A Freedom Timeline

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the New Americans, and I (as an American) was made forever free of Great Britain’s rule.

On September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and I (as an African-American) was made forever free of slavery.

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified and I (as a woman) was left forever free to cast my vote.

In 1992, I became self-supporting and I (as an adult) made myself forever free of my parents’ rules and priorities. Theoretically, anyway…

January 15, 2005 was my last day of full-time work as an employee. I invested three years into supporting Dan while he was in school full-time, and on that day he started returning the favor with three years of freedom to work from home. Maybe forever. Maybe not.

My Freedom

Much of my freedom was fought for by my forefathers (and foremothers!), but some I had to earn myself. With each additional chunk of independence came the joy of flexibility, the burden of responsibility, and the bittersweet confusing bliss of having choices.

That’s what freedom means to me, just as Sethe said in Beloved: waking up at dawn and deciding what to do with the day.

Not that I wake up that early…9:30’s just as good.

Building Freedom

There are 6 months of my Employment Freedom left and I’m revisiting my strategy on how to remain free. The original plan was to build a business, but the way I had it figured, I was actually building another job.

Now I know that I need to develop/create/manifest/engineer an income machine that will maintain—and maybe even extend—my freedom.

Tricky stuff, that. Because “independent work” only promises freedom from an employer, not freedom from a desk, freedom of movement, freedom from worry, or financial freedom.

Whatever I build, it needs to run for me, not run on me—there’s only so much Crystal to go around. Just as indispensable employees can never be promoted, an indispensable entrepreneur has built their own cage.

Work Freedom

As I see it, truly Independent Workers are queens and kings of passive income streams. They still work, of course, and from what I’ve seen they work hard. There is work freedom, but without a trust fund or a big win lotto ticket, there’s no freedom from work.

But these Independents work on projects for weeks or months, not so much on tasks day after day. And after a project is completed and earning, they don’t need to work as hard or as much, if at all. Nifty, eh?

Above all, true Independent Workers have incomes that aren’t limited by time. Their earning potential is not limited to the hours they can work (quite finite), only the price of their product or service and the number of people they can get to pay for it (also finite, but way more potential).

Going Forward

Starting today BigBrightBulb is going to continue with more focus on Independence: ideas and resources for passive income streams, mobile working, and similar topics. Other stuff will surely pop up from time to time, but the core topics are going to be on getting—and staying—free.

Et tu? When did (or does) your freedom start? What does your freedom look like?

And yes, Jeremy Adam Davis, I am finally reading The 4-Hour Workweek! It’ll likely be this month’s book review…