Susan and I went through a spell recently in which we began to worry about the viability of our small company. Neither of us had a lick of experience running a business before we started our venture, and we've had to learn it all the hard way, with a narrow and frightening margin of error separating us from the loss of all our money. The glorious periods in which we hum like little industrious bees have been punctuated by stretches in which we've had ample free time to refinish old furniture and contemplate utter financial ruin.

During the last slow spell, we decided that we needed to learn a lesson or two about marketing ourselves a wee bit more aggressively than in the past. Our marketing strategy until then had largely been to assume that our potential clients would beyond our greatness in a dream and call us the next morning, begging to hand over bricks of cash in exchange for our expert services. Alas, our target market seemed sadly lacking in psychic abilities.

So we embarked upon a number of efforts to get ourselves recognized by people whose money clearly needed to be ours. We had no idea what might work, so we tried a number of things, from taking out an ad in the Other Pages to writing a guide for nonprofit organizations on creating an effective website. We adopted the strategy of a SETI researcher who is attempting to make contact with an alien civilization; we broadcast an assortment of simple messages on a wide band of frequencies. At any given moment, only one of us was allowed to become thoroughly convinced that we were failures at business and therefore life. It was the other's responsibility to shore up hope by mentioning that the worst that would likely happen is that we'd have to get real jobs again.

All the while, deep in my heart I knew that getting a real job was nothing to make light of. In the workplace, surrounded by my fellow proletarian combatants, I have proven to be suspicious, antisocial, unpopular, cursed with a tin ear for political nuance, and utterly miserable. I got headaches every day, and my fingers tingled at night as a result of my habitually defeated, slumped desk posture. The only occupations in which I've thrived were as an EMT, a Peace Corps Volunteer, and the co-owner of my own small business -- situations in which I worked with small group of individuals in a largely unstructured environment, with little direct oversight. I don't harbor the romantic illusion that I'm too much the Rugged Individualist to work a regular day job; I've merely come to understand that I'm such a failure at enduring the constant presence and oversight of people that I become an annoyance to myself and others in the workplace.

Little by little, our marketing strategy began to work. A few potential clients called, interested in having me whip up some website action for them. A couple nice beefy contracts came Susan's way. Before long, I found myself on the train to New York to meet with my newest client.

It quickly became apparent that my recent period of protective stinginess had left me behind the curve in the portable electronics department. Sitting on the train, surrounded by an assortment of beeping people who would occasionally carry on conversations with their own clenched fists, I felt I might possibly be the last person on the East Coast who doesn't have a cell phone. Worse yet, I lack a Palm Pilot to scratch and poke idly on my way from one Big Meeting and another.

Concerns about cash flow had once put me into an ascetic frame of mind, but surrounded with such a bounty of gadgetry, I felt my latent acquisitiveness began to reawaken. It was a familiar sensation: Dingus Envy. Now, with the potential for a solid roster of incoming clients, I might actually be able to heave money into the gap separating me from the rest of the wired front edge of greedy progress. The glistening, heady shop windows of New York only made my condition worse: the beckoning, waving antennae of tiny little phones; the sleek shapes and gleaming glass elements of digital cameras. The curved dark iridescent lenses of sunglasses, like fish scales.