Robert Paterson's Weblog

Freelancing - Control and Adventure

So in conclusion - what is all this Freelancing about? Is it just another way of working?

Yes it is but it can also be more. Much more. It can be how we change the world. For we know now that real change comes not from ideas but from how lives are lived. America was an idea. But when enough people moved there, it became a force that has affected the whole world.

This is what is I think is the meaning of Freelancing. If enough of us go there. If enough of us create a world where we we have control and where we are less dependent on the system, then we create a new world inside the old.

The New New World no longer demands that we cross an ocean of water but an ocean of culture.

In going to this new world, we also take on the life of adventure that the early settlers did. For any man or woman who leaves "home" has begun the "hero's journey".  We commit to adventure.

The humble Hobbits leave the Shire and take on the forces of darkness. It is they, not the warrior or the magician, that wins the final battle. The young girl has faith in the the Black Horse. None of the experts agree with her. So she rides Black Beauty herself to victory. Luke looks up into the night sky at his unhappy home on a barren planet and yearns for a larger life.

Of course we know that we could never be like them!

Or could we?

There is no great struggle out there that little me can be part of surely?

When I first started Freelancing, I saw the work and myself still in the old mold of how work was when I was employed. I largely did the same work. I looked for the money as a priority. I stayed working on the same old things. I thought that I was weird but thought that the world was OK.

But as time passed, I began to find see the Dark riders on the Skyline. I started to feel that I was not the one who was mad. Instead, I started to question the sanity of the world around me. The call is out there if you listen.

Like Luke Skywalker, or like Frodo, I could sense that dark forces were becoming stronger.

Of course the dark forces represent the very culture that I had had to leave.  Back in 1994, few could see this. but today many can see that our institutions are fatally flawed.

Look at what is happening to the British Parliament right now. Look at how the bailout helps Wall Street but does nothing for people. Look how no one in power will admit to the issue of Peak Oil. Look how vulnerable we are with only 3 days of food in the local system. It seems that no one in power will face the real issues that confront us because that will mean that their institutions will lose.

We have been told that only institutions can decide our fate. We can't have paid work without them. We cannot raise our kids. We cannot have a house or food. We cannot be well. We cannot be safe. We cannot be happy without them. We are told that they all exist for our good. We believe that we are helpless without them.

This was the message of the church before the reformation. That salvation and our soul could only be assured if the church intervened. Luther's response was that our souls belonged only to us and that we could work directly with God for our salvation.

What happened to the church in the 14th century has happened to our own institutions. They serve now themselves and not us.

This is indeed a time of struggle. A time when it becomes vital to reclaim our power. It is a time when the stakes are higher than ever before. For now the fate of the entire human race is at stake. If we continue as we are, we are condemned.

But breaking free from our traditional view of reality is going to be very very difficult.

For the system that controls all of this is very powerful.

Even more challenging, this is like the Matrix. For we have become so encultured that most of us cannot even consider another reality. The real enemy is us!

The block is the prevailing institutional mindset. We are so indoctrinated that we are the capos in the camp.

But now the impotence of the system is being exposed. Doubts are rising in many people.

Like the time of Luther, authentic leaders are emerging. The evidence of what is happening is more clear to more people. The web is empowering the discussions and the sharing of ideas and evidence.

Being a Freelancer, is part of this shift. For as more of us find that we can control our own time, our own money and what we chose to do, the less control that the old system has over us.

I think that we Freelancers are in a way like the early immigrants to the New World. We get up in the morning and have breakfast and so on as all others do, but in reality we inhabit a New World.

As the failures and the corruption of the old world becomes more obvious, more will come here to this new world of Freelancers who are FREE either by choice or they will have been exiled here. 

I think it will be the Freelancers who will tip the system.

We will live in a low intensity and low energy way

We will depend less and less upon the old system

We will grow food in a new way.

We will offer our kids a different "education".

We will help each other be healthy.

We will work with each other to keep us all informed.

We will in effect create a new real world

When there are enough of us doing this, then the system will tip.

