Being Happy with Nearly Nothing

This is a pop-up, just a random post in between the normal Wednesday blogs.

I am a failure as a normal person and I’m okay with that. I’m a failure as a normal person but only because I was never supposed to be a normal person; maybe it’s the same with you. When I say “normal person” I mean someone who is working towards the American Dream: Career. Good sized house with enormous televisions. SUV with all the gadgets and seven hundred horsepower. Maybe I tried to get one form of the American Dream but it was a half-hearted effort. My first wife and I got good jobs, we were filling our rental house with new furniture and working on having children as grown ups are supposed to do. And then we lost those jobs, sold all that furniture at a huge loss, and eventually got divorced. I felt like a failure then, broke and living with my mother in my early forties. And then I ended up in Portland, Oregon early in 2012. I was supposed to stay two weeks and ended up renting a room and living there three months. All I had was a carry on bag, a borrowed sleeping bag, some art supplies, and a couple of used books and, you know, I was happy. I found I could be happy with very very little and it was amazing, it was liberating, to coin a cliche. That is my personal version of freedom: Discovering you need very little to be content.

I had to return to California for a year but was back in Portland early in 2013. In those days, the end of old Portland, you could still get by with a service gig like working in a hotel as I did. I bought a van with the intention of living on the streets of Portland during the warm months and going down to, say, Yuma or something and finding a job over the winter. I spent a few nights in the van…and then I met my second wife. She had a daughter about to start high school, so we wanted a stable home for her. My thinking was we provide a stable home for my step-daughter and when she hits 18 and can be independent, my ex-wife and I would travel more, have some sort of business on the road—

You know, the cliche that love is blind is very apt, and this goes for both my ex-wife and myself. You love this person, you want to be with them the rest of your life, but you have very different goals. My ex wife wanted to acquire property and furniture and all that, and I went along with it. In the end we both we were very unhappy and our marriage ended. As I said, I am a failure as a normal person, but I exceed at living outside the box—yes, another cliche but when I say that you know what I mean.

For six years, I tried to succeed as a normal person. I loved my wife and still love my step-kids and even though it made me unhappy I was going to try for the American Dream. All this is covered in the first American Outback book, Disappearing is a Young Man’s Game. I had this illusion that I was being noble and making sacrifices but really I was just being an idiot. The two of us had very different goals, I just wouldn’t allow myself to accept that,

The whole vanlife trend seems to be receding a bit. It peaked with the film Nomadland two years ago but it seems to have slipped back into the margins. The reality is that living out of a vehicle is not the pretty show influencers portray, beautiful, young people in gorgeous Sprinter vans that cost as much as a house. You see these videos of them eating avocados and doing yoga on sun kissed beaches with the ocean in the distance and—

It’s not like that. The majority of one’s time on the road is looking for a safe place to stay the night, to use a bathroom, it’s sharing your space with bugs and other people, it’s wondering if that noise the engine is making indicates an upcoming disaster or is just the sound of your van aging.

But I found I could do it and for a year it was an amazing experience. It changes you, I can honestly say that, it makes you a stronger person, more resiliant and resourceful….but it isn’t easy and not everyone can hack it. The story of that year on the road is covered in the second American Outback book, No Signal. One anecdote: It makes you closer to nature, you watch the sun closely because that is what gives you power, keeps your fridge running. You are attuned to the wind because if it picks up, it can rip the solar panels off your rig and destroy them, leaving you with no power. I know this because it happened to me. Alabama Hills, California, March of 2021. Always bungee cord your panels, my friends, learn from my mistake.

As of Halloween I may lose both my job and my home due to seasonal layoffs. I am not worried if that comes to pass; after living out of the van and all that entails I feel oddly empowered. Don't get me wrong, I am very attached to my little home and I like the people I work with but I know I can hack whatever comes. That’s what I got out of vanlife. Don’t get me wrong, the first two weeks on the road I was full of doubt….but I did it and it comepletely changed me as a person.