I make a pretty good living as a free-lance programmer. I sort-of specialize in writing assembly-language code for microcontrollers, and I'm damn good at what I do — the people I work for are always happy to give me a reference when I need one. That I'm able to meet tight deadlines, too, makes customers glad to pay my only slightly outrageous fees.

Because I can make the income I do, I've never had to go out and get a "real job"; I get to work from home, instead of slogging in to some beige corporate environment. Another benefit is that because I don't have to punch any kind of time clock, and my only job requirement is to deliver good code by the deadline, I'm free to work whatever schedule makes me happy… if I want to take a couple hours off to go play golf on a nice day, there isn't anybody to tell me "no". It also means that I've been able to get to know my neighbors pretty well. The couple in the place south of mine are a couple of retirees that aren't visited by their kids as much as they'd like, though they get to spend plenty of time with their grandkids. Every so often, they'll ask me to come over and deal with some technical issue that they can't figure out; stuff like programming numbers into their cell phones, or hooking things back up whenever she decides their TV/stereo stand has to be rearranged, and that kind of thing.

Across the street is a middle-aged couple that both have to work more time than they'd like to support their keep-up-with-the-Joneses lifestyle. They're a nice couple, and doing the best they can, but argue over money that they don't have, to pay for stuff that they don't need… or even really want.

To my north, a younger couple moved in a few years ago. Bill and Andrea Patterson were just a few years younger than me, with two daughters — Emma, then 3, and Gail, 2, both of them cuties. He was an office drone with some big company, worried about his job more than he should, and had to travel a lot.