I just want to be myself, and be free.

I am so stressed out everyone.

I have wanted to live in a van or small motor home for years now, but just have not been able to because I have a daughter and girlfriend. My girlfriend and I keep fighting and I can't be happy anymore unless I am outside doing something with nature. It is calling me I just want to be outdoors all the time and not have the stresses of an everyday life. I have spent days and days of time researching different rvs, off grid living, survival skills, solar energy, and boondocking and it just fascinates me. There is nothing I want more in life than to be able to be free and live stress free in the wild, where I can travel and have almost no expenses. But I have not been able to do so because I will feel guilty if I leave my daughter. I am so confused and frustrated and stressed because this is the one thing I have wanted for so long. Part of me wants to follow my calling, but part of me feels stuck. I cannot be happy in the lifestyle I am living anymore. I do not know what I can do I feel it is only a matter of time before I drop completely out of society, but I feel it is wrong to do that. Any advice? love

 

You are not alone my friend, and I can relate all too well. Chances are you have arrived at a yet another one of lifes crossroads, AKA a spiritual shift or "awakening" as most commonly called. This is truly a confusing and complicated time, so just try and relax and trust there are favorable ways of handling all matters. To shed enough light on your situation will take much more than a quick reply to be of any real help to you. Private message me if you'd like to talk more into your situation, you're more that welcome and glad to help where I can. Peace and light my friend..

 

It's just a fantasy, there's no such thing as living stress-free in the wild.

Don't fuck around dude, find a way to fix your normal life for the better...

even if only for your daughters sake, man the fuck up! :biker:

 

I cannot message you for some reason but I need to hear more of what you are saying please. Thanks.

 

Why do you say that? I would like more information and personal experiences to help if possible. Thanks! love

 

I'm hoping he said that tongue in cheek, and out of tough love. If not, it came from fear and ignorance. Don't sweat it. To quote Jello, "Real freedom scares you...because it means responsibility! So you chicken out and threaten me!"

Van dweller/rubber tramp life can be awesome but it can be tricky to convince women that they can have all of the comforts of home on the road. The only way I've had success is to already be existing off grid, living on wheels when I meet them. Convincing a home dweller to become a nomad is tricky.

There are a couple of blogs documenting families on the road and living in vans/rv's and it looks like they have awesome lives.

http://ouropenroad.com/ is a good one.

http://wheresmyofficenow.com is another one.

The rubber tramp nation on facebook is a cool group.

As far as living free goes, I've transitioned through different stages of existence in a similar quest and found a few different solutions. It all depends on what comfort/conveniences you need and how much crap you want to belong to. I've had a great time with nothing but a backpack and a change of clothes, just doing odd jobs, partying on the beach, hitchhiking and using public transportation. But since I want to have some music gear, tools, and dogs, and still lead a near moneyless nomadic existence, I'm building a solar/pedal amphibious camper trike out of hemp and bamboo. No joke.

There are multiple ways to live "rich". The western consumer model is to sell your life away in slavery for brief moments of access to resources, distractions, and free time. The struggle is learning how to increase comfort by making more money without working so much that your free time and family life are compromised. This is nearly impossible even in a best case scenario. The millionaires I know only get a couple days off a week...lol.... The big problem is that this system is inherently corrupt, unsustainable, and fixed against the little guy.

The other way is to adopt a sustainable lifestyle that allows you to meet your basic survival needs without working constantly and instead, learning how to be comfortable without money. Spend a little resources upfront to create long lasting, sustainable, reliable methods of providing life's basic needs and spend your free time growing food, playing music with friends, teaching, learning, traveling... It's totally possible to do for less than a few months rent and I'm gonna prove it!

The best thing about opting out is that it's morally/ethically clean! Your hard work isn't making rich a-holes richer. It's not polluting the environment. You're actually restoring it! You're not paying tax dollars so you're not buying the guns and bullets and drones that are killing brown kids to prop up our essentially worthless govt issued fiat currency. You're not burning oil to travel. You'll be healthier from pedaling, living in clean natural environments, and eating natural food....

