I have been self-employed for over 30 years. Usually, I had some kind of "job." In two cases, I held the same "employment" for two years. However, in both cases, I earned money from other sources -- and in both cases, I viewed my "employer" as my client. I was in charge of my effort. I sold my skills because I perceived myself as having marketable services to offer.

It is easy to say that I "work as a security guard." Indeed, I do. I also get paid to edit, The Mich-Matist, a numismatic quarterly. I get paid to write a monthly column for Numismatist magazine of the ANA. I also work as a public programs presenter at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. My model is Bert in Mary Poppins.

In the late 1990s, just before the Dot.Com implosion, "intrepreneuring" was a buzzword. Corporations were supposed to encourage managers and other workers to consider their budgets as investments and then to grow their activities to earn greater "profits" and more "customers." Of course, it was corporate baloney. However, it is how I have lived all my working life.

As a technical writer and programmer, I went from one contract to another. I have carried out some of these under my own business name, Mercury Atwell (mercury@well.com has been a username of mine since 1989). I always had more than one source of income. Often, I write features for regional and local business magazines. However, I have also sold cookbooks door-to-door and sanitized a hospital ahead of a state inspection. I worked as a retail clerk for NASA before working for NASA as a technical writer. The first job was through Kelly, the second through Manpower. Both were temporary.

I am a member of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce. With the holidays here, I am sending out letters to other Chamber members offering to fill in as their admistrative assistants when their regular gals (most typically by 99%) are on vacation. It is work I have done before, for advertising agencies, for instance. I am a tested and proved expert at Microsoft Office Suite. I like meeting people. I have no intention of making a career of that. I do not intend to open an agency, or file corporation papers for it, or get licensed. It is just something I do.

Karl Marx epitomized the complaint that all workers are forced to sell their labor as the only commodity they own. Of course, that is all that anyone has to sell, even if are a diamond merchant. The diamonds are just carbon cystals. How well you succeed depends on your ability to find and motivate buyers. Ayn Rand accepted the Marxist challenge at face value and proved that all workers are not equal, neither in their abilities nor their self-perceptions.