But of course, the Heroes journey, is not smooth nor is it safe. But with the trials comes the Fellowship, the Sisterhood, the Brotherhood and the connection at the heart that offers the Hero the support that makes it all worth while - even if we don't live to see the result.

Joseph Campbell, the man who restored our knowledge of the Mono Myth will close this short series with my favorite quote:

"....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath.

And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

Freelancing - Working at Home - Managing your Time, Spouse and Kids

"Oh I could never work at home. I need the structure of the office. I would never get any work done. And what about my Kids? How could I get enough space from them? One of the good things about going to the office is that I get to be a grown up for a while. I would miss my co workers. Part of why I go to work is that I have lots of social interaction. I would be so lonely. And talking about interaction, what about my wife/husband?  Whenever I work at home now she/he is always interrupting me. They don't seem to know that I AM WORKING!"

When I talk about working at home, these are only some of the many reasons I hear from people about why they cannot make the break from the office.

So let's look at these three areas and see why they are so hard to deal with. Then I am going to try and show you why coping with solving these problems is worth the struggle.

So let's start with time. Yes for many, managing your time is very hard because we have never done it before.

If from the age of 6 when you went to school, or worse if from the age of 3 when your parents scheduled every hour, you never controlled your own schedule, managing your own time will be a revolution. Many people have never had control of their time.

Think of that for minute. Many people, maybe you, have never had control of their time. When those fleeting moments like weekends and vacations appear, you tend to fill the time with more activity, your habit, or collapse into lethargy.

Taking back control of your schedule will mean changing the habits of a lifetime. But the secret is that you will have so  much time that this is not too hard.

For not only have we never had control over our schedule, but the huge block of time that has been organized for us for work, has meant that there is not enough time to lead our full lives. We are always out of time. We are used to being hectic and having to manage every minute so that we can fit into the time that has been scheduled for us by our commitment to going to work.

We have no time now.

We have to be at work for 8 -10 hours a day. It can take 2 -4 hours to get there and back to home. We have to sleep. Most people get less than 6 hours sleep a night. With what is left, we are pulled this way and that. Our kids have needs. Boys break their arms in the middle of the day. Our spouse has needs. She too goes on trips leaving us as single parents. Our parents have needs. They have doctor's appointments, they need help at home. We have needs. Now and then a hair cut or a new pair of shoes would be nice. We go to the doctor. Our home has needs. The plumber never comes on time. Lawns have to be cut when it is not raining. We have to buy and cook food. All of these calls on our time compete with the time that we have to put into work.

We have no time now.

The work/life balance thing is a crock. So long as up to 12- 14 hours a day is devoted to work that is separate from home, we are always failing. Usually we fail on the life side. So we fail our families and we fail our own needs. We feel guilty. Especially women feel guilty. More than 50% of women working in large organizations are on some kind of medication for stress. No surprise here for me.

The stress that most of us feel today is bound up in this unsolvable paradox. So long as we obey "office" time, we fail and feel guilty about our time.

So the first thing you notice about working from home is that the available amount of time that you have is much much much greater.

You get time and your life back.

For, in reality, if you are a white collar worker, when you are at the office you don't work 8 hours flat out. Most I know have to work at home if they have a paper to write. The office is full of distractions. Huge amounts of time are spent in meetings, doing email, hanging out, and people bugging you. How many hours do you really work at work?

In reality most people work in an office for maybe 4-6 hours tops. You cannot do much more anyway. Your brain turns to mush after 5 hours of concentrated mental effort. So if you work at home, you find maybe 8 hours of "free time". You find a day! At worst you may find 2-4 hours. At best, you find 5 days in a week. You find 200 days in a working year.

Now let's say that you are really busy and a very hard worker and you only find 25% of that. That is still 50 days in the year that you have got back. OK, you are a total workaholic and you only can get 10%. That is still 20 days or 3 weeks vacation!

You get a lot of time back. So the first thing you feel is guilt.

