Why Am I Living in a Van
People living in a van is not as uncommon as you might think.
I’ve been living in a van since the summer of 2011. That makes it eight and a half years, as of this writing. I wasn’t expecting it to come about as it did, but it was more or less a foregone conclusion.
Earlier in our marriage, my wife and I used to talk about traveling around and making a living on the road. However, we never took the initiative to make it happen.
Then we had kids and life got busy. We took an occasional family trip to places like the Niagara Falls and the Yellowstone National Park, but the dream of a perpetual life on the road never manifested.
Unfulfilled dreams and desires have a way of creating a rift between couples. We weren’t an exception. We grew more and more apart and at some point verbalized the possibility of going our separate ways once the children go off to college.
Neither one of us had thought that it would happen a month before the youngest one started college, but it did. There is no sense in pointing fingers as to whose fault it was. There is an old saying from India that says; “You can’t clap with one hand.” Enough said.
I moved into my Kia Sedona van and started my life of living in a van. I took out the back seats, and a foam mattress over a wooden platform served as a bed. I used several plastic tubs to hold my belongings. I was never much into material goods, so being a minimalist was ideal for me. I had my home on the wheels. I call it my Mobile Domicile.
Type in the word vandwellers in Google, and you’ll find over 300K pages. Vandwellers Community will fetch you about 150K pages. It is not as uncommon as you might think. They were generally considered as homeless people, but times are changing. Now they are classified as people with Alternative Living Arrangements.
In the past eight and a half years, I have traveled to all 48 of the lower United States. Three years ago, I walked from Chicago to Santa Monica along the Historic Route 66. I blogged about it as I went, and took about 3,000 pictures. I met more than 2,000 people, some of whom have become life long friends.
Living in a van is grand. I am enjoying my Freedom Lifestyle.
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
Here are a couple of related stories:
Rasheed Hooda is a published author, who has contributed to many of Medium’s top Publications; Start-up, The Ascent, P.S. I Love You, Rogues’ Gallery, and ILLUMINATION, to name a few. He is also a Top Writer on several topics. If you like his work, buy him a coffee, he drinks a lot of it.
