The View From Your Recession

A reader writes:

Once you quoted someone who referred to the self-employed as being "on their own" because they don't receive unemployment benefits. If memory serves, you have not yet run an email from one of those people, so I thought I might as well do it.

I am a self-employed commercial artist, who "went freelance" in 2002. For five or six years I was able to round up enough work from various magazine and ad agency clients (many of whom you would recognize) to earn a half-way decent living...