I’m actually a bit of a homebody. I like many activities that keep me indoors in front of a computer working away for hours on end. I don’t have a huge desire to go out and see the world per se, so it still kinda takes me by surprise that I have ended up a nomad.
I am a nomad because living this way provides me the best opportunity to do most of the things that I want in life. I wouldn’t really consider myself a person who is in love with travel. I like new experiences, but I don’t have some compelling drive to go see Yellowstone or The Grand Canyon. I kinda just take in stuff like that as it comes my way through the natural course of life.
I sat down and did a hard analysis of my goals in life. Instead of trying to shoehorn them into a preconceived box, I pulled out all of the stops and started entertaining all possible solutions that would fit as many of them as possible. The scenario that seemed the most promising was the one with me living in a vehicle. I was initially very skeptical as I have some pretty specific demands. I found that as I kept looking deeper into the details, I was able to find solutions to most of the problems.
When I first decided to do this, I was under the assumption that I would be sacrificing some benefits of being stationary. As it has panned out, I feel like very few stationary benefits are missing and a ton of new and unexpected benefits have been added. As it stands right now, I have zero interest in returning to a stationary life. That might change in the future, but right now things are pretty good and I anticipate them only getting better in the future.
Some of the important factors for me are low cost of living, warm weather all year long, ability to change locations as I wish, lots of new people to meet, and having a dedicated office/work space. So far it has been a great experience, but I basically had to talk myself into it.
Vanlife to me is like diet RV living. You have many of the amenities of an RV without the gigantic vehicle that sticks out and needs to be parked in an RV park. My van is on the large side, yet is still small enough to blend into everyday life. I can park almost anywhere.
Vanlife is living in the now. Everywhere you go, you are home. You have all of your stuff with you. At any given point in time, you can pull over and do whatever you need to do; send an email, take a nap, watch a movie, get work done, go to the gym, visit people, go on a hike etc. You end up having a lot of extra time that would normally be wasted transitioning from one thing to the next. There is no more “driving back home” after visiting a friend. Most trips are no longer round trips, but one way trips. There is no more mental energy spent on packing a bag for a trip. In general, I feel way more prepared for anything that life throws at me now, because I have my stuff with me at all times.
Minimalism
One of the biggest adjustments in vanlife has been embracing a minimalist lifestyle. I knew that I would end up owning fewer material possessions. It didn’t hit home though till I had to make hard decisions about which things actually went inside the van, and which ones were left behind. For me, the hardest part about minimalism is the fear of “needing” something that I won’t have. I was mentally aware that I really only used a small fraction of the stuff that I owned. I had stuff on shelves that had not been used in 10 years. But what if I need it someday?
If you make a list and keep track of the actual items that you use daily over 30 days, that list will be very small in comparison to the total number of things you currently own. Unless you are already a minimalist, it is probably in the neighborhood of 25 percent or less. You really only use your favorite mug, shoes, pants, shirt etc. Sure you own a bunch of other stuff, but you probably don’t use it. Minimalism is about owning the few things that you actually use. If you’re not using something, it is taking up physical and mental space in your life that could be occupied by other things. Many people own lots of stuff that they don’t use or need.
The beautiful part about vanlife is that it forces you to embrace minimalism due to sheer lack of space and vehicle mpg. The initial leap into minimalism is quite a jolt. At first, I found myself being anxious about not having things available to me that I was used to having. After some time, I realized that I really didn’t need them. Additionally, when I did need something that I didn’t have on hand, my mind started to come up with creative solutions to those problems. It turns out there are many ways to solve problems, and owning tools and stuff is one way to do it. It may not be the best way either.
A paradigm shift happened for me one day when I realized that I didn’t NEED to buy anything more. At that moment, I owned all of the things I needed to make daily life happen and I only have so much room in the van. Sure things still pop up here and there, but there is always the question of “do I have room for this”? If it is important enough I will make room. If it isn’t, I just don’t end up buying it.
In fact, I now try to find ways to avoid buying stuff. In the past, any reason was a good reason to buy another tool. Not anymore. It is a weird realization that you have all of the material possessions you need to live your dream with you in your vehicle at any time. Sure there could always be more, but it isn’t required. Actually, owning more stuff might not bring you any closer to your goals, and might possibly be taking you further away from them. Of course, you don’t need to be a nomad to experience this. I have just never met a stationary minimalist. I see the space limitation of living in a van as a huge positive incentive toward living this way.
