An old friend and ex-coworker called me late last week. She just wanted to call and catch up. She had decided to take a big new step in her life and wanted me to know about it.

After nearly twenty years with her current employer she was cutting the cord and venturing out on her own.

The news didn't surprise me very much. The only part that really was a surprise to me was her willingness to take the leap, to cut the cord and go solo.

We've been friends for a long time. I know a bit about her and how she thinks. From conversations about money and personal finance I had her tagged as a likely stealth economics practitioner. I say likely because I'm one myself and I have always seen those characteristics in her. However there is no way to really identify such a person, not if he or she is truly operating under the radar.

So for me it was no surprise she'd realized she had the financial resources to retire from her corporate cubicle career. That left the open question of how this came about. Her willingness to take the leap - that was the surprise. So I asked.

She'd been working on a small business project on the side for a number of years. A friend of hers had at one time introduced her to a home decorator where she learned there was a lucrative cottage industry in full swing. Evidently home decorators and their clients in their mutual quest to create a unique experience in every project generate and enormous and mostly unsatisfied demand for custom fabric items such as pillows, throws and draperies.

For my friend, who had always been proficient with her sewing machines, it was a perfect fit.

Her only concern, believe it or not, is managing demand. Sewing is her passion. She's very good at it and her time spent is "good for her sanity" as she likes to put it. She doesn't want her newfound demand for her sewing talents to overwhelm the pleasure she derives from the activity.

From what I know of her, she won't let that happen.