It's a good feeling to be at this point in my career and working as an independent contractor. I'm on assignment now and have money coming to me. Not sure how long it will last but I have enough money to carry on for a few months until I can find another gig. The uncertainty is exciting as long as you are not destitute. Also, it's exciting as long as you have side gigs that you can work on when you don't have contract work.

It was kind of scary for a while because between the house, food, and cobra health payments we're talking at least $3,000-$3,500 a month. And I don't live a particularly extravagant lifestyle. I had gone down to like $4000 in cash reserves before I got my first invoice paid. My second invoice payment is due today but I figure I will not mention it until next week.

I meant to sell stock options from my last employer. It's lost $5K in value since I left GSI. I should have sold it a while back.

The good thing about being independent is that I can work hard to help my client but at the end of the day, I am not primarily on the firing line. I've been focusing on building good breadcrumbs and process/procedures for every thing I do so that others can follow.

I'm excited about learning and using my brain again. Sometimes employers drive you right into the ground until it's so hard to breath or be innovative. Sometimes cultures and architecture are the limiting factor. Anyway, it's nice to start over again especially if you still believe you can go out there and make more of a difference than in the spot you were at before. Why be trapped in something you can't fix / improve when you can go on to do work where you can make a huge difference?

Anyway, babbling on. I've read 10 chapters of my Ruby On Rails book. Would you believe it - they're already coming out with a 2nd edition of the book. Anyway, I'm very excited. The framework makes web apps something even I can build. With such a good starting point, I'll be able to add on a lot of my analytics ideas and come up with some really nice demos. I'll be able to tell a story with pictures to my friends and inspire them to build stuff with me, maybe. That's my dream to be able to talk the talk, be a closer, get the Glen Gary leads, get my friends involved and start a company we can be proud of and never have to rely on "The Man" for a paycheck.

Anyway, happy Independence day to all.