A Dozen Reasons to be Self Employed

Except in a couple of instances when I took jobs in order to learn skills that I needed or, in the early years when I wanted to make money quickly and had basically had no skills (bartending), I have been self-employed for the majority of my life. Here's a dozen reasons why people should be self-employed:

1. Lots of tax deductions not given to a regular employee.
2. The ability to earn according to your skill, need, or basic chutzpa (when you work for $9 an hour at WalMart, you have no ability to earn more than $9 an hour. Period. Depressing.).
3. A lack (or at least minimum) of office politics.
4. Flexible hours.
5. No one looking over your shoulder, no need to put up with inane employee policies better suited to pre-schoolers, and no timing of your every coffee break.
6. You get to be creative!
7. You can switch gears quickly--if one part of the business takes off, you can follow that part and drop or at least minimize work on other parts that don't make money.
8. The ability to multi-task...start the laundry, write some code, set bread to rising, write an article, mow the yard, shoot some hoops, catch the ninth inning, take a nap, blog into the wee hours...you get the idea.
9. An immediate increase in status--outside contracted "expert" versus "office flunky".
10. Flexible dress code.
11. A (sometimes dramatic cut) in work-related expenses: lunches out, coffee on the way to work, a comprehensive "work" wardrobe, money for co-worker gifts, daycare, etc.
12. No need to grovel with an employer for a fifty cent raise, an extra sick day, an office with a window, etc.