familiar with the cutting edge js frameworks or slinging around some deep neural network models.

Isn't this essentially a definition of leisure time? It's at least salon culture[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)

There are employers that give the best of both worlds.

There's something about employment - sometimes it's the employers, sometimes the culture, mostly ourselves - that leads to a certain form of inauthenticity. Maybe this is what's know as "professionalism"?

However, I did find after this realization that I was able to shape my next career choices around maintaining that authenticity with a high level of success (albeit, not perfectly).

Yes, and you, unlike the author of this piece, appear to grasp the basic fact that nobody will pay you for this. So you have to make a living some other way, and use the leisure you earn to do this nice thing that you want to do.

I think you're making an assumption here that your "dream life" is a destination. Which is a perfectly rational way of thinking.

But, alternatively, your dream life could instead be the journey. So, perhaps, rather than working at a job today to make your dreams come true later, maybe your dream instead is to do what you love today, and let the future take care of itself.

Not saying either is right or wrong - I know many people in each camp. Just saying there's two ways of thinking about it.

> I've never understood the irrational desire to quit your job.

instead of

> I've never understood the desire to quit your job.

It sounds like you think it's irrational by definition. If you start out already thinking that, of course you won't understand it.

I think it's easily explained by the fact that people have very different emotional responses to "going in to an office every week day for the rest of your life and doing what someone asks of you".

I, for one, dread that, and as soon as I had saved up enough in my first tech job to quit, I quit, to travel and often to do nothing, and I love that. When my bank account gets low I'll get another job for a while.

Others want (in a way that ought to be described as 'need') to be in control of their own fortunes, or to be doing a mixture of things that keep life interesting, or to be doing something that constantly subjects them to new experiences and new people, or to not know what next month holds. So they live their life in a way that gets them toward that.

Others don't know what they want, just that they don't want this, so they're trying other things and experimenting.

Anyway, I don't think you want what he wants. This is nothing like what you wrote:

> But take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line of work. However, if you are burning with curiosity — if your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don’t make sense—well, then you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you?

Additionally, the economy is seeing a general uptick in gig work and a general downtick in full time employee positions. I have run into a number of people online who have been job hunting for a year or more, to no avail. I tell them all the same thing: You may not be able to find a job, but that doesn't mean you cannot have an earned income. Go looking for gig work while you keep job hunting.

While I would dearly love to be you, my health makes that impossible. Modern medicine has created a lot of people who lived that would have died a hundred years earlier, but they may never be genuinely hale and hardy. They limp along as best they can.

I do not qualify for disability, but a regular job is a problem for me. Gig work has been a better answer, though I kind of hate it because I value security and social status. So I would much rather have a job and a brag worthy title. That simply was not working for me. I was running up crazy levels of debt when I had a corporate job, in part because that lifestyle just does not work for me. I have been paying down debt while making a lot less money doing freelance work.

Good for you. You go. But you are very fortunate. Not everyone can pull that off, even if they desperately want to.

Second, the fact that you justified what you were doing for yourself doesn't make you right. It means you convinced yourself you were right. Being "intentional" about your job is irrelevant to whether it is a good idea or not.

Third, a lot of people don't want to buy into a system which, if they follow its procedures and restrictions exactly, might allow them their dream life (it often does not). A lot of people would rather live right now the way they choose to, because they prefer the experience of living on their own terms instead of simply dreaming of a similar life in the future.

Sure, all of the above is my fault. But once you've dug the hole, it's hard to get out.

It's a matter of taste

If everybody thought like that there wouldn't be jobs in the first place, as nobody would risk to start a business (and hire people).

Not to mention that freelancers are becoming a dominant percentage of the workforce.

Besides, the story is about a person who didn't like his job, and built a decent (if not great) career for himself by himself after he quit. Not sure what's "irrational" about it.

>Sure, he never starved. There was always some money coming in the pike. But he purposefully did not shoot for any more.

Shoot for more of what? More of the same job he hated, with perhaps better compensation but the same lack of satisfaction?

And why should have he "shot for more"? Shouldn't he just shoot for enough? (and he seems content with what he has)

In fact, why don't you "shot for more" and do something on your own? Why is your idea of more constrained to being a salaried employee?

I've never understood the irrational desire have a job.

