Keep this top of mind.

Especially on those days when you feel bullied about by some intimidating client.

Or when you have to endure the friend who endlessly raves about her swell new job at this cool company where everybody makes a lot of money and they all get dental and there’s free sushi in the company lunchroom.

Consider this: They can’t do what you are doing right now.

I’m not talking about being able to draw or write killer content, or wrangle PHP.  I’m talking about being able to carve out a living on their own, on their own terms.

The vast majority of the working population doesn’t have the desire, the huevos, or the smarts to pull it off.  They simply can’t do it. Most don’t even want to.

What you are doing right now, this afternoon, even if you’re flailing and wobbling a bit at the moment, they cannot do.

I’ve seen this more times than I can count. (And, yes, shoot me, I take something of a perverse satisfaction in this. But that is just between you and me, of course.)

Example.

Once, on a freelance gig for a unit of Ogilvy, mega-conglomerate agency in New York, I wrote copy for a Creative Director who had apparently been anointed a genius. He was quoted in Ad Age.  He wore red high-top sneakers. He terrorized his copywriters and designers. He supposedly oozed conceptual brilliance.  (Although, after 2 pm, what he was oozing was 80-proof tequila fumes, I think.) I actually liked the guy, even though he hacked at my copy with a machete.

One afternoon, he quit the agency in a huff, tired of the petty politics and creative constraints, he said. He was going freelance, to offer his brand of brilliance direct and unencumbered.  This was announced with great fanfare.

Three months later, he was quietly back in an agency job.  On staff.  On salary.  A company guy again.  He couldn’t do it.

Another example.

Whenever one of my tech-company clients would go through a downsizing, I got calls and emails from the staffers who had been sent away with some goodbye money.  “Free at last,” they’d say.  “I’m going to do consulting, build web apps, open an omelette shop, write for the trade press. Let’s talk.”  We would kick some ideas around, brainstorm some things.  They got excited. They tried some things.

And one by one, they always ended up back in corporate jobs.  They couldn’t do it.

Latest example.  (Skip on down if you get the gist aready.)

One of the smartest clients I ever worked for.  She was VP of Communications for a Fortune 500 company.  Ran national campaigns.  Orchestrated the Annual Report.  Sponsored PBS series.  A savvy writer.  A list of credentials up one arm and down the other.

She left to form her own communications business. We exchanged a bunch of emails on pricing ideas, web sites, business cards, the usual.  She was psyched.

Then there was a long lull.  Until she sent an email asking for help updating her resume.  There were some jobs she wanted to apply for.

Here’s the nub of it, I think.

What my VP friend and the others discovered was that they couldn’t really function unless plugged into the company machinery.  Where someone else brings in the business, a boss puts assignments on their desks, somebody else pay the bills, and there is a budget and a staff to send scurrying.  Without all that infrastructure, they’re uneasy, ineffective.

But you and me, all it takes is a Mac and phone.  Or a potters wheel, or a camera or two, or easel and brushes, or even a Bic pen and legal pad, and you can put food on the table.  And even do some damn good work now and then.

Don’t get me wrong. I like people with jobs just fine.  I respect what they do.  (And they often have to eat more crap than I could ever stomach.)

But they can’t do what you’re doing.