Do any of you have jobs that allow you to travel wherever you want and work anywhere there's a wifi connection? That to me sounds like a scenario worth breaking your ass working for.

(Success to me doesn't necessarily mean making huge money, just having freedom; the freedom-money trade off will depend on your values)

Some of us find it very stressful to be forced to work as a 9-to-5 office monkey, toiling away for a corporation who control so much of your time and don't have any qualms about unceremoniously chucking you out on your ass when there's economic benefit to be gained.

We feel like prisoners trudging into our cubicle prison every day, rotting away while time - precious, finite time, whizzes by. It's not about laziness, it's about a craving for freedom.

I look forward to reading all discussion about this, but I'm particularly interested in anyone who has been successful with self-publishing, artistic pursuits, or any form of teaching or research online.

In the modern age, just how difficult is it to make a living by yourself? There is a simple but important phenomenon called the "survivorship bias", where we only see the winners, who (for example) quit their job to start their own successful business, and we don't see all the failures, because they remain invisible to our radar.

I think the keys to success must include experimentation, taking action (as opposed to constantly reading and drowning in theory while never fully applying it), Machiavellian plotting, balls, networking, and persistence.