You discover that you can get your work done in much less time than the typical 8 hour work day. You also have no rush to get to work or to get home.

That first time you take the dog for a walk at 9am feels like having an affair. Feeding your kids in your PJ's feels like a sin. Greeting them at the door when they return from school feels wrong. Having lunch with your mother - the horror! Catching a quickie with your husband after lunch - you must be going to hell. Shopping mid morning - impossible. Mowing the lawn at 3pm - can't be done.

It took me years to stop feeling guilty. Even though I was getting my work done better and way ahead of deadline, I had been encultured to think that doing anything other than work in the day was immoral.

But I promise you, that in time, having all this time starts to feel normal and it will be impossible for me to give up now.

I have also developed a routine. Yours may be different but a routine really helps. I get up early. Between 5.30 and 6.30 every morning including weekends. I get all my routine work done by 10am. Others I know, like to do all their routine work at night. It just depends on your metabolism.

I mention that because having a routine for routine work is the foundation of coping well with the kids/spouse issues and for ensuring that you do meet your obligations for work.

In reality I use what would have been commute time to do most of my routine work. Of course there are busy times as well when I may put in very long hours but they are not the day to day. I also tend to work 7 days a week. But if you finish by 10 on most days, you have done a lot but you have  a lot of time left.

By having a routine, the rest of the family can fit in to your need to be not part of them. These are the inviolate times when you are not available.

But what about small kids? I can't have my kids running around when I am working? Now you can have your child care arrangements located close to home. No longer do you have to panic at the end of the day that you will not be able to get to the daycare on time. Now when they have a doctor's appointment, you have not lost a day. Working at home does not mean that you have the kids at your ankles. It does mean that they are close enough that you don't have to stress out all the time.

What about missing your co workers? Well social media is a huge boon. I have twitter going in background all the time. I make time to visit my friends face to face. I also co work at the Queen Street Commons where I can get out of the house for a while.

When I visit my clients it is very intense. We often spend 2-3 days with each other. When we are not in the office talking about things that are meaningful, we are having fun together. Much of the facetime is now deliberately social. The opposite of conventional facetime that pretends to be about work.

The new reality is the old reality. Work was always centred on the home. It was only an industrial need that took us out of the home. For many technology will enable us to return there.

Once again children will see what their parents do for a living. Once again, local infrastructure will fill in the meet the needs of people who don't have to go to work. Life and work can be melded if the home if the centre of both.

Oh and the money! Going to work not only costs us most of our time but much of our money. Second cars, transport, clothes, eating out etc. We save all of that too.

We get our lives back.

Freelancing - Managing your life and your clients

Whom do you seek to please? Most of us choose to please others. In so doing, we often please no one. Pleasing others makes us weak and unhappy. For we can never please them enough. The traditional workplace is all about pleasing. Pleasing your boss is job#1 - pleasing your client is close.

Pleasing others usually ends in tears. We become a fake person who is designed to be what we imagine the other wishes us to be. We try and become mind readers. We try and control what cannot be controlled. In the end we annoy the very person we tried to please and we lose ourselves along the way.

I think this is why the workplace is often so toxic and stressful.

Ironically the best way to to please others is to be clear about who you really are and not try and be what you think they want.

Be close but not too close. Own only what you can control and to be clear about what this is. Be disciplined to know that you are not responsible in any way for others and make it clear to others what their part is in this dance that is our life.

Understand that, ultimately, we can control nothing. All we can really control is our reaction to events and to people.

Know that the only person who can make us happy or unhappy is ourselves.

When we can do this - we have grown up. When you can do this, you can be a really good freelancer.  You will have the optimal inner skills to use your outer skills.

So how can you get to the place where we don't fall into the pleasing trap? The only answer I know is my own answer and my own assessment as to why I did this anyway.

The day I grew up was not long ago.

In 1996, aged 45, I was on a train with Fraser Mustard. We were returning from a trip to Queens University in Kingston,  where he had been giving a master class to  a group of senior people in the Canadian Government service. I had been working for him as an adviser for about a year. Working with him was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I asked him if he would consider taking me on full time.

