You’ve opened the social app before you’ve even made coffee.

Not because you have something to say. Because you want to see the numbers. Because yesterday’s post might have moved. Because the algorithm rewards consistency and you’ve convinced yourself that checking in counts as working.

It doesn’t feel bad exactly. It just feels like something you have to do.

Here’s the thing. If you work for yourself, you probably got into it for some version of freedom. Your time, your decisions, your work. And yet somewhere along the way, the platforms and the tools and the metrics started calling the shots.

You act on autopilot.

You handed the keys over without realising it.

That’s not independence. That’s just a different kind of working for the man – except the man is an algorithm, and he doesn’t even know your name.

The kind of indie I’m talking about isn’t really about what you do for work. It’s not a personality type. It’s just a question: are your tools and platforms working for you, or are you working for them?

Most people reading this already know the answer.

They’ve felt it. The slight resentment when you have to post, and the guilt when you don’t. The distraction of being pulled in a different direction than where you want to go. The creeping sense that you’re building on someone else’s land, on someone else’s terms.

Not quitting everything. Not going off-grid. Just taking back the controls to make the tech serve you, not the other way round. Doing it on your terms, not the algorithm’s.

If that sounds like a fight worth having, you’re already indie.