Cross­posted to the Not An Employee blog

A gen­tle­man of my pass­ing acquain­tance, who is a promi­nent local busi­ness­man, men­tioned today that he was “happy to see another tal­ent col­lec­tive” in our town.

I went to sub­stan­tial lengths to cor­rect him. Which leads me to jot a few notes, and to share them with you.

Sure, yes, there’s Not An Employee, LLC, a com­pany we formed to sell stick­ers. But that’s a piece of legal chaff for Pay­Pal accounts and to give us a shared onto­log­i­cal frame­work to use as an inter­face with banks and Cham­bers of Com­merce and suchlike.

No. What­ever it is, maybe an insti­tu­tion or col­lec­tive or orga­ni­za­tion or movement—whatever we finally call it—this thing “Not An Employee” is not a con­sul­tancy, head­hunt­ing agency, sub­con­tract­ing net­work, social club, net­work­ing infrastructure.

Not a “tal­ent col­lec­tive” or a union. Not a cooperative.

Not a cowork­ing facil­ity, and not cowork­ing itself.

Not boos­t­er­ism, not eco­nomic devel­op­ment, not merely a scam to sell stick­ers or present hack poetry or invoke the ancient Titans of yore. Not a cult, not a jape, not a sorry-​​ass quixotic windmill-​​tilters asso­ci­a­tion.

Not even a way to change the world.

It’s a tag. That’s all it is. A tag. A com­plex adjec­tive. A thing used to describe. A nonex­clu­sive classifier.

So you are asked, What are you? And you say: I’m Not An Employee.

Tell that to me, and hav­ing thought long and hard about it I promise that I won’t assume I under­stand the details of what you mean. But I will sus­pect some of what it implies.

What are you? Not an employee. What do you do? This.

I think I’m start­ing to understand.

When we founded Not An Employee, we decided that we would build a new Founders’ Myth with every telling; that every face-​​to-​​face ver­sion would be mea­sur­ably dif­fer­ent. That still applies; ask any of the oth­ers around here what this thing is, what it’s for, and you’ll get a vari­a­tion. Some over­laps, some dif­fer­ences. Some real­is­tic but stereo­typed details thrown in to make it more fea­si­ble, make it sound like it’s a general-​​purpose answer other folks would give as well.

They’re all dif­fer­ent, but every one of them is the truth.

So when you tell me you’re Not An Employee, I hear you. After sev­eral months, and years before that, I think I’m start­ing finally to get it. A lot of peo­ple I meet every day, peo­ple with Prometheus stick­ers on their com­put­ers and “Bet­ter With­out Bosses” badges on their lapels, I bet they’re start­ing to under­stand too.

Tell that to any of us, and we’ll sus­pect that you have a truly mar­velous life which this mar­gin is too nar­row to con­tain. That you’re there, you’re in there behind your eyes, some­body watch­ing back. Rare bird. You’re say­ing some­thing impor­tant about your work, life, that it’s all com­plex and con­tin­gent and varies from time to time in unex­pected ways.

We’ll know, more than any­thing, that you’ve spent a lit­tle time think­ing, and have decided that the stan­dard glib expla­na­tions just don’t work.

What do you do? What do you want? Where do you work?

Does being not an employee pro­hibit you from being any­thing else? Does it keep you from hav­ing any other tags? From being a pro­gram­mer or a maid or an inven­tor or a mom, a gar­dener or a golfer or a Spaniard or a soprano?

Don’t be stu­pid. You are also every­thing else you are. It’s just a tag. A phrase that describes you. One of many.

Being a thing does not keep you from being other things. Being Not An Employee, hav­ing that tag, pre­sent­ing your­self with that label, it doesn’t even keep you from being an actual employee.

If you ask me, it’s risky to assume the world is as sim­ple as you’ve been told. Even the sim­ple white lies you tell your­self? They’re still lies.

Every time you accept a sim­ple expla­na­tion, you open your­self up as a tool to be used to oth­ers’ advan­tage. You become of use.

Now you may want to be of use. That’s a life of ser­vice, and it is admirable and hon­est work of its own. Many of the most blessed among us, they’ve served.

By choice. Remem­ber that the blessed ones, they lead their lives with their eyes open. They lead regarded lives. They pay atten­tion, and I would wager that their assumption-​​to-​​consideration ratio is really kinda low.

Not all of us choose lives of ser­vice. I haven’t, not really. And so like me you may find your­self telling some­body it’s more com­pli­cated than that; it’s not what you assume.

The more you do that, the more likely it is you’re Not An Employee.

Among other things.