**Another cliche #vanlife blog?**

It’s 2023; nearly two years since my #SubaruLife blog, and I am now writing about my lifestyle change.

#VanLife, the logic to “why”.

I could be the 999,999,999th person to write a blog about the lifestyle of living in a van. That’s fine, I am not writing a guide about building or buying a van or talking about how life is so much better or worse living in a van.

In 2023, living an alternative lifestyle; such as living in a tiny house on wheels, is becoming a solution to living a life that is affordable. However, perhaps this “alternative” lifestyle is not alternative or abnormal anymore. Perhaps, living in a tiny home; if it’s on wheels or stationary, is how the world will look going forward. Equal to living in a large square footage American home in the suburbs in the eyes of our progressive minded peers.

This blog is going to be about my story with getting into a van to live in on a regular basis. This blog is to share a story that might be relatable to others compared to the #vanlife YouTube video from a content creator that shows only what gets subscribers, since that video is their livelihood. Not all people who choose to live in a van are YouTubers who just vlog their life every day or every week. I imagine more so, people who live in a Tiny home are just like everyone else who were searching for a means of living they could afford as to help them save and live the life they want. Since the 2020 COVID pandemic, housing; both rentals and mortgages, have become outrageously expensive for the middle class. (Hi, its me)

*Sitting on the bed in my van with a laptop at a viewpoint. (Winter 2023)*

I am this person.

Before getting into this van, I lived in a tiny 560 sq/ft rental house. In 2019, the rental fee every month was $1,000.00 and in 2020 the private landlord raised my rent to $1,200.00, and finally in 2022 my landlord raised the rent to to $1,400.00 (and if I wanted to use the basement for storage, that was an additional $50.00). WHAT!?

This landlord was a friend and the rising costs of living and rental fees around the country caused my landlord to get greedy. This new reality; which I will be honest and say I assumed I would be immune to, forced me to rethink my options. In early 2022, I have been working for an Idaho company that paid me at the time; $64,000.00 (before taxes). Which comes to about $1,650.00 a paycheck. For someone who wanted to look for a house to buy, that wasn’t possible within 50 miles of the Idaho town I was living in and now rentals becoming as expensive as a house mortgage but I don’t see that money as investment returned to me somehow, I felt screwed. Yeah…I’m out, but how or what do I do to invest in myself. “They” said buying a house is the way to do that; in America at least, but in 2022 that isn’t possible for someone making the average salary income in the state of Idaho.

Do I, move back in with family at the age of 32? Yes that is an option but I was absolutely not wanting to or going to do that.
Do I, find a rental but find roommates to help share the financial burden? I could, but after living in the college dorm rooms in my early 20s, living in military barracks in my mid 20s, and after my military time having roommates for 5 years in a standard apartment. The internal answer was no.
Do I, live out of my Subaru Crostrek and migrate to warmer weather in the coming winter? My current job was fully remote but by the early fall of 2022, they changed their policy and require me to go into the office once a week. So that idea quickly become not an option, plus living out of a car sounds “romantic” in some light but honestly was more of the desperate option.
Do I, move find a van to purchase or build out and move into a van? Get a loan from the bank and that loan becomes my new “rent”? Well that is an idea, large space to live in compared to a car and I could have all the amenities I would need to live and work out it comfortably.

The prevalence of living in a van was/ is at it’s peak right now, so the content and resources to help someone determine if that style of living was for me or not was not hard to find.

I spent the better part of 2022 searching for a van on listing websites to hopefully find the right one for me. However, since the end of a relationship in 2020, living in a van has been near the front of my mind and I had some ground work completed already to help me search for a van.

*Sitting outside my rental house. (Summer 2022)*

Requirements to live…happily.

When we live in a comfortable routine lifestyle, sometimes we can neglect to recognize day-in and day-out what about our situation that makes us feel safe or happy. This can cause the thought process of determining if living in a van is meant for us or not more challenging.

