My new life-- help me become nomadic

My children were taken away by the State of New Mexico over two years ago. During covid when my first grader was online for classes, the teacher overheard one of my wife and I's shouting matches where I complained about her meth addiction and tried to bully/terrorize her into quitting.

I knew better, but I had little recourse and had spent the previous five years constantly under assault by situations, persons, and things that I had tried to avoid my whole adult life.

The condition of the home was unsanitary and bad, so we were both held responsible for neglect.

My children are autistic, one very severely, and she would not help me clean or come to bed at night. She was always up to something and going somewhere-- always with a trashy person doing trashy things.

and she always complained that she was too tired to help clean... and I had myself, her, and two uncontrollable boys to clean up after. Literally an impossible situation.

I don't mean to judge, but I had absolutely no patience for this. When we had children we had discussed keeping a drug free home, but she was heedless and it got maddeningly worse.

I was violent and abusive and also deemed an unfit parent.

My wife and I have both completely turned around. I'm in therapy and am quickly becoming the peaceful, fun, sweet person I used to be. I've come so far from where I was, and yet to my astonishment, my wife has come further. She was never the adult never the responsible one. Now she surpasses me in that.

They are going to give her the kids and both of us shall have our parental rights restored.

But in the course of these years, it worked out that she could not find work or affordable housing in Alamogordo, where I live, and she had not seen her family in ten years, so she moved back to Mississippi where her brother had work for her.

In retrospect, her emotional need to return home was something I should not have continually dismissed.

"Let them come visit us here," I said, "when they experience the cool summer climate in the mountains they'll never want to go back to that hot swampy place again."

Anyhow, poverty has stranded us. I am now living with my cousin, who stepped in to help out-- when nobody else in either of our families were willing or able.

30 years after I'd last seen his face, he came into my life, volunteering to be a temporary guardian for the kids. He bought a house here and offered to let me live with him.

However, the first attempt at re-unification failed, largely because we could not find any therapy for my severely autistic boy. They gave him to me after I hadn't seen him in 18 months, and took him away 2 months later, cancelling their plans for cousin Raymond.

But now they are going to let the kids live with their mother in Mississippi and that woman is fiercely determined to never lose them again.

Part of my recovery process was learning that I did not need to be in a relationship to be happy and to cut the chord between us. When I had accomplished that, after about a month I got a call from her asking me to take her to rehab in Carlsbad.

I was on thin ice. I could not afford to have any more screw ups in my life, so I was taking a huge risk in order to do so. But ethically, I had no choice.

After rehab, she had no place to go, but back to the people she knew and since moving to Alamogordo from our small mountain village she had made no friends other than crazy street people addicted to amphetamines.

I was advised against it, and it was a HUGE risk, because I just KNEW we would end up at each other's throats, but I took her in to my home for two months...

And it was like a second honeymoon. We fell in love all over again. We did cool things together and never had a single conflict.

So now, it will have to be summer visitations-- and not with both of my boys until my youngest son Felix is able to control himself. She's also facing being a single parent, and her brother's work didn't pan out that well, so she is going to have to divorce me so she can qualify for public housing and get a place to live that she can afford.

All with my support.

But my thoughts are towards a future where I will be spending a lot of time with my family in Mississippi.

Well, I can't stay with my cousin forever, but my disability check isn't enough for paying rent and bills anywhere, so if I get a job to afford rent... let's just say I haven't had a vacation since the early 90s, nor do I know any low-skilled low wage laborers who has been able to do that for the last 30 years.

FUCK CAPITALISM. FUCK BEING AN EMPLOYEE.

So in order to be able to cut loose from the grind and be able to travel freely and stay anywhere as long as iI like I have two options.

One option is so ideal for me, I wish I could just up and do it. But my cousin is against it and will offer no support for it.

Looks like my plan for now is going to be to let my cousin help me get a fuel efficient car and for me to be self employed and take my work with me, and/or have jobs lined up wherever I want to go.

The other, my cousin just doesn't understand. I used to tour in a van with a band and I kept the van for many years after that. All I needed in that van was a camp stove, a five gallon water jug and an ice chest and I found that I could camp anywhere I wanted and not miss a thing except for my computer.

Well now there's wifi tethering, so if I have a laptop I can have everything. I can put my stuff in storage, and live in the van. The van has several advantages, chiefly, I would not have to pay rent and bills, which would offset the only disadvantage (the one reason my cousin is against it) the high price of fueling the vehicle. I could continue to use my cousin's address and live comfortably. My "crazy money" government check would make this all affordable.

