The Fine Print

If you wish hard enough, wish or just visualize the life you want, it’ll happen. The thing is, you’re looking at Disneyland like a tourist and not someone who works there. You are looking at it as a destination and not thinking of the nuts and bolts deep in the machine, the fine print. Once your new life comes to fruition it’s all about the fine print, the day to day reality.

I am sitting in Room 211 of the Holiday Inn in Rancho Mirage, CA. In an hour and a half I have to leave this room and wander around for a couple of hours before another room in this same hotel is available. Pandette is at a Honda dealership a few miles away where they are trying to determine the cause of her electrical problem. I was hoping to hold off until November and take her to the mechanic I trust but the issue has gotten too serious to ignore. This is the fine print of van life, vans are machines that will break down. And, it’s not just my car in the shop, it is my home.

My last post was about burn out. The purpose was not to complain because I accept the consequences of this life; I may not always be happy with them but I accept them. Everytime I get tired of living out of the van or dealing with drunk campers who won’t quiet down at midnight I ask myself these questions:

Okay, would you prefer to be back in Sacramento sharing a house with people? Would you be happier delivering car parts in heavy traffic?

No. But, it isn’t always easy, the fine print. I read the fine print before going into this life two years ago but it was just words, until you are living the fine print you don’t really understand what those words mean.

I am ready for the next adventure, the next thing. Sometimes I imagine wearing a suit, I see it very clearly: A medium blue suit. Untucked white button down shirt. Black Chuck Taylors. What I would be doing in that suit I have no idea—wedding officiant? I know I don’t want to live in a city of any size again but maybe a small art or college or arty college town. But, again, what would I be doing to survive? Where would I be living? For now, the campground is my best option, I like the area and the people I work with so I consider myself fortunate…I still keep myself open to whatever new opportunities are out there.

This four city metro area reminds me of an old western. You know how they’d build a set in the middle of nowhere, just slap together a “town” out in the wild desert? The Lyft driver was taking me from the dealership to the Five Guys where I had lunch so, not distracted by driving, I could take in my surroundings. This town looks like any town, like the one you’re in: Beige malls. Tire shops. Hotels. Restaurants. Surrouding it, though, are these fierce, beige hills. Unforgiving. Lifeless. Seriously, not as much as a tiny, struggling shrub. It looms hundreds of feet over this town. Southern California is just a movie set: Scenes are shot and then reshot, the script is played out, and then the production company can no longer get water and the director calls a wrap and everyone goes home. The set is abandon, just left up because it’s cheaper than paying the carpenters and truckers to break it down and haul it someplace else. And the hills just wait. They were there long before the sets were built, they will be there long after the director calls a wrap and everyone climbs in their Pierce Arrows or LaSalles or Packards or Plymouths and goes home.

Permanence is an illusion. One day you and I will be dead. That place you work, where you imagine a bright future and have set up relationships with your co-workers? Could be gone next week. That isn’t being morbid, that is embracing the understanding that shit changes but there is new shit out there, maybe better shit. Maybe you will be, technically, living in poverty out of a van but will feel more alive than you have in your adult life. The fine print is in every contract we agree to. When I was married with a mortgage and a long term job you may have looked at that contract and the heading may have read: SECURE ADULT LIFE. The fine print read: May cause lack of fulfillment or unhappiness. Also, nothing is permanent, security is an illusion. Live the life you are supposed to because before you know it this life is over. You can floss, you can live off kale and free range dirt, drink green tea by the gallon, do yoga, wear sunscreen—

You’re still gonna die. I’m still gonna die.

But we have today.

REMINDER: I've got a bunch of books on Amazon including No Signal, the book about my first year living out of the van:

https://author.amazon.com/home