Choosing your life's calling

[7Wannabe5]

As somebody who has had the experience of running my own generalist umbrella lifestyle business and also doing extremely flexible gig work in realms of lifestyle interest, I kind of agree that the two are coming to intersect at the juncture of the sort of customized and flexible "contracts" now made available through 21st century technology. The point ducknald_don made about being able to fire your annoying clients at will is key, but intersects with situations where you are "working for other" when you are also free to accept or turn down or filter annoying assignments at will. For example, I can go into the app I utilize for W2 income substitute teaching, and adjust the settings so that I never see assignments at the annoying middle school level, and I am only available for assignments on Monday and Friday. And this isn't very different than consulting the app I used for finding potential sources of inventory for my Schedule C business with filter set to 3 hour driving radius and total book sales attended per week limited to 3 max and "annoying" because likely to be picked over book sales deleted. Maybe the main difference that remains would be the level on which "reputation" and "reward" are risked, although these apply more equally to businesses and employees these days in much the same manner that they apply more equally to professors and students engaged in an online course, especially if you take it down to a one-to-one relationship such as self-employed tutor and student.

In "A Pattern Language" and similar works circa the 1970s, a model in which everybody has something like a street or commons facing home workshop is created, and this is now much more easily accomplished due to the internet, etc. It's not that difficult to imagine a paradigm of just-in-time employment where you could wake up on a given morning and choose to maybe work for two hours at a local co-op bakery in the morning, and/or deliver a lesson on geometry to a group of home-schoolers in the afternoon, and/or serve as usher at a musical theater production in the evening. Or you could run the script in reverse and solicit the help of independent operators for your various venture(s.)

This is also quite analogous to how dating apps work these days with the heterosexual male only somewhat more likely to be in the more "contract-presenting employer" like role than the heterosexual female within a similar selection of available annoyance-reduction filters.

[lillo9546]

Whether you work from the office or from home, a job is a job and you're still dealing with mostly the same soul-sucking bullshit. Things like commute or loud open spaces are no longer a problem, but everything else remains.

I was considering making a comparision btw working for yourself (business) and working for somoene else (employed) in a range of 50 years.

[Lemur]

Pick your poison I guess. Either your master is the client/customer or the boss.

These days I see it less as a poison and more as a mutual exchange where I trade my time, skills, knowledge for your wage and I compete with others for that. It is mostly a fair trade. Though salaryman requires a bit more subjugating, it is less risky overall because I get dependable cash inflows.