I've been thinking about my work lifestyle a lot lately, and have come to realize just how spoiled and privileged I am in regards to my work life.

For awhile I was a little embarrassed to have a cobbled together work life. Back in 2002 I finally understood that having multiple streams of income instead of one steady "career" job leads to work independence (though for awhile, also poverty and insecurity). I was also embarrassed to have taken a retail job at a bookstore - a somewhat radical departure from the "career path" I was on. However, that job was the most fun I've had at a regular job. I learned a lot about writing, publishing, and business, and got to work with some really cool people (bookstores tend to accumulate jaded anti-authoritarian intellectuals who have a hard time fitting in anywhere else; I unclogged toilets (we all shared in the store's janitorial duties) with two former NASA engineers, a fellow photographer/writer, and a talented up-and-coming fashion designer, among others).

Now I own my own photography business, teach classes online, have a book published, and work part-time at a really cool start-up, and I live a block from the beach in a tropical paradise. I'm not wealthy yet, but I'm not eating ramen either (actually ramen in Hawaii isn't considered poverty food - there are actually ramen themed restaurants here).

I popped into work today (because I have my own schedule and work mainly from home now), specifically to hang out with my coworkers and play video games. We have a small room called "the cave" outfitted with a mini fridge, a suede sofa, a huge beanbag chair, flats of RedBull, a Wii, a PS2, an AppleTV, and most recently an Xbox 360, complete with the game "RockBand" and it's plethora of instrument controllers. The game was won by one of my coworkers at the Christmas party, and instead of taking it home, it now resides in the cave for all to use together.

Back when I lived in Iowa and worked for EAI (a now-defunct software company), the work lifestyle was also very free (all night Half-Life gaming sessions on the testing machines, free food and soda, going barefoot in the building (even in the public bathroom), 4 hour lunches, coming in whenever the heck you felt like it, sleeping on the leather couches in the lobby, bicycling in the halls). It was great - then the bubble burst in 2000 and that sector of the economy took a huge hit. We all thought the halcyon days were over, and we would have to start acting like serious adults. Luckily, the Web 2.0 bubble came along, and surely there will be more after that. The work lifestyle that has defined the geeks of my generation is probably here to stay.

I'm a little worried that I take this all for granted. I really have a tremendous amount of freedom - I'm not sure I could do a 9 to 5 job, where I had to be somewhere specific and had to take lunch at a certain time, and dress in a certain way (I haven't worked at a place that didn't at least allow jeans every day of the week since March 1998). I have friends of course who do the 9 to 5, but they seem to be getting scarcer. Many work the 40 but get to slide start times.

Many people in my generation own their own side businesses, or are constantly scheming some new business adventure. Many have taken risks to pursue something artistic, but still suffer under the cultural pressure to be a "serious" adult. It's a completely ridiculous cultural bias though. Only in the past few centuries has a "regular job" had any meaning for the majority. Before that, you did whatever you needed to get by. Family bonds were more crucial, and families were like little mini business units. People needed a wide variety of skills to create tools and necessities for themselves (bereft of a global economy that shuttles resources and consumer goods all over the planet). I think we are moving back towards that sort of mishmash of skills and mini job roles, and away from the uber structured and artificial 9 to 5 with its scary reliance on some corporation for your health and security (a strange variety of employee socialism). Only this time, instead of having to do it just to survive, we can do it for the joy of doing it. That's freedom.