If being a single person economically dependent on income from an abusive workplace qualifies, Write, then count me in. I've been trying to figure out how to get into something else but preserve a decent income and insurance coverage; being over 50 now, with health problems, in a mushy economy, it's not so easy.
I'm just starting to explore the indy route - as in independent - but I'll need to change professions for that.
Most freelance consultants in my area of work stay in business for about two years, just long enough to run through their savings and end up worse off than they started. [I do know this for a fact, because I've known a lot of them.] The ones who last are the ones who had achieved sufficient stature to be name brands. That's what they sell, their name and whatever connections they have - not primarily their expertise. The ones who go to work for consulting shops generally get used up like Kleenex, pushed to put in totally insane amounts of billable hours and kicked to the curb when they drop from exhaustion... I ain't going there, either.
So it's gotta be something I can do, on my own, that I'm good at, and am honestly compensated for without having to have lawyers available to enforce it. [You don't want to know what happens to some of the freelancers.]
I have a couple of irons in the fire, now. So, true to form, even though I have said nothing about this at work, my workload has significantly increased.
If you look at this in economic and psychological terms, it's really quite similar to an abusive, entrapping marriage.
Including the fact that I have finally realized there are no good options within the structure.
I was valued once, and appreciated, but those people were independent thinkers, have left, and were replaced by individuals to whom I am a puzzle at best, a threat at worst, simply because I think and solve. [Although, ostensibly, that is my job.]
It's not going to get better, just like an abusive marriage does not. One in a hundred thousand times, things turn around. I'm not going to win that jackpot. I have to make my own prize. At least I fully grasp that now.