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On the night of September 12th 2007 I sat tucked away in an isolated office in the basement of an abandoned building and waited for the clock. I had been sent to the hospital’s East Campus — a building that formerly housed the mentally unstable but now contained marketers and designers — to mop floors and empty trash cans for one last night. At 10:55PM I would turn off the lights, lock the doors and make my way up the stairs to punch out at a computer terminal one final time.

I was happy that my final night was accompanied by little fanfare and total quiet. If my job had always been like that, I might have stayed, but calm and quiet strikingly differ from the atmosphere of the emergency room where I found myself working more often than not.

After clocking out, I walked down the steps of the front entrance, staring through the glass at the parking lot and trying to convince myself that I was actually unemployed. It was so surreal.  I was free. I felt mostly exhilarated, a little scared, but overall very happy. I took the first huge step that most people can’t muster up the courage to take. I was unemployed and proud!

I was so happy, in fact, that I went out at 11:30PM and bought myself a cake. Now, what would you have written on a cake to celebrate your recent unemployment? I went with Monty Python.

Dealing with Unemployment

I quit my job with bills to pay and absolutely nothing lined up. If you are sick of your job and convinced you deserve a better life, I highly recommend you do it, too. I was living the exact situation that most people feared, the exact situation that kept them slaving away at a boring job just to have the security of a regular paycheck. I was living that. And guess what? It wasn’t all that bad.

Most people feel that if they quit their job they’ll completely lose control and end up homeless or hungry when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. Without a job, I had the ability to make absolutely any career move I wanted. I had bills, but getting to homelessness and hunger are both pretty slow processes in the first world. I had more control of my life than ever.

However great I thought unemployment was, though, it didn’t last for long. Within one week of quitting my “real” job at the hospital, I had become a freelancer almost completely by accident. It started with $45 per week to write reviews on a blog then before I knew it I was a web designer/developer. At the time, I barely had the knowledge to do either, but people don’t care. You should strive for greatness at whatever you are doing, but no matter the level you are currently at, there’s always somebody willing to pay you.

If you’d like to get into freelancing, I highly recommend you go to www.elance.com. Elance isn’t something you’ll necessarily want to stick with forever, but it will help you find those first freelance jobs you need to feel like freelancing is actually possible. It’s where I got all my jobs when I was just starting.

Working Like It Matters

In the beginning I made the mistake of treating my freelance work as a string of loosely related odd jobs when in reality each job I got had the potential to balloon into more jobs and, eventually, into a thriving steady business. I didn’t know it but I was on my way to becoming a full-fledged entrepreneur.

I think the goal of any independent person should be to create a business that functions with or without them. This will give you the time you need to live the life you want while still enabling you to earn money. To get there, though, you have to treat yourself as a brand and a business, even if you are a one-person operation.

To an extent, you have to treat it the same way you would a “real” job. You don’t need the bureaucratic bullshit or ridiculous corporate culture, but you definitely should have a set schedule for working and a plan for where you want to go and how you’ll get there. After about a month of freelancing, I wrote a business plan and a marketing plan, got a Doing-Business-As name from the county clerk’s office, and opened a business bank account. I also set up a website with the purpose of drawing clients… and it worked. Before long I was knee-deep in work and all of it was coming to me. I never once ran an ad. The best clients you’ll ever get are referrals.

Conclusion

The one thing I want anyone to take away from my story is to not be afraid to fail. That is the most important thing you can learn. I was afraid of failing so I stayed in a “safe” job that I absolutely hated even though the potential positive outcome greatly outweighed any potential negative outcome. Too many people are scared of trying, afraid that they will end up broke or hungry or homeless or that people will think they are crazy for actually doing what they want to do. Don’t buy it. Get addicted to falling on your ass and sucking at life.

Failing doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it means you’re trying something that’s actually worthwhile. Most people don’t fail nearly enough.