Why I want to work for myself
Follow my dreams
I always wanted to work for myself, there's just something great about seeing your own ideas come to fruition.
I like helping people and want to do that through the form of online courses and free content on my blog and on youtube.
I like playing games and have always wanted to make my own games for others to enjoy.
Work on something I am excited about
I've burnt out on working for other people, sometimes projects come along that are slightly more interesting than others, but typically I am pretty bored of doing some incremental feature. It's nice to be able to work on whatever projects I feel like working on. Albeit brief, I have definitely been enjoying that freedom since I started working on my own projects full time.
Have more skin in the game
Having 100% ownership of my ideas is something that is appealing to me, if I screw up then I am accountable, if I win big, then I relish in my success, that's very appealing to me, high risk, high reward.
Do something that makes me uncomfortable
When you are reaching outside of your comfort zone, you are typically going to learn a lot more, and learn more about yourself and grow as a person. I find when I become complacent and comfortable with what I am doing for work is when I am least happy in life. Maybe this is a personal problem, but I prefer to be learning and growing all the time rather than just collecting paychecks doing something that is simple.
Freedom to learn
I had began to recognize that I was mostly doing the same thing and not really learning much, the main barriers I had to overcome on a daily basis were mainly ones that were self imposed by the company, and that was a point of frustration for me. Occasionally I got a fun project, but it always ended up being super rushed and that's not really a great environment to try to learn something new, since your self-education then also ends up being rushed. I attempted to remove the barriers and make things more efficient, but at the end of the day I think it was just time to move on and start my own journey. I wanted to do something that I could be excited about and would allow me to learn with ample time to cover important topics and absorb requisite information without feeling rushed.
Help more people
Through the magic of online content distribution platforms I feel like I can help a lot of people do what I was able to do, and teach themselves programming, or anything that they are excited in really, and do what they love. I think life is too short to spend 8 hours a day doing something just because you need money. For me, the job was a way for me to catapult into my own ventures by allowing me a period of flexibility and ultimate freedom away from any financial stresses.
Freedom to take a break
I never really felt truly disconnected from work when I was taking vacation. I don't really feel like I will be able to do that with working on my own projects once they come to fruition either, but I can still take some time now to do what is important to me and take some time off for myself. I have had a job since I was 12 years old without more than a few weeks off at a time, so I kind of just want to see what I will do with uninhibited time off as well.