The only real freedom

Two jobs ago I worked with a guy named Randy. Randy was a middle-aged developer who had a single-digit employee number and more years with the company than I had with life. He was an opinionated Republican and social conservative, a Vietnam Vet, and an enthusiast of a generally strange view of the world. So when I was assigned to help Randy port his disk storage software from Windows to Linux, we hit it off.

The two of us spent countless hours in his office, half working and half shooting the breeze. I figured that since the company paid me half what I was worth—as I figured it—and that since Randy came and went as he wished anyway, our arrangement with the company's time was fair.

Randy and I rarely agreed about anything philosophical, but one thing we did agree on was the inseparable link between money and freedom. As Randy put it many times: the only real freedom is financial freedom.

Now, civil rights are important freedoms. The right to free speech and the right to due process are important freedoms—critical freedoms. But no rights or freedoms granted to you by any parchment or legal act will keep you from becoming someone's tool, someone's serf. To be your own person, you must have your own wealth. Otherwise, someone will be there to tell you to show up to work on days you'd rather not show up, on days you're inspired to create something of your own, and thus you must drudge through the mediocrity of earning a living.

These last six months I've taken what many people would call a sabbatical. Six months ago I decided I was better off leaving my job, and so I left it. It was that simple. I left because I wanted to and I could. I took the time off to be myself, to set goals for myself. I learned two new programming languages. I made a bike rack and shoe rack. I read philosophy and then moseyed around the neighborhood to think about what I read. I nursed an Achilles' tendon injury. I bonded with Laura's cats.

Sadly, though I'm not fully shackled, neither am I fully free. And so I'm bringing my six months of self-direction to its end. Today I accepted a job offer and will be going back to work.

The new job has a few things going for it. For one, the company makes chargers for electric cars, which is cool even for a product, and making products beats making services. Also, the office is in downtown, and I love downtowns, even Phoenix's, what with their plazas and gigantic public art and their compactness that lets you walk to nearby shops and restaurants. Not that I spend money at shops or restaurants. But it's neat to be one of the shabbily dressed people who walks around, awkwardly staring people in the eye and muttering under his breath.