"You are an adult now Rob. Time to go out on your own." He paused and then added. "I am tired. You cannot rely on me for your life."

The greatest advice I have ever had given by the greatest man I have ever encountered.

As I look back, I can see that nearly all my working life had been a replication of the most important thread of my family story. I wanted my father's love and explicit approval.

This meant in my early life, that I was going to meet or beat his milestones. It was all about public success. To say that I was driven was an understatement.

Even my father's early death did not stop this drive. It made it worse. For not only, did I still pursue "Success" but I also looked out for other father figures in the work force that I could finally impress. I chose roles where I could serve the "father" directly. I became the ideal chief of staff person. No matter how difficult the assignment, I would make it look easy. I was into jumping over buildings, catching bullets in my teeth.

But like a love affair, reality would set in over time. He would seem less god like. I would seem less magical. We would start to get annoyed with each other. There would be a break up and I would find another "father" and the cycle would start all over again.

Fraser was my last attempt to find a new dad. He never played the game. As soon as he saw what I was up to, he sent me packing.

I don't think that my work trap is unusual. You may not seek to find your dad's approval. But my experience is that I see people playing out a whole range of family stories. Beat my brother. Find my mother. Play the parent. Play the helpless child. Sons find dads and dads find sons. Tyrants find slaves and slaves find tyrants.

Many take their unresolved family issues into the workplace and play them out time and time again. They do this I think because, the traditional workplace appears to be like a family where parents adjudicate between unruly children. The more more bureaucratic, the more removed from results, the more toxic and more dysfunctional family like the workplace becomes.

But most of all, we play either the parent or the child who wishes to please.

This simplistic idea of pleasing is connected to feeling that if only we had more money or stuff - we would be finally happy.

For of course, there is no pleasing enough or no amount of money that is enough to fill this need. For as long as we play this game, we avoid dealing with the central issue. That we have to leave our family behind to grow up.

We can never have authentic relationships with others so long as we play these family games.

So what to do? How to stop pleasing?

In my case it was to find out how to please myself. To know that the only person who can do this is me.

How did I find this? Not by enlightenment. Not by reading someone else write this.

But by having the messiest and most painful mid life crisis. So bad that in the end, it was to acknowledge this or die. Maybe not die a bodily death but to give into the game itself.

I regret to tell you that there is no easy or graceful way. Maybe the crucifixion story is the metaphor. To find the better life, the childish person has to die. Die publicly in a humiliating way, abandoned by friends. But loved by a few, who wait patiently and without blame for you to chose to grow up.

And the result?

A new relationship with the world. For the Freelancer only superficially stands on his or her skills.

Most of all she or he bases their life and all their relationships on love.

Not the love of a child. But of an adult that bears the scars of life and our failings. The underpinning of this love is compassion. To know how hard life is and to see yourself in all others - especially in those that annoy you the most.

For the true freelancer can only influence another or events by their own lives. It is not the great idea, the power point, the report. It is only you. To have any influence, others have to know and trust that you are really there for them. That you are them.

Paul of course says it best. His plea for adulthood is my Freelancer's creed.

 ¹If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,^[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

 ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

 ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Freelancing - Freedom – Costs - Co Working – Sleeping at Night

Do you still work in a corporate environment? Have you just left school where others told you what to all all the time? If so, do you know what Freedom is?

For me Freedom is being able to choose who I work with and under what conditions. I choose my schedule. I choose what I do every day. I choose where I live. I could do none of those things when I had a real job. Of course on a project I have to meet the milestones but how I do that is my choice. The larger areas of choice still remain mine because I can negotiate my role. If I don't like it, I can choose to not do the work.

So how can I do this as a Freelancer and not as a SVP of a big organization who made much more money? The answer is that I have designed my life so as not to be financially dependent.

The key to freedom is not to maximize revenues but to minimize costs!

If I don't need to make lots of money all the time - I can be free to chose many things that I can't if I spend all my paycheck or I have expenses that drive large amounts of debt.