For me, at the end of the day, my requirements to live comfortably and happy enough in a living space is fairly simple. Having the space to retreat from the elements is important to me, especially living out west when winter and summers can be extreme opposites from each other. Though I had that in a Subaru, being able to stand, sit and lay down all in one place really becomes more apparent when it is raining or snowing outside. Another aspect I had to consider is what type of social creature am I most of the week? The easy answer is I need access to internet and not just strong cell signal but something that enables me to consume media that you would conveniently in a traditional home (Insert Starklink).

Something about living in a traditional home is we do not have to factor in our daily consumption of electricity. We just turn things on and use them without a thought of if this will drain the source of power or not. With that said, I knew I needed to have a power storage system (aka batteries) to supply me with enough power to last a few days if I wasn’t resupplying the batteries, solar panels to take advantage of free electricity, and electronics to manage modern device demands for power (ie. 12v vs 120v and DC vs AC).

Does this van feel like a dump or does it feel like a true comfortable and homie tiny home. When I wake up, do I see a compromise to my life because society put me there or does it feel like I tried and when others step inside do they feel welcomed.

As an anxious person and also someone who thinks about all the “details” ahead of time. Knowing that my new investment that is my home is capable of handling “the thing” is also something that makes me feel safe and happy. What is the vehicles drive train, can it store all my stuff, how well was it cared for by the prior owner and was it built well. If I had the time and money to build it myself would I have done the build the same way (ie. attention to detail).

Enter Vanadu

(Xanadu - an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place.)

November 2022

I found it, the van that met the price, the build quality, and was inside the van I hoped to find. A Canadian couple out of the Bay Area in California built it together, but had a lifestyle change and no longer needed it. Roughly 9800 miles on it, 2020 van model, and built with modern things; plus one of the builders was an electric engineer and did a wonderful and reliable job on the electronics in the van.

The color scheme was pleasant and the layout was well thought out. In fact it was built with the layout for remote IT workers (Hi, its me). I felt like I found the answer to my problem of living in an expensive rental house, a new way to live and save money (relative to what I was doing before).

Since I have been thinking about living in a van since 2020; I have been pairing down my belongings so the process to a much smaller space was nearly one for one.

Here it is:

What’s next?

Now that I have a tiny home on wheels, what is my plan?

The last puzzle piece for me is to find a job that is fully remote; that doesn’t require me to go into the office. Once I am able to solve that, then I plan on moving around in the van. However, I will move around slowly; for one gas is expensive but I intend to live in a way where I can still feel connected to people and not feel like an outsider just rolling through town.

After all, at the end of the day we are all social creatures that long for connection. Living in a van shouldn’t change that, the difference is just the manner in which we look for connection. Every hobby and sub-culture in humanity has a community. There is a van life community which I know a few people from, there are online communities which I am part of a few outdoor based communities, the community I have in this town, and the communities I have yet to become a part of.

There is a video I enjoy on Youtube that pairs a clip from a university lecturer named Alan Watts with an artists interpretation of his words. The title of that video is “Life is not a Journey” and that title speaks a lot to me. With the passing of my father in 2018 and the message from that video. I have truly processed the phrase “life ebbs and flows“. Human connection to life and the people in it comes from our effort to be apart of it. Someone living in a van out in the middle of nowhere is no different than someone that lives inside their home in the city and never leaves. If we meet people by going places, then living in a van just puts us in the biggest place to do that in, all I have to do is accept vulnerability and introduce myself.

A secret ingredient to living the non-traditional life is to be able to be happy and content with myself. The ability to be alone and not require stimulation from the attention of others. This is not to say to never want it; which is far from the reality of being happy being alone, but to confidently go away from a town/ city and not panic or feel anxious. For me that bridge is having internet to touch base while I am away. Do not mistake the ability to be content being alone with introvert vs extrovert.

So I hope to save money, take a lot of photographs I wasn’t able to before, meet new people and hopefully earn their friendship, and to live a life that isn’t focused on work (the 9-5 grind). Because life is not a journey, it’s a dance.