I'm a retired stripper, so I feel you on the "doing whatever." Once I discovered how *good* that work was for me (and how good I was at it) I gave myself until age 30 to play on that playground. But I have a powerful fear of addiction, and wicked insomnia, so I also worked full time in IT.

When I was 29, I gave up the dancing gig and just maintained a full time job as a sys admin. I am seriously under compensated when it comes to my pay check, but I have awesome health insurance and a lot of personal time off that is really flexible about how I use it.

If I ever lose this job, I'm not sure I can get another one. My mind has been slipping a bit over time. I think I'll become a bar tender if I ever lose my gig here. Self employment and night shift work have always been my props. They allow me to do what I'm capable of, when I'm capable of it. Sometimes I can't read. Sometimes I can design a new network and port my users seamlessly into file-server nirvana. I need an environment where I'm not closely supervised in order to pull off what has been a 20 year long cover-up of whatever it is that I have.

I have an appointment in January with a pdoc to try to get a handle on and perhaps a name for this thing (things?) that I've been working around for so long.

MJ