This is the key to freedom. No debt and low expenses. It also helps to have a "Fuck You" fund. Savings sufficient to keep me ticking over for a few years now. Again this is only possible with a low expense rate.

How do you do this?

I bet that the answer is different for all of us. So I can only talk about me as a general rule.

I used to live in downtown Toronto with a big house and a really big mortgage. Where you live is a key issue. I chose to move to PEI. Where I have a much nicer place and no mortgage. But the trade off is that a lot of work is in Toronto. But not needing a lot of money now, I don't need a lot of work anyway. I can choose the work that I like the best. My only expenses are property taxes and food, drink and energy.

I have invested in energy saving. Insulation, wood heating, solar water heating. All of this reduces my need for cash.

We used to have 2 really nice cars. We have one very small one now. If I need another car, I rent. It's much cheaper.

I used to commute and have lots of really expensive clothes. I work at home - have found 2-3 hours of my time back and have worn a suit once in 14 years. I also co work out of the Queen Street Commons where I have a full office, access to a cool boardroom, wifi, Voip, nice colleagues for $50 a month!

I am incorporated - I have much more financial flexibility than a wage earner. I run a rental business at home as well. As a wage earner you have no flexibility at all.

I save and I have saved all my life. We don't get rich in the stock market. We can save though. Both my kids went to university paid for by savings and left with no debt. I was able to do this while I was a Freelancer because I had saved since they were born just for that.

I sleep well at night. Why not. My contracts with my clients are based not on a power dominance but on a partnership. I am in control of my work. We speak as partners not as child to parent.

I wonder if this economic crisis has shown more of us that how we choose to spend our money can make us either slaves or free?

The day after I was fired, Robin and I had a strategic planning meeting at a pub. We ended up with a one word plan "Freedom". What this meant in practice was that every decision that we would make would be filtered through the ideal of gaining more freedom. If the decision meant less freedom, we usually said not. If it said more we usually said yes. We do choose less sometimes, such as having dogs, because there are offsets. Dogs bring health and love and in that case the loss of freedom is worth it. But always we make a conscious decision.

It's a simple plan. It took us about 4 years to unwind our old life. In the last 10 years, our freedom has only increased. So as our security. So has our health. So has our happiness.

Your path will be different. But is you make freedom your goal, all else will follow.

The Freelance Life - Leaving your job - Marketing - It's all about Relationships

What's really different about having a job and being a freelancer? It is the core relationship. In most organizations the core relationship is at best utilitarian. People use each other. In the best of Freelancing, it is Love - people look after each other - all of each other the work and the person.

You don't believe me about the utilitarian aspect of the corporate world?  When push comes to shove it's the organization first and you second and all the rest....  Part of the tragedy of modern corporate life is that we naively start work thinking that we have joined a family. You haven't. You have joined a machine. You have joined a school of sharks.

There are some freelancers who continue to see the world in terms of utility. They still climb over the bodies of others and self promote like mad. But the good ones don't work like this. They get by giving. It's all about love.

I hope that the story of how I left my job and how I get work may help explain in concrete terms what I mean by "I get by Giving".

Nearly 2 years before the bank and I parted company, I had dinner with an old friend who comes into my life when big changes happen for me.

So at the end of dinner, Gaye looks at me with that LOOK and says "So Rob, you want to leave the Bank"

I was stunned. I told her that I loved being at the bank and so on. She replied by telling me that all my energy was telling her and of course others that I did not fit any more and that I wanted out. She told me to go away and think about this. "Be sure that you are aligned to your message"

I was stunned but after a few weeks I could see that she was right. I could see the reality too clearly and I did not like being part of this and felt more and more uncomfortable. So I called her and asked what to do. Should I quit. She told me not to be so stupid. She reminded me that there is nothing personal in a big organization. She advised me to go out and get connected to the outside world. The day of my departure would come when it was ready.

So that is what I did.

Like many in large organizations, I really had no outside network. I had become isolated inside. That is of course how they have such a grip on you.

