Ask HN: Are you ok?

I suspect the biggest thing is just being in a good location. I live 90 minutes from NYC and can get there easily. The majority of my clients are in NYC and I think it would be hard to get the same rate in any but a few other cities (SF, Seattle maybe?).

There are some intangibles here. I interview well. I have code samples that I think are good--I don't have a lot to compare them to, but maybe they stand out compared to other devs. I do one stack (Python/Django/React) which is in high demand. I've been told I'm easy to work with and my clients have always been willing to give me recommendations (the recommendations are confidential, but I imagine they're positive because I keep getting work based on them). My experience is with some big name (top 50) companies. There are a lot of things in my situation that might be different from yours.

In general "finding high value clients" sounds a lot like advertising, and I don't really believe in advertising. I think advertising is a distraction from providing value, and believe that if I provide value to my clients the results will speak for themselves.

I wonder: how do you know you can only make $50/hour? If you just started telling people your rate was $80 from the get-go what would shake out?

Mentally, I'm mostly alright, but under a fair amount of professional and personal stress. The personal stress is mostly due to medical and financial issues (trying to get my wife to live within a budget).

Physically, that's where I break down. I'm not quite 40, and I already have a number of chronic medical issues that are largely beyond my control. The worst of it is osteoarthritis in every thoracic and cervical vertebrae coupled with bone spurs and degenerative discs in the same. Short of it means I'm in pain every day. On a good day, I'm sitting at a 4 in the 1 to 10 pain scale. Sleep funny and tweak a back or neck muscle, I can hit an 8 or 9 easily. Pain bad enough it causes me to vomit. Docs dont/won't prescribe pain meds because of the opiode crisis, which is fine, because the pain I have doesnt respond to opposes anyway. But, makes them reluctant to prescribe meds that might help with the nerve pain, such as Lyrica.

I also suffer from Cyclical Vomitting Syndrome which means every 3 to 6 months, I start vomitting uncontrollably for no apparent reason. No infection, no flu, no food poisoning, no allergy, I just start vomiting about every hour for days on end if untreated. I have to go to the ER every time it happens. Sometimes I get sent home after a few hours and some IV fluids and antinausea meds, other times like this past week, I get admitted because my blood chemistry is so out of whack it looks like I'm about to have a heart attack, am undergoing kidney failure or it looks like I'm diabetic, or all of the above. I spent 4 days in the hospital last week. That stay caused me to miss other scheduled appointments with specialists and an MRI to check on organs due to a genetic condition.

The kicker? I feel great. The docs dont know what causes it, although there's about a 90% correlation with heavy marijuana usage (I've never smoked weed).

Iunno, I have a referral to a specialist a few hours drive away. Need to schedule that appointment...

Have you considered going to London/Toronto/Vancouver? There's lots of business potential in all three places, healthcare included in taxes (though not immediately--I'm not an expert but I know from friends there's definitely a waiting period in Canada and probably in the UK). You could work a salary job for a year or two to build up contacts and then branch out on your own.

The weather is simply too cold for me in those places. I need more sun, even NY is a bit rough for me. But if healthcare is a big concern it might work for you. I know people who have worked in and loved all three.

> From where I'm sitting it seems pretty extraordinary :)

Haha, well, thanks. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there isn't a script you have to follow. The typical 9-5 American dream sounds like it's a bad script for you, but what I've done might not be any better. Try stuff out, don't live in fear of mistakes, find out what works for you.