Today is my twenty-ninth anniversary as a self-employed person. (File this under “things that make no sense.”)

On May 30, 1997, I walked out of my old firm for the last time. Three days later—Monday, June 2, 1997—I awoke as a self-employed person, doing research and writing for other lawyers. I had one client and a box of business cards. No alimony, no trust fund, no independent income. In the corner of my living room sat the desk my parents bought for my bedroom in 1968. A computer sat on that desk, a hand-me-down from my father’s office that was still connected to the dial-up modem I’d used four years earlier, when I was in law school.