Fortunately I was in an area of work where I was doing groundbreaking stuff. So I got myself on the public speaking circuit. Many good things happened as a result. When you speak, you have to know your stuff, my learning curve went up. I met many many people - several of the best later gigs of my life including moving to PEI came from this process. I became a player again that raised my value at my employer so that when the day came they compensated for that and treated me very well.

I also started to help a few friends for free on their problems. One was a Deputy Minister for a major province. The other was the President of a major think tank.

The work was fun. It was challenging. Working for free was very interesting. It changed the relationship. We were equals. We became life long friends. We were exploring together. So different from work in my job.

In effect I built a lifeboat for myself. Everyone in a job should I think have such a lifeboat. Don't get isolated.

I had a real network of real friends. I had a public value. So when the day came, I was treated very well by the bank and I walked immediately into paid work with the friends that I had been working for for free.

The quality of my work for them and their reputation meant I immediately had the credibility to get other high end work. For in the Freelance world, your work and your clients are your value. The best marketing you can have is the support of your clients and to do challenging work.

The Freelance world is best lived not as a utilitarian world. For in this world, the more you use, the more isolated you become. Nor is it a "Glitz" world. You don't get the gig because of the neat brochure. Many new Freelancers spend lots of money on Branding. Brochures etc. I never did this. My brand is my name. My name is based on the value I have offered to my clients who in turn help me.

How do clients find me? For I never cold call, market or answer RFP's.

Blogging - telling stories, talking about my ideas is my current way of getting my Name out into the world. My band of peeps online help amplify my message. Having a legitimate and authentic group of friends in your field is so important. They are not your competitors! They are not to be used. They are to be loved. Great work comes from this source.

Nearly all my best paid work has also come from free work. Most of my best client relationships have come from free work. Some times this results in paid work directly. Sometimes the paid work comes indirectly.

For it is possible to recreate the "Gift Economy" in Freelancing. In the classic Gift Economy, the Gift has to be given freely without the expectation of an immediate or direct return. The Gift often comes from the side or a third party. The Spirit of the Gift has to be one where you genuinely want to help another.

Help and love your peeps and your clients. Get to know all parts of them not just the work parts. Honor them and keep your word. In return, you are loved and cherished. You also can pay your bills! Over time the love builds. I wonder what it will be like in 10 years?

How different this is from being in the shark pool where over time, the certainty of you becoming lunch grows.

Want to know more?

The Freelance Life - Security and Peace of Mind - Why these cannot exist in a job

Many who balk at going out on their own fear that they will be insecure. The great irony is that I have found much more security and peace of mind as a freelancer than as a senior executive in a large organization.

How can that be? How can we fear less when we work for ourselves than when we work in a job?

Here is my answer to that question.

When I was a 22 year old I went into investment banking - those were the days before the big bucks of recent time - I deliberately chose that life because I wanted to be measured by my results. I knew intuitively that I could learn to be good and that I could work hard. What kept me away from other walks of life - especially the corporate sector was that I felt that they did not value results - I was not sure what they valued then - but I felt that I would have too little control.

I was correct. In the sales and trading area of investment banking, I could see every day how I was doing. So could my bosses. There was no fudging the numbers. I did learn how to do this well and I did work hard and in my early thirties was one of the top folks in my field. So far so good. This world was also comforting in that just as my bosses knew that I had value, so did all my competitors and my clients. This was security and this was control. I could leave at any time as I was a known quantity in a big field.

Then I made my "mistake". Bored with the short term aspects of winning and losing every day in the markets, I opted to leave the frontline and enter the world of senior management.

Over time I discovered what I had feared as a newbie all those years prior. In bureaucracies, results don't really matter. As I came to see what was going on more clearly, I could see what the game was. It was the pursuit of power. If you ever watched any BBC costume drama about say Henry VIII or Elizabeth I - that is what the executive suite of any large organization is all about.