The choices seem to be struggle to get rich within the current system only to discover that it's a wild goose chase, or get thrifty and evolve now. The get rich game is fixed and the get thrifty game seems to be wide open territory.

I have an idea that people waking up such as yourself could build little rolling homes like I'm doing and collaborate on making food forests and permaculture campgrounds. People could do light impact stuff on public lands and promote the growth of local edible plants and animals. Public permaculture campgrounds could be developed that would have community kitchens, gardens, workspaces, etc..

There are theories that what the conquistadors saw as "Natural" when they first explored the americas was actually a landscape heavily managed by the natives, with the goal of producing an abundance of food. If we were smart, we'd be doing that again, and soon!

Another example of living free that could work for all three of you is WWOOFing or finding an intentional community to join. ic.org is the most complete resource for intentional communities but since people are still focused on 3000 sq ft permanent living spaces, tv's, fiat currencies, insurance, etc, finding a "free" situation is a needle/haystack kinda deal.

So far, the only sure way I've figured out if I want to be able live in the US, not need money, and still have a way to get around, a place to sleep, a place to cook, a way to have electricity and filter water, and a place to store my crap is to build this trike camper thing, convince some friends to build their own, and get them to come join me, camp, refoodforest the world, make music, invent cool new green tech, tour around and teach sustainability, the importance of collaborative open source development, crypto currency, barter methods, etc.

If you're fed up and struggling with the consumer game, it doesn't mean you're crazy or that you need to work harder within the system for the sake of your kid. Your kid won't be happy if you're not and your relationships will always be rocky if you hate your day to day life. It sounds like you're awake and your state of mind is trying to push the scared part of you to put fear aside and make some changes in your life. If your girl doesn't understand that and won't take the time to understand, you're better off without her until she figures it out for herself.

I think this life is a novelty chase. When our lives lack novelty, relationships suffer because boredom and resentment build, people make ethical compromises in the name of the stability that's essentially killing them, and eventually, we're stuck with corrupt, oppressive, destructive ways of living like we're experiencing today. As far as I'm concerned, if I can't spend a large percentage of me alive and awake time having fun and creating, I don't want to be here, and westernized civilization makes this lifestyle impossible for all but the elite so I'm out. Time to go feral!

Sorry to ramble.. hope some of it helps :2thumbsup:

 

:smilielol5: Damn you've got it all figured out don't you? You are full of shit, I doubt you've ever lived the life at all, you are just blowing more fantasy smoke up his ass. Fact is, it's becoming illegal in more states every day to camp outside of designated areas, or even sleep in your car. Whatever, I'm not going to waste my time here with my experiences, y'all need to learn your own damn lessons in life.

 

Thank you for sharing that was a great read. I will take your advice and thing about it, thank you for those useful links as well. My lady will never want to live that kind of lifestlye, so she says. That is why I am feeling this way. I try to show her how much better things could be if we were free but she is a white picket fence materialistic kind of girl. Thank again for sharing!

 

Gongshaman do you have any experience with this sort of lifestyle? I would love to hear some information to support your view on this.

 

As a matter of fact I do. I have been a street musician and traveller, but it's been many years now. I try to keep up on the state of things and I gotta tell you things are quite grim here in the US. As I said, they are enacting laws not only prohibiting things like busking all over the US, but even sleeping outside, in your car, or anywhere not designated as a campground. A lot of cops are real assholes if they think you are trying to live on the fringes, I know a guy who the cops literally burned his sleeping bag, tent and all his stuff right in front of him, then told him to get in his car and leave the county.
Even the cool cops will tell you to move on, point you to the nearest K.O.A. 25$ per night is cheap for one of those...It's sad but true, in todays world, you are much freer with a establishment job and an apt than trying to vagabond...

People talk about camping on public land, but there is a time limit there too, and for the most part if you can even find a place, it's so far from any facility's it's simply not feasible. I know people who have built entire log cabins in the woods, only to have them dis-mantled by the forest service or BLM. If you build a structure on public land it must be able to be dismantled and removed in 24 hours, and you can only camp in one spot for up to 2 weeks max.

