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Today was quite relaxing with a few new contracting leads. I’d say that there’s enough work in the Bay Area now to sustain any techie or dot-commer. If only more people would try their hand at contracting for a while! Office drones confined to one company (and one cubicle) would be so lucky to learn what it’s like to float freely from opportunity to opportunity, to sample the techie world, the corporate life, the ma-and-pa atmosphere, and everything in-between! I have visited and experienced so many forms and faces of business, and the knowledge I’ve gained is far more potent than the so-called “growth” that full-timers hope for and often never achieve.
Despite promotions, raises, political wrangling, and climbing on top of “friends” to get the next promotion, and all of the other familiar office antics, the truth is that in a corporate environment, professionals (and non-professionals) are playing a game that they will never win. Eventually, any office worker tires of a particular setting, and in a final hour of resentment and perhaps even disgust, the person resigns. This does not happen with freelancers. In fact, with the closure of each contract, freelancers feel their professional self grow and their personal self flourish, time and time again. Human nature may partly be responsible for this, perhaps since humans instinctively seek adventure, the thrill of a hunt, and self-sufficiency.
Although it should be obvious by reading my blog that I deplore the stereotypical corporate environment, in no way am I saying that all workers should join my ranks and become freelancers. After all, without full-timers, how could large corporations become a reality and compete with other industry giants, and foreign companies? Corporations are counting on masses of people to be attracted to the numb security and superficial prestige of a full-time job with benefits, even if it means being grossly overworked, throwing a worker’s personal life out of balance, and pushing the worker to nerve’s end. But this very phenomenon has persisted since the industrial age began, and office “submissionism” seems to be embedded right into our DNA. Well, I must be some kind of mutant if this is true, because I defy this corny and murky office environment of corporate America, as I will to the end of my days.
I have finished my personal bio, and I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. I included my favorite quote in my bio, but I’d also like to include it here. It’s a very powerful excerpt from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, a passage that I reflect upon daily. My nephew's recent battle with cancer has also put this passage into perfect context.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to Hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
-from Prometheus Unbound,
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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