Once upon a time I was a productive member of society.
Oh, it’s not that I’m not, now. I contribute what I hope is some useful stuff to the world around me, in various ways. But what I mean is that I went to school for years and years and raised my hand to speak and did group projects with other students and I met deadlines and ran meetings and then went out into the “real world.” There I no longer had to raise my voice to speak, but I did have to do things like put a professional greeting on my voicemail and do things like “follow the chain of command” and be in the office at a certain point every morning and stay until a certain point each evening. I’ve worked in a cube and I’ve had officemates and I’ve had my own office. But all of those were still under the watchful eye of various bosses and assorted colleagues.
For all of the things that freelancing from my home office has given me, I sometimes wonder if it hasn’t rendered me completely incapable of returning to a “regular” job without being fired. Mind you, I have zero desire to go back to that sort of job, but who knows? It’s weird to think about.
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