My Own Declaration of Independence

On the cusp of the new millenium over seven years ago, I had an epiphany during a stay at a friend's mountain retreat: Time is a limited commodity, money is not. Freedom is owning one's time. Being an employee means a large chunk of your time is owned by the company. Ergo, working for "the man" is to give up personal freedom.

As a former military officer, I was serving the country rather than self. Duty and honor was my motivator, not pay. Eventually, the realization of being owned by Uncle Sam set in. The needs of the Army overrode personal desires one time too many. So I decided to resign my commission. I have great respect for those who have and continue to serve with self-less sacrifice in the Armed Services. I cherish the memories from that time in my life. But now it was time to regain some control in my life.

I became a consultant at a large audit & accounting firm. I was somewhat giddy over my new found freedom. I had choice of where to live, what career to pursue, and what to wear. I no longer had to request a "pass" to take weekend trips outside of a 50 mile radius from home base. I morphed from soldier to individual.

I fell into the life of a salaried employee. I gave my time in exchange for good, steady pay and benefits. It seemed reasonable enough. But then my consulting engagements began to incur 12 hour plus days. Then the client asked if I could work weekends. My company pushed for increased billable hours because this equated to increased revenue. The client was incented to push for long hours because the shortened timeline would translate into large executive pay bonuses.

It is true that I had a performance bonus that factored in billable hours, but the earnable bonus did not seem equitable. In addition, I was not truly compensated for the time I spent traveling to the client locations or for the inconvenience of being away from home. Moreover, I could only work so many billable hours in the day to translate to a capped bonus income. Any extra hours worked after a certain point would have diminishing returns. I actually felt like my employers were "pimping" out my professional service.

After several years of consulting, I planned and took a six month career sabbatical. I had gone from military to civilian work without a break. Between the pace of the military and consulting work, I was exhausted. I ended up taking a nine-to-five job at a small investment company. But as my first post in this blog pointed out, I became stagnant, bored, and mentally atrophied.

So my goal is to earn money in ways that is not so dependent on my time, which most corporate jobs are not. Alternatively, if I were to put considerable amount of time into an income earning activity, it should be doing something I greatly enjoy. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is my fitting objective on this 4th of July.