I generally work for myself, sometimes as an independent contractor when I work for others. There were some real hard times, especially at the beginning, and I didn't eat everyday (and I'd crash art shows for the free food back then). I also had to give some things up, like in a very small town I made a little extra money at a new age shop doing henna body art (they bought the henna there at the shop and I got paid to apply it), but when I tried making a living at that in Venice I simply could not compete with the competition who were awesome.
But I'd been sewing since I was a little girl and found there was a neglected market for specially sized people (especially women) as big biz focused more on standard sizes and these people pay A LOT to to have clothes made, mended, and refitted for them. Using the library I expanded what I could craft and sold through various vendors (eventually settling on a thrift store that was good to me). I've made stuffed toys as well making over 10x the profit of the time and money put into them and to my amazement saw even thrift stores make over twice the money back they paid me as well (amazing how much you can jack the price up if you call them "originals" instead of "homemade"
).
I've also bartered as well as worked for money house sitting and babysitting and ran errands for people and thought up a mail proxy biz (originally I just offered to get holiday packages without a significant other finding out and deliver them for a "finder's fee" but I expanded to people who wanted to get controversial magazines without being caught at it and/or put on a spammer's list, and btw that gets me a lot more color catalogs as junk mail which I bleed with lacquer thinner, which I bought in bulk years ago on discount, onto freezer paper and sell as gift wrap).
Some odd jobs are amusing, too, like when I made $20 in 2 minutes by fixing a computer teacher's new pair of personal radios with VoX after he failed to get it to work after hours of trying (I called up the manual online, went to the "did you do something stupid" section, and was inspired to make sure all the screens matched; when one didn't I changed it so that it did and it worked. I lied about it taking me a couple of hours so that I'd still get the $20, but also to protect his ego.)
I've also managed to use my contacts as well as my own creativity to arrange for many temporary gigs, too (from playing the Snow Maiden at a Russian American Christmas party to taking several children to see the Hannah Montana movie, both of those examples making me A LOT of money at the time). Because of the glowing recommendation from my time as a library volunteer (helping with the summer's children reading program) I was also able to get work with a home-based children's birthday party biz as well.
I'm proud of my accomplishments and my independence, and at a time when all too many have lost their jobs I still have income. Nevertheless, even at the best of times I've had to keep a low overhead, use thrift stores as much as possible, I've never been able to afford a car worth having (and when my granny was hospitalized I had to sell a lot of stuff to finance my trip via Greyhound to get there) or get a decent credit card (when you conduct the majority of your biz on the grey market like I do then you don't get a credit score, and this has been a problem like when I rent I've always had to have someone else on the lease as my score is "insufficient credit history") and plenty of people would be mortified to live like that (though plenty of wage slaves DO, or foolishly use cash advance services so they don't).
However the economy has been slowly grinding down how much I make (because people have to have money to spend to buy my services and products), and though the thrift store I did the most biz through actually picked up as the rest of the economy sagged, even they're feeling it now. This means I have less opportunities than before. Furthermore I've moved so I have to carefully plan when I go back there to do biz (otherwise the price of gas wouldn't make it worth it), though I find I much prefer to working in "spurts" when I can (a couple of days or so of intense work, many days just coasting after). My partner has sold her home and we're pretty much living on that for the time being, as well as what we're both able to make.
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