Reviewed by David M. Kinchen

Job security is today's ultimate oxymoron. Don't believe me, just look at the unemployment statistics. The latest weekly numbers were  released as I sat down to review Dan Miller's No More Dreaded Mondays: Ignite Your Passion -- And Other Revolutionary Ways to Discover Your True Calling at Work (Broadway Business, 272 pages, $14.99)  and were considered good news by commentators: "initial jobless applications declined to 470,000 in the week ended Jan. 23, higher than anticipated, from 478,000 the prior week, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance dropped to the lowest level in a year...."

If that's the good news, I don't want to hear the bad news. More and more I agree with Miller that we're in a post-employment world. I'm glad I'm not a college senior looking at a May or June graduation with no job prospects (come on, it's not that bad....or is it?).

Miller -- a life coach (now there's a job title that didn't exist when I started my first job out of college in 1961) and the author of 48 Hours in the Work You Love book, DVD and seminar series -- sounds like a preacher on the subject of finding satisfying work outside the traditional parameters of employment, where job security is a joke. The days are long past when you started a job and stayed with it until gold watch time.

I learned about job security in 1990, when, after more than 14 years at a job I loved, I was told at my exit interview by the head honcho that "we're all temporary employees here." This was at a place that had long been noted for the closest thing to permanent employment outside a tenured college position or a government job. Job security was even enshrined in the employee handbook, which I still have. A few years later, that honcho was gone.

Think: "We're all temporary employees" and you're on your way to understanding Dan Miller's message.

Miller writes that if a steady paycheck and the promise of a secure retirement is what's keeping you celebrating TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) and dreading showing up Monday mornings, you're in for a big disappointment. In today's volatile economy, there is nothing safe about punching the clock for a job you hate.

If your job is making you sick or stupid, find something you like, even something as simple as the lawn care business started by one of Miller's friends near his home in the Nashville, TN area. Find something you like and go for it. Selling on eBay? Many people are making a living or supplementing their incomes doing just that. (I'm personally enriching quite a few of them!) Buying hotdog vending carts and leasing them out in an urban area... go for it!

I saw a pickup truck in the Walmart parking lot today that had on its doors the sign: "Pimp Your Golf Cart." Hitched to the truck was a gigantic flat bed trailer for hauling the golf carts. Golf cart rental, customizing and service was a job I never thought of, but somebody found a way to make a satisfying -- and profitable -- living doing just that.

Miller -- big on quoting people from all walks of life -- notes that Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations,  the classic book on economics,  wrote that a person who spends his life performing the same repetitive tasks generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

Not a pretty picture, but think about it: It's not only assembly-line workers who are stuck with boring, repetitive tasks; professionals like doctors and lawyers are too. Maybe that's why so many lawyers have turned to writing thrillers. Think Scott Turow, John Grisham, Lisa Scottoline, etc., etc.

I read a fascinating New York Times magazine profile of the world's best-selling author James Patterson (Along Came a Spider and the other Alex Cross novels, to start with). Patterson is a virtual writing factory, hiring many co-authors to churn out his best-sellers. He came from the advertising business and is his own best ad man, the profile notes. Remember the guy who buys a number of hotdog stands and leases them to his friends? This ensures a steady stream of income, much the same way Patterson can afford to live on an island in Lake Worth, FL, near Palm Beach. He's a cash cow to his publisher, Little, Brown and Co.

You say you're a loyal, faithful, dedicated employee, bringing value to your employer. Think again, buster! There's somebody in China or India who can do your job. One of the best examples I've heard of is a newspaper in Pasadena, CA that outsourced its copy editing tasks to a firm in India. Copy editors are one of the most important, if unsung, people at a newspaper, but soon their profession will be as dead as the dinosaurs, in the States, at least. Judging from the spelling errors and factual goofs in many online news sites that I read, copy editors are not on the employee roster.

If you're tired of the long commutes and being tied to your desk like an ox yoked to a cart and you have ideas whirling around your brain that you think could create new income and freedom, No More Dreaded Mondays might just be the catalyst that will change your life. You don't even have to quit your job; you can start your dream career in your spare hours -- hours that could very well become your full-time new career.

Author's web site for comments and up-to-date resources (there's a big list of them in the book)  www.NoMoreMondaysBlog.com

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