There is a King. There are princes and princesses. There are big servants of the King who act as hit men. There are competing heirs. There are rebels. It's all about being part of a group that either is in power or has a shot at power.

Now the message to the "people" is all about the common good, the shareholders, making money, making good products. But don't fool yourself - all this is what all Monarchies told the people. The reality is that it is all about who has the power.

I found also that you could not hide and be outside this. You have to play this game. You have to publicly stand in one group or another. At my bank the game has always been the same. Below the King are at least two heirs. Both have their followers. Both teams work hard to get their man into the final selection. If you win, you all win. All the people in the losing other team die/leave/get fired within a year. The winners take it all and the game starts again.

Well, my man lost. I was one of the last to go. In a way it was kind of fun. But I did not want to do this all over gain somewhere else. I now knew that working hard, being good at what you do, getting results really did not count for much. But these were the only things that I could control.

As a junior person in a large organization, you can have the illusion that doing a good job is valued. But I think that many of us can now see that the workers are just expendable pawns in the larger game that is played. The rhetoric is all about results. But failure is hugely rewarded at the top and it is the pawns who pay for it. The breakdown of our current economy is starting to make it clear to more and more people - that they are just pawns with no control.

Worse, I back in 1994, like you maybe now, had leveraged my lifestyle. I earned great money but I had huge expenses. I somehow thought that I would always make this kind of money.

Worse, when you are a player at the top of a bureaucracy, you have no outside network as I had when I had been a front line investment banker. I also had no real value, for at that level you real value is as a player in the game itself.

So my bottom line lesson is this. A job only has the illusion of security. What you do or contribute has little real impact on your security. The real game is power at the top. This is not confined to banking but all bureaucracies. You are expendable.

Worse, now we are in a transition from one business model to another, the guys at the top have missed the opportunity to realign your organization. So car workers, journalists who have all done a good job are on the scrap heap. Soon they will be followed by people in every sector. You with a job have no control over what will happen to you.

Worse, like me back in 1994, you have no idea of how to live without a job.

More tomorrow and here is the information about our series on Freelancing.

Living the Freelance Life - What is it like? Find out more May 19 Queen Street Commons

On May 19, at 12.15 at the Queen Street Commons 224 Queen Street, we start a short lunchtime series on Living the Freelance Life. I thought that this week I would talk a bit about the issues that I confronted. 

Back in 1994, I had only ever had a job. That was true for most people. I could have no idea what working on my own might be like. Only one person I knew did that. I could not imagine what not having a job would be like.

Well I think Freelancing is moving from being rare to common. Not having a job will be the new normal for many. But what is it really like to Freelance?  There can be no manual for being a Freelancer is different in detail for all of us. We hope that our stories will ring a bell for you - show you that pattern - answer your questions.

To set up our meetings, I will talk a bit about these issues this week. But I would like to begin with what being a Freelancer means to me now. I can sum it up with one word - Freedom.

Yes I worry about money sometimes, about where the next gig will come from. But I could never go back to having a job. I used to worry then about losing my job anyway and I had cause to fear, because I did not know then how to live without one.

What is Freedom?

Freedom for me is having control over my time and hence my life. I almost never have to go some place as a matter of routine. My commute, to the room next to my bedroom. Office hours, when I want them to be. Yes some times I am very busy, but that is about a project not my daily life. Freedom means that not only can I be here when the plumber comes, but also when my kids come or off to see them when I want.

Freedom is that I live my life with my wife and family. I walk the dogs, mow the lawn, go shopping, start, finish when I want. I dress as I want. I eat when I want.

These days, I choose the work I want. I only do work that is stimulating. I only work with people that I like. I only attend meetings that are going to help the work get done or that will hep me get to know people better. I never worry about where I am in the organization. Is my star rising or falling?

I chose where I live. I live in rural Prince Edward Island. I don't have to be close to the people that I work with. I don't need endless face time with my clients. But I do have deep friendships with my clients and with my freelance colleagues. Often my work is like an adventure story. We don't know how it will end up. In my field of exploring how the web will affect the world, we cannot know the answers. Like explorers we go on expeditions.

