> I’m out to help promote a new, brutally honest way of writing about life in the trenches. Thank you. This is superbly well-written and incisive. Accurate too

> I’m out to help promote a new, brutally honest way of writing about life in the trenches. Thank you. This is superbly well-written and incisive. Accurate too. As someone with a decade plus of continuous self-employment, one other challenging (demoralizing? LOL) aspect is never being able to really, completely, and truly take time off. When you get sick, your money comes to a grinding halt, but your bills and client support tickets keep piling up. When you're on "vacation" you keep your laptop charged and ready to go in case your phone lights up with notifications that a server is down. Your brain is constantly adding up the next invoice, making the next sale, coding the next method, etc, etc. It can be unrelenting. You can make excellent money consulting, but to make a ton you either need to scale a team, be absolutely world-class at a specific technology, or go the cult of personality write-a-book/hit-the-speaking-circuit route. Otherwise you're going to max out in the same range you could fairly easily get working a 9-5, but with way more volatility, risk, and stress. If anybody considering consulting happens to read this, specialize as soon as possible, charge way more than you're comfortable asking, live below your means, and build some sort of redundancy by way of an employee or 1099 partner.