He won't help me get a loan to get a van, he said not to ask him to bail me out if I got broke down somewhere (I won't) and meanwhile I'm saying: I can get a van for $2k-$6k and even if the engine falls right fucking out of the engine compartment on the very first day, I still have a home that I can live in rent free/mortgage free as long as I can find someone who would let me tow it to their place and let me live in their driveway.

Additionally I could find a one acre lot in the middle of nowhere costing next to nothing and build a storage shed and park the van THERE as long as I could get somewhere on my bicycle to get water.

A lot of people want to try the van life and regret it, but I have a lot of experience with it and I love it. I was known as the guy with the van. When I showed up it was party on wheels! I could also get gas money by giving people rides. I could hire out as a private courier and deliver pets and other valuables on road trips. I could buy a weed whacker and trim yards, and best of all, Austin Texas is smack dab in the middle of my road trip, I have friends there who I've known since the 1980s, and I am a much beloved local legand and I can arrange performances where I can collect from the door and sell merch at my shows.

If I traveled enough and made enough connections I could probably make enough money playing music to really make a lifestyle out of it.

But I can't convince my cousin, and if I go ahead and wrangle up a van somehow he's probably not going to be too happy with me, so what I think would be best is to find some kind of way to be self employed.

On disability I can earn up to $800 a month, but I don't think I'll need more than $400, so I am asking for ideas, how to be self employed so I don't have to ask my boss for a weekend off so I can do a whirlwind holliday trip that costs me hundreds of dollars in gas for practically an overnight visit.

My oldest son Zappa was born on January 28th, and I would really love to go up for Christmas and stay through his birthday. Hell, if I had the van I could do that AND come up for Felix's birthday on October 2nd and stay through Halloween.

Nobody in my family really understands that I'm not materialistic, I'm very adaptable, and I would be very, very, very happy living in a van and never having to worry about rent or buying a house.

Any place there's a highway could be my home, and if there's a solar event or we run out of oil to drill out of the ground, well me and a lot of other people will probably be stripping our vehicles of all the heavy parts and setting up a harness for a mule team.

It would be theraputic for me as well, it would recall the days when I never knew violence and despair. I was a happy go lucky guy who took every imaginable risk and never came to any harm. I really believe in positive thinking, and I know that when I was in harmony with my self, nature, my friends, and the world around me I had nothing to fear.

My cousin is one of those guys who calculates everything and plans for every contingency. One of the reasons I can't see myself staying with him indefinately, though I may be welcome to, is that I am trying to learn to trust myself again, trust my intuition, live my life spontaneously.

And one thing a van would help me out with is this. I love my wife and we haven't fought yet, but I don't EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER want my kids to see me get angry at their mother again. THAT is the FIRST thing I told my cousin about why I wanted a van:

"If we have a disagreement and I start getting pissed off, I can stay in the van, maybe even go to the next town, until we cool off."

It sucks because my wife and I are both so fucking poor and my cousin has a lot of money (for now). I don't want to offend him either, because if I have to move out, I can't afford a place big enough to house my kids. As it stands now, the kids are welcome to stay at my cousin's house all summer.

Hopefully my wife too, because as far as she and I are concerned that divorce is just a scrap of paper. I told her we could have a little wedding with her family and just skip the whole marriage license thingie, if it made her feel better.

ALSO what I've been through put me on an inner journey that made me realize that my tempertment is best suited for a MONK.

My cousin want to help me be more worldly, and I want to retreat from the world. I do not want material things, I do not want to pursue love, relationships, even food (happen to be on my third day of one of my long fasts, but I fast to some extent almost every day with at least two days a week and usually more than that where I don't eat at all.

Can you say "Monestary on wheels?"

One of the thing I thought I could do for money is teach classes on panpsychism, come up with my own spiritual discipline, invite my students to become monks and collect donations to live on the way acetics have for thousands of years.

Point is, I can actually, for the first time in my life, do exactly what I want to do and not be bothered with all the shit that can clutter up and complicate your life. Van would be my passport into that life.

But if I put all that aside, he may even be willing to buy me a car. I even thought about getting a motorcycle and a tent, but why? I mean, I've done van before and it was like being able to take my bedroom everywhere I went! Except for the computer. Laptop + 5g network on muh phone takes care of that. Maybe a small solar to help charge my devices. Had a friend who lived in a tent all summer and his cheap ass solