It's been a good couple of weeks since I discovered I was to be made redundant and for most of that time I imagine I've been hell to live with. Mood swing central. I've been switching between a determined "this is a great opportunity" and "my whole world is crumbling around me" so much, even I wouldn't want to live with me. The stress levels have been pretty high in the household and arguments have broken out as a result.

The crux of the problem has been the uncertainty this whole situation has thrust upon us. When I took my current position, I always had in the back of my mind that there was a contract in place that should, reasonably, have ensured that I had a pretty secure job for at least the next few years. Indeed, the whole rationale behind me only taking on permanent roles since I left University was the perception that it afforded me more job security than contract roles, where I could conceivably be employed for three months and then jobless for a year.

The stark reality, however, is that even a permanent role offers no job security, at least not in a Plc. My first role was at Reliable Hosiery, part of Coats Viyella Clothing, which in turn was part of Viyella Group Plc. We discovered one day that our Directors had just been told in a meeting that the Clothing Division was being wound up and we were all to be made redundant. I got my CV on a couple of jobs boards, applied for a few roles and out of three offers chose Morse Hughes Rae, part of Morse Group Plc.

After surviving several rounds of redundancies and gradually being shunted closer and closer to an on-site consultancy role that I didn't want, I decided enough was enough and moved on to MChex Ltd who had recently been acquired by Stream Group Plc. After all, I'd made enough of a point of the fact that I didn't like the direction I was being forced to take that had another round of redundancies come about (which it soon did), I would probably have been top of the short list anyway.

Stream Group Plc was ultimately to come into the hands of Martin Higginson, formerly of MonsterMob, becoming NetPlayTV Plc in the process, and the vast majority of the Mobile side of the business was ditched shortly thereafter. MChex survived this initial change of the Group's direction, but the severance of the MoniLink contract sounded the death knell for us too.

So now I'm back in the market. Having had a couple of weeks for things to sink in; to consider my options; to get my CV up to date; to reflect on things in the cold light of day; I've decided that my assessment that permanent roles equals job security was misguided. Having "lived the dream for two years" as my wife put it, it seems I will now be falling back into a more traditional working model, traveling to and from an office every day. For all my occasional rants about having to babysit while I'm trying to concentrate on something, I'll miss working from home.

Walking Version 2.0 to and from nursery every day was good for my fitness, good father-son time and great fun. I'm forced to accept that now I'll be working from an office again, I won't be doing the nursery runs any more and will see less of my family in the evenings. I know Version 2.0 had a hard time some mornings when he saw me getting in a taxi to go to the train station because he didn't want me to go – he's never truly known anything other than Daddy working upstairs, so it's not just me that needs to make the transition but him, and my wife, as well.

"Living the dream" is not entirely accurate, either. The dream had me working from home for myself rather than someone else, but the simple fact is that I'm not going to build up a £30,000+ a year freelance consultancy overnight and I still have bills to pay and debts to clear. Given a choice between "living the dream" but having constant debt worries or working for someone else and ensuring my family are safe from such unpleasantries, I'll choose the latter.

All this considered, I've decided that finally the time has come for me to go contracting. I have a broad skill set and a lot of experience now. I've seen enough and done enough to have a good idea of what works and what doesn't and I can turn my hand to most things. And if I really am to sacrifice time with my family to ensure the bills are paid and debts cleared, contracting offers more financial compensation and a better chance of achieving that goal quickly than a permanent position.

I'm going to have some tough decisions to make with my wife. I've had one phone interview already for a Vignette contract position in London. I've got one lined up on Thursday for a permanent J2EE role about twenty minutes' walk from my home. I've also been speaking to a couple of ex-colleagues and trying to line up two more interviews fairly locally. The ideal is a contracting position in Derby, but if it came to a choice between contracting in London or a permanent role in Derby I'd have a bit of a predicament and the wife and I would have to have serious talks.

When the debts are cleared and we're on more stable financial ground I'll have a bit more freedom. I can think about building up a war chest to tide us over while I build up that consultancy and then I really can think about "living the dream". In the meantime, I think it's really just going to boil down to choosing the best path to get there.