The price of freedom

There are times, especially when money is tight, when I consider going back to working for someone else. To clarify, in case anyone thinks I’m waving a flag, I simply mean being someone’s employee again. There’s nothing wrong with that path—not at all—but for me, it feels like a chapter I’ve already closed.

It was our last year in the U.S., right before we made the jump. Our crypto holdings had plummeted, and both my wife and I knew it was time to reassess. She went back to an office job, and I grabbed the only work I could find on short notice: driving a truck and delivering custom kitchens.

Not a day went by that I didn’t feel like I had regressed. I had once tasted freedom, only to fall back into the chains of the nine-to-five. What made it worse was that this job didn’t require any of the skills I had spent years developing—it demanded the youth I no longer had.

I’d come home in pain, my back aching, my hands raw. My wife would look at me and tell me, almost weekly, that I had to quit. Of course I knew that, but I also knew we couldn’t afford our life without it, not anymore.

As the months passed, the physical pain became background noise. We paid off some debt and even managed to turn our house into an AirBnB. The business did well—too well, if I’m honest—but we knew it couldn’t last forever.

I can’t point to the exact event that made me stop showing up to work. Maybe it was a combination of things. All I knew was that it was killing me inside. And maybe it was also that sense of change—hitting the fourth floor of life and still feeling like a grunt.

So we left. And right around the time COVID locked the world down, we managed to sell the house, our anchor in Florida. Looking back, it feels crazy—all the steps that led me here, now, surrounded by family and four little dogs.

How much is it worth? I ask myself that whenever I think about a cut I have to make, an item I can’t buy, or a repair I have to delay. Is it still worth it?

These days, I find I can live with so much less. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s wisdom. My house—the one I’m in right now—doesn’t even have windows. And yet, I feel right at home. At peace.

I know one day things will turn around, and our projects will move forward as they always do. Still, sometimes I wonder: could it happen faster if I worked for someone else, not just myself?

Then I play back the film of how I got here, and the answer is never simple. Maybe one day I’ll trade freedom for stability again. But for now, I’ll take the peace of this windowless house, and trust that the light still finds its way in.

MenO