The Big Decision: Going Solo

My Free Range Office!

It’s a scary thing to do to launch yourself out there into the big wide world when you’ve spent your entire career working for other people but that’s exactly the challenge I’ve chosen to take up. Yep, come the end of September I’ll be going solo!

There are many reasons why I’ve chosen this particular path but I think the main one is that as I’ve gradually moved up the corporate hierarchy I’ve become separated from that day-to-day working with technology and writing code which is my core passion and was what drove me into this industry in the first place. As the tools on my work laptop have gradually transitioned from compilers to spreadsheets I’ve started to lose my mojo and while there are still undoubtably some aspects of my job that I still enjoy, that fundamental, geeky part of me has become restless and in need of satisfaction.

While thinking about these things a few months ago, I stumbled across the work of Marianne Cantwell which led me to Seth Godin and also Wealth Dynamics. It was from working through these that I came to realise that we are all in fact already incredibly wealthy individuals. This wealth takes the form of who we are and what we know. What we need to do is to convert this form of wealth to whatever other forms of wealth we happen to need.

As a techie, I can’t help thinking about this in terms of potential energy stored in a battery that has been gradually charged up over the course of our careers so far. Turning this potential energy into other forms such as money, investments etc is simply a case of completing the circuit and allowing the current to flow.

The big question then is what does the circuit need to do and what components am I going to put in there? Well there’ll be no surprises if I say that there’s going to be hands on coding in there. I’ve been working on a couple of proposals for potential clients over the last few days for some really exciting work. On top of that though there have been a few opportunities for consultancy that could also be fun. I’m also going to be looking for opportunities to speak at conferences, something I really enjoy doing.

Another key thing for me though is that I remain mobile. I love to travel and my wife and I are planning a semi-nomadic lifestyle and starting to make lists of countries we want to visit already. The plan is to pop my laptop in a backpack and head out into the sunset.

I can’t wait!

• Coding
• conferences
• consultancy
• contracting
• firmware
• free range
• free range human
• self employment
• software
• software architect
• travelling