Time Stretch
When we are young, we are constantly learning new things as just about everything is new to us. This tends to exaggerate our sense of time and make things feel longer than the actual time that has passed. As we get older, we tend to settle into routines that reverse this and make time feel more compressed. I know people that have their life planned out roughly five to ten years ahead. By living in the same house, working at the same job, and doing the same activities over and over again, we eventually get to a point that we can almost live life on autopilot. Time seems to evaporate under these circumstances.
Living life on autopilot is very hard when you are a nomad. The weather alone forces you to move around with the changing of the seasons. There really aren’t very many days that are exactly the same. Different locations, people, work, activities, stores, scenery, etc. By default, almost everything is constantly changing. You wake up in one place, do a bunch of stuff and then go to bed in another place. Sometimes it is hard to tell if two events happened in the same day or in different days. This constant change creates circumstances that are similar to when we were young, and therefore gives the feeling of stretched out time. A week can feel like a month. I still marvel at how stretched out time seems to be in comparison to living stationary. This single reason alone is justification enough for living as a nomad. Given that many people seem to complain that life seems to speed by as we get older, this is a solid strategy to fight that off.
Paradigm Shifts
Vanlife requires different paradigms for living as compared to stationary living. It is a bunch of subtle mental shifts. Just because you normally do things a certain way when living in a house, doesn’t mean it will be done the same way in a van. It also doesn’t mean that one way is better or worse than the other, it’s just different.
For example. I don’t have a toilet in my van, so I’m forced to use toilets where ever I can find them (it helps that they are everywhere). I’ve had conversations with people that admit that they can’t use a bathroom anywhere else but home. If this is you, a mental shift would need to take place. I also don’t have a shower in my van, nor do I feel like I want one. There are showers in various gyms all across the country that are way better than the ones that I have had in my houses. The idea that we need to own toilets and showers is exactly what I’m talking about. I still shower often and always seem to have access to a toilet. Do I really need to own one myself? I don’t think so. No one would build a house without a bathroom, but building a van without one seems to work fine for me. The same could be said for refrigerators or AC. Sure they are nice, but not really necessary. Living in a van doesn’t mean you can’t have these things, it just means you might not want to automatically assume that you need them. It is a different existence.
Another example. Plates, bowls, and cups often come in sets of 4 or 8. While this often makes sense in a house, this isn’t required and only takes up precious space in a vehicle. Even if there are two people living in a vehicle, you don’t need 8 plates, bowls, and cups. Even 4 might be overkill. I think about things relative to the number of people in the van +1 for spares. You might have a visitor. Maybe a couple visitors, but even if that is the case, the odds that you REALLY NEED extra stuff is quite low. It is certainly low enough that it doesn’t justify carrying extra stuff around for 99% of the time when the actual event is 1% of the time. This line of thinking pretty much applies to everything. Even if something breaks, you can replace most material possessions fairly easily and quickly. Food is the only thing that I have found myself wishing I had more of, so I tend to keep a little extra food and water.
Another paradigm shift is learning to be comfortable where ever you are. When you are homeless, everywhere is home. It could be a crowded parking lot or BLM wilderness. It is kinda weird at first to sit down and start working in a Walmart parking lot because you need to get an email out, but not really in the grand scheme of things. Field workers from all kinds of industries and companies do this every day. Truck drivers spend an entire career living life wherever they happen to be. It’s just weird for regular stationary people. In the beginning, all of the traffic and bustle of normal life going on outside of my van used to disturb me. Over time I’ve gotten used to it. I’m still not as comfortable as I’d like to be, but I’m sure it will come with time.
All kinds of things might be done differently when you are a nomad. Like renting things instead of buying. Or paying people to do things because you don’t have the tools yourself. I enjoy this mental shift as it helps me consider new ways of living life that I might have previously rejected. Living as a nomad forces you to entertain lots of new possibilities as the standard solutions for many things just won’t work.
All of this thinking outside of the typical box has really strengthened my creativity and resourcefulness. I often don’t have any consistent place to park, or people in close proximity to rely on. Vanlife forces my mind to think in new ways to solve problems that would normally be solved by calling someone or having my own place to get things done. It also forces me to face the fear of “what do I do if __ happens?” I really enjoy having this particular muscle being strong as it gives me a lot more freedom in life. And magically, things still somehow seem to get done. There are many different ways of living. Living as a nomad helps me see a totally different angle of life than I have ever known.