 

@Gonghaman,

I mean no disrespect, but just because you weren't able to figure out a sustainable, nomadic, lifestyle for yourself, it doesn't mean that it's not possible for others. Telling people to man up and fight within a corrupt system is like telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's physically impossible to pull yourself up by your boot straps and trying only leaves you frustrated, tired, bent over, and exploited. It's beyond me why and how people are still playing a broken fixed game when there's an internet full of info out there and alternative ways of surviving that DO work... :2thumbsup:

I live free now, in a little rv. I just sold my big solar array to fund the trike build though. Been off grid, on wheels, and camping for a few years now. I am full of shit though. I ate a whole bag of chips last night and didn't drink enough water before bed! doh!

An offroad trike can camp pretty much anywhere on public land because it's a non motorized vehicle. It's not confined to the roads and campgrounds. You can camp in a spot for two weeks at a time and then you have to move 15-25 miles line of sight but as long as you're not leaving anything but foot prints and tire tracks when you roll out, there will never be a problem, and not being in campgrounds, it's unlikely that people camping this way will ever see a ranger.

It's also easy to park at friends' properties because it doesn't take up much space, won't hurt the lawn, can be collapsed during the day, and is self contained.

Another idea, one I hope gets rolling soon, is that a groups of people can get together, throw in a few hundred bucks apiece and buy cheap pieces of land that need reforested to develop into private campgrounds for eco-nomads.



To OP,

It sucks to be in your situation. I've been there...a few times for some dumb reason......Einstein's definition of insanity right?... Suppressing wanderlust and the urge for true freedom brought me a lot of suffering and struggle, and caused others close to me unnecessary grief too. Materialism and the consumer lifestyle are just so obviously wrong that I've pretty much decided that anyone still chasing that dream is on a different evolutionary path than I am and it's one that's unsustainable and destructive to the core. I just can't participate or enable those that do.

Try to get her to open her mind and watch a few videos about how money works, how brainwashing crap like bernays pioneered has tricked her, how minimalist tribes have happy lives, Daniel Suelo, Mark Boyle, zeitgeist, thrive, new earth foundation, one people's public trust, Max Igan, Russell Brand for cryin out loud!.....There's so much awesome stuff going on out there! Maybe you could compromise with her and get her to head south with you for the winter every year or something? You get to travel and be free and she can see what it's like, then you can go back to the box with the white picket fence when/if she's over it.

If she's worth it, you'll figure it out.

 

Where do you get the money to maintain your RV? tires wear out, there's oil changes, licensing, emissions, insurance...
Mooching a place to park from friends is not living free.Where did you get the money for an Rv and solar array to begin with? Where do you get money for gas? For food? You are not living free, I dare say you are living the life of a bum, and thats why no intelligent woman want's to do it. You are just a breakdown away from homelessness.
The system is fucked, yes, but no matter what you do the system will catch up with you. A couple of years is nothing. You can't live without money. I was a street musician, making upwards of 100$ a day and thats still not enough to live decently when you have to be constantly on the move. With little cold storage for food you end up eating crap most of the time out of convenience..like your bag of chips...ain't enough to even make a shit. Good luck maintaining your health. Sure stop somewhere and make a pot of beans and rice, where are you going to store the leftovers on you little trike? I'm sure you think you have answers for all this, I've heard it all before so I'm going to leave you with your unsustainable fantasy and just say.. good luck with all that.

 

It would be interesting to see if Daniel or Mark could live without money while raising a child. They've already proven the naysayers wrong.

 

Bullshit, someone else is footing the bill.
Most "successful" off-griders have mommy and daddy's money to fall back on when they fail. No worries for them if their rig breaks down.

 

You should look into Daniel Suelo and Mark Boyle.

 

How many do you know? Why be a troll?

I'll admit, it would be really tough right now to be on the road with a kid simply because so few have the juevos to quit being accomplices in the murder of children and have decided to find a better way. If a small percentage of the population adopted a collaborative, nomadic, permaculture/food forest lifestyle, there could even be kid specific camps.

