I went from working with management that wanted us to do the minimum effort to create average quality, to an environment where the partners want us to inspire and motivate our clients as well as each other.

I think the moral of the story is that you should start off at a company that stifles inspiration, discourages creative thinking, and promotes general misery in your daily life. Then these obstacles will inherently put you in the direction to break out and rise above to something better!

Just over a year ago, I quit my last job to start working on Planet Argon full-time, doing freelance programming, hosting, and consulting. My one year anniversary is later this month… and although I took a good paycut at first, I have found myself with new motivations, inspirations, and free-time! My free time lead me into Ruby on Rails at the beginning of the year and 6 months later I am writing a book for O’Reilly on the subject.

My business is growing rapidly and I find myself thinking that I will need to move into a real office and out of my home office in a few months so that I can possibly hire some new talents to work on these projects that are coming in.

If you asked me 15 months ago if I thought that any of this would have happened, I would have laughed.

Freelancing is the way to go if you feel the slightest urge. My clients and I have a much deeper relationship and this is one aspect that I was unable to do when working for larger corporations.

After I college I joined the Army and served in Germany and Bosnia. In return, the Army paid off my college loans. Thank you!

And Bryan, thanks for the link to bigmoneytips

I can totally relate how hard it is for guys like us to find a “day job.” In my current situation, I just got lucky.