The feelings are very intense. Real friendships are the outcome and are the larger reward than the money. Talking about money...

Being self employed I have a lot of flexibility about how I manage money. More of it stays in my pocket. We run several little businesses. We don't put all our eggs in one basket. I also have a core of close clients that are in a sort of rotation. Every few years, there is more work to do. So structurally I am more secure than if I had a job with one pay check.

Even the worry about will I get a gig is diminished over time. I have set my costs up so that I need very little money anyway. 15 years of experience tell me that, like a hunter, the game will come and the plants will grow berries.

Having a very low costs base is crucial to my sense of freedom. Col John Boyd said that the only way to be free was either to be very rich or not to need money. It is of course much easier to design your life to not need a lot. I will talk more about this later.

I could never go back to being dependent on one person or one organization. So this is where I have landed. It did not happen overnight and I made a lot of mistakes before I found the best approach for me. Mine is also not the only way. It is my way. On May 19 you will hear of several others as well.

So tomorrow I will talk about how to leave a job well and how to set your self up as a new Freelancer

Here are the dates and the deal - all sessions are at 12.15 and last for an hour. They are at the Queen Street Commons - 224 Queen Street - The cost is $10 per session or $25 for the 4 sessions and a 1 month trial membership of the Commons

• Tuesday May 19 - How do get started?

• Tuesday June 2 - How do I afford to have a team - how does my support system work?

• Tuesday June 16 - Marketing and Pricing

• Tuesday June 30 - Managing your clients and your life

You can book by sending an email here info@queenstreetcommons.org

Living the Freelancer's Life - Is this for you? A Series at the Queen Street Commons

Are you a Freelancer? Might you become a Freelancer? Have you ever wondered what working for yourself might be like?

In May and June, members of the Queen Street Commons, all Freelancers, are going to put on a series of lunchtime workshops/conversations about what we have learned worked best for us as long term Freelancers. Our hope is that our stories may help you do better as a Freelancer, make the move to become one or if you have been forced into being a Freelancer, build a network of people who can help you.

What is it like to be a Freelancer? Can you make it as a parent and small kids? How do you get work? How do you get clients? How do you market? How do you organize the support you need? Where do you work and will you be lonely? How do the money and taxes work? What is this life really like?

You may be thinking about going out on your own. You may being forced to go out on your own! You may have graduated and there are no jobs. You may have retired and are bored.

I worked for 23 years in a "real job". Before that I lived a very structured life at school. Going out on my own was quite scary. But I could not stay in the regimen of a job any more. I had no idea what working for myself would be like. Even if there had been a book, it would not have been as helpful as talking with people who had real experience. Talking with people that I could could keep referring back to as issues arose. I also had to set up all the infrastructure for a home office myself. I immediately found myself alone with my wife and my kids, a weird transition after never being at home. It took me years to get good at all of this. I made very mistake you could.

You don't have to be like me!

Our hope is that we can offer you more than information Our stories will give you that. In addition, we offer a network and a place. All the social advantages of a job without all the bullshit and the meetings!

The Queen Street members have been you and we do all sorts of different things and we are at all stages of life - young - old (me) - with kids/not. We are in all sorts of fields. Collectively our stories and life experiences will match yours.

Here are the dates and the deal - all sessions are at 12.15 and last for an hour. They are at the Queen Street Commons - 224 Queen Street - The cost is $10 per session or $25 for the 4 sessions and a 1 month trial membership of the Commons

• Tuesday May 19 - How do get started?

• Tuesday June 2 - How do I afford to have a team - how does my support system work?

• Tuesday June 16 - Marketing and Pricing

• Tuesday June 30 - Managing your clients and your life

You can book by sending an email here info@queenstreetcommons.org

Queen Street Commons Open House Tonight 4pm - 7.30pm

See you there at 224 Queen Street

Queen Street Commons - Looking Great

We are having are open house next week 4 - 7 Thursday 29th to show you the renovations.