You're not really negotiating unless you can walk away

I'm used to being underemployed, in the sense that it's a familiar status quo, so the string of joblets I've been doing since January are business as usual for the most part: short-term, part-time, odd hours, and with one awesome exception stuff I could do in my sleep. But there's been a definite change in how work comes to me, compared to before.

BEFORE, I'd apply and obsess and worry and possibly interview and desperately want and need and finally FINALLY land something I didn't want to screw up because after months of looking I was beaten and more than ready to surrender to whatever terms came my way.

NOW, I answer a Craigslist ad on a whim and make a Blue Oyster Cult joke in my cover letter, or a friend floats my name to his boss, or someone I did a temp gig with ages ago calls me up, or I do a admin-for-hire gig a few hours a month and they court me (court ME) to get me on the payroll full-time because my skills are "exceptional...scratch that, *beyond* exceptional".

There is a huge scary power that comes from the freedom of not having to give a shit. Scary, because I viscerally remember the cold dead panic of BEFORE, even as I find myself sitting down at a desk which is apparently now mine.

Yes, find myself. Because it's vaguely dissociative, like I just walked in off the street to set up a voicemail.

It's like that episode of Star Trek where the spray-painted polyfoam triffids shoot pollen into everyone's chest and make them lazy-happy, but Kirk and Spock beam concentrated annoyance down to the planet, and when McCoy snaps out of it he hauls off and punches some colonist in the face AND DOESN'T SPILL A DROP OF HIS MINT JULEP. Yes. I'm that fucking awesome.

And I'm even starting to sometimes believe it.