My contract work over the last 13 years has been immensely rewarding, both financially and personally. I've met and worked alongside many very interesting people. I've had some great relationships and untold wonderful conversations (and billed for them). There have been contracts that are grueling and difficult and some that have been embarrassingly easy. I have always been thankful that diversity in my income has allowed me to ride-out economic hardships and to be selective about the work I do and how I spend my time.

When I see people chain themselves to a single source of income (and particularly a single source of health insurance) I get a little sad. I see people frustrated with dealing with HR policies, working unpaid overtime, and forced to deal with unpleasant co-workers. So many people seem to be slaves to their jobs but are either unwilling or unable to make a change. The fear of losing a job today and being without health insurance has turned work into near-slavery for many people. I've heard many stories of hardship that start with "I lost my job..."

Working intentionally and working a job/freelance are orthogonal. I work very intentionally, but I don't have a job. I watch my billable number every day, and I tune my work up/down based on my personal commitments and goals.

Any perceived "security" in a job (for the vast majority of jobs) where you hold no equity is an illusion. (Sure, sure-- different states have different protections for employees, unions have contracts, etc...) I feel very comfortable that, so long as I don't do anything to tarnish my reputation in the public sphere I have pretty good security in my income.

Edit: Grammar... oh, the grammar...

No - they just hate wasting time. Like time spent living someone else's dreams, for example.

And I can have conversations, share what I know, and learn at work.

That's great for you. Not all jobs work out like that for everyone, unfortunately. In fact they're nearly 100% "dead time" for many people I know. An acceptable enough tradeoff (given the available choices), mind you -- I'm not saying these people are complaining. But in and of itself -- 8-12 a day (depending on your commute) gone straight down the toilet, nonetheless.

So like the author of the original post himself acknowledges -- the grass certainly ain't always greener, on "the other side". But I don't poo-poo these people for trying. In fact I'd wager it'd be a much more boring world to live in if people didn't try to "break loose", as often as they do.

When you don't have a job, you have a lot of time to live how you want.

Last time I quit I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina through 16 countires, and right now I'm spending two years driving right around Africa through 30 countries

I hike, swim, camp, cook, learn languages, talk to locals, see sunrises, sunsets, beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, volcanoes, animals, take photos and generally do whatever I want on any given day.

It's paradise, for me.

Have you ever thought that perhaps a life doesn't need to have this work/life separation at all? When you run/own your own company your life becomes work and vice versa. It's incredibly freeing. You wake up when there is work to do, and any time you are working on something when you don't want to be - you know the direct and logical reason you are doing so. Want a vacation tomorrow? Take it. You can push a couple meetings and take those other conference calls from the beach no problem. You are never sitting there plugging away at pointless work no one will ever see - and if you are, the second you realize it you can simply stop and switch to a different direction.

Ever been in the office at 3pm wondering why the hell you have to sit there staring blankly at a screen? As a business owner that never happens. Not being productive at that moment? Just leave and go swimming. No boss to justify it to, and no reason to feel guilty about what your co-workers may think.

It's freedom. Sure if I could somehow work a job I hate for 10 years and then have financial freedom so I could do whatever with my day - great. Sign me up. That doesn't really exist (for me) though - so the next best thing I can do is make my career my life and hopefully reach the same financial goals in 40 years instead of 30, but having come out ahead since I didn't hate most of my waking life working on some useless thing I don't have any investment in.

I've done the commute to work 10+ hours a day thing, and I honestly don't know how anyone can act like such a mindless drone for so much of their useful life. Seems incredibly myopic to me.

There are jobs you could not pay me $50k/hr to do. Life is too short to spend time doing stupid busy work - no matter how well paid it is.

Or put in a much more simple way? It's about enjoying the journey, not just the destination. When the journey equals the vast majority of the waking hours you exist for, I think it's incredibly important that part of your life gives you direct satisfaction over simple monetary concerns. Once my basic needs are met - compensation is certainly nowhere near the top of my list when evaluating job opportunities.

The problem is that a job robs you of that tiny bit of fuel that you can use to change the world in the direction that is yours alone. I don't know the exact word for it, so let's call it agency. I would argue that it is in large part what makes you human and not an automaton. You didn't have that problem when you worked that warehouse job because you used it to save up for doing something you wanted. But for some senior engineer at the BigCo polishing the internals of an ad-serving backend in exchange for a hefty paycheck the problem is real.

It is especially tantalizing for us software developers because we are constantly bombarded with reminders about how much leverage and power we have. This makes the pain of wasting our agency on someone else's crappy vision even more acute.