My editor asked me to add a new chapter to the updated Making a Living Without a Job to talk about the current economy. I finished the first draft today and as I was working on it,  thought about the response I’d received after I sent out a mailing over the weekend called The Security Factor. In case you missed it, the piece was partly inspired by Joseph Campbell’s observation that the insecure way is the secure way. With the constant media barrage of tales of job loss, this article challenged the notion of job security. 

What I hadn’t anticipated was the reader response. Almost immediately, I began getting calls and messages like the one I received from Liz de Nesnera who rang me right up to tell me that her voice over business was booming. 

There was only one message from someone who wasn’t self-employed. She wrote: 

I just had to write and tell you your article ANOTHER LOOK AT JOB SECURITY in the recent Joyfully Jobless News was amazing and wonderful!  As a person who stays stuck in a situation that I am not happy in, just because I need the job security, I was challenged by the article.

More common were messages like this one from Connie:

Thanks for reminding everyone that security lies within.  I live in California, am self-employed and last week I turned down work because I am too busy.  My friends are stunned.  I “lost” two clients last month and took on two more.  I do not look at any of my projects as permanent.  Some come, some go.  Some are planned, some are not.  When one door closes, one door opens.  Interesting.  I keep myself open to possibilities.  My only regret right now is that I am too busy to take your online seminars, but that will change when the time is right. Thank you for your constant presence.

Then there was this one from Angela:

 My business is better than ever right now and I have no fears about layoffs.  I work as a private math tutor and babysitter and had to adjust my “ego” because I can’t tell people I have some lofty position.  What I have is daily freedom, joy, and independence. 

I am no longer sacrificing my health in order to have what society has always told me I should have.  My boyfriend (he’s 52, I’m 44) is an independent massage therapist and  his business has never been better, either.  We keep saying, “Wow, there’s no recession for us!”  I don’t have a big retirement account and neither does he, but we feel so confident in our ability to “take care of ourselves” that it doesn’t matter!  Self-bossing is the best!

I was a public school teacher and he was a lawyer.  We both had many difficulties fitting into corporate systems because we wanted to improve them with our creative ideas and tell the truth about what was happening in those places.  Not welcomed by those systems!  Well, our creativity and noncomformist attitudes serve us very well now and we both feel we are uniquely suited for the services we provide.  Yippee!

That one made it into the book.