Independence becomes real when one bad situation does not own every alternative.

When one bad situation controls your income, your housing, your relationships, and your sense of self, it owns all of your alternatives at once. Independence is largely about separation, making sure that a failure in one area does not take everything else with it.

Look for the places where too much of your life runs through a single point. Then build one small separate thing. Independence is less about self-sufficiency than about not having everything on one thread.