If an adult can build a sustainable pedal camper for them that meets all of their survival needs, what's to stop them from building a kid sized one, or a trailer?

The gypsies in Europe seem to breed?

Anyway, I think I made my point.

 

If my rig breaks down, I fix it. Better yet, I'm building it from scratch so it won't break down because it wasn't designed with planned obsolescence and profit as priorities over reliability, efficiency, and safety...

 

You made the point that you are a self-loathing hipster without a clue... and you are avoiding the money question.. IT'S ILLEGAL TO LIVE IN THE FOREST. YOU CAN'T HAVE PERMACULTURE AND BE NOMADIC. YOU CAN'T FIX YOUR RV WITHOUT MONEY
Good luck on your bamboo tricycle in the winter

Go to Europe then, I was talking about the US.

 

Screw money man. Anyone using givernment backed fiat currency is an accomplice to MURDER(myself included unfortunately). Seriously. If you were playing monopoly with some friends and the guy playing the banker kept reaching across the board and snatching your money, forced you to use dice with only one number on them, kept making his own money from scratch, and smashed one of your kids in the head every time you called him on it, would you quit playing? If not, then I really don't need to talk to you.

For others that might be reading this and want info though, I'll destroy your last few points.

You can definitely live in the forest/blm/private property. I know this because I CAMP IN THE FOREST/BLM ALL THE TIME You can't just post up in one place for months at a time. You have to move around.

You can absolutely have permaculture and be nomadic. As soon as my trike is done, I've already scoped natural springs and man made water tanks all over the forest around here and in Colorado. I'm planning to help foster the growth of local edible plants at these locations and other places where rainwater collects. Doing simple things like moving rocks around by hand, weeding, and transplanting, can be done totally under the radar. I have one location on a friend's property that I've put a little work into over the last few years and where there was once, dead, decomposed granite and rocks, there is now a large producing peach tree, cherry tree, two pecan trees, and a few large mesquite trees that make tons of beans.

So yeah, the nomadic tribes that lived here for possibly hundreds of thousands of years before the continents were "discovered" by the takers WERE NOMADIC, PRACTICED PERMACULTURE, and lived sustainably, largely without money, and in harmony with their environment. It has been done. It worked. It can work again. And with the access to knowledge we have today, it can work indefinitely.

You are wrong that I can't fix my rv without money. Instead of worrying about making money, I've concentrated on gaining the skills I need to fix or build pretty much anything. Most of the time, I can get things back on the road with nothing but patience and ingenuity. It does take money to register, insure, and fuel it though so that's why I'm building the trike.

Have you ever camped in a small space in the winter? A decent sleeping bag and a good tent is all people need to camp in Antarctica. I don't see how the trike with a little wood stove would be too bad. I lived in the back of a Toyota pickup in Colorado for a few winters and it was actually pretty cozy. The cool thing about the trike though is it has wheels, which can function as climate control. People shouldn't be living in places where they need to constantly consume resources to be comfortable anyway. It's greedy and stupid. If it's too cold for humans somewhere, that means that bears and bison are supposed to live there. They have fur.


So, thanks for the name calling. I wasn't planning on putting this info up tonight but your ignorance spurred me to typing it all out so thank you. :love:

 

Oh, I just caught the bum comment.

Since I don't have to work like a slave to pay for shelter, I spend my free time helping friends with their projects. I volunteer for an organization that races the baja 1000 to raise money for wounded vets, even though war and those that perpetrate it disgust me. I fix people's cars, computers, music equipment, bikes, motorcycles, houses, solar arrays, help inventor friends build prototypes, and help in their gardens and farms in exchange for food. I don't mooch or bum at all. In fact, since I'm much freer than the average Joe and have found a way to live for so little, I'm able to give about ten times more than I receive. It's called contributionism, and it works way better than capitalism when dealing with evolved humans that can be good people without the need of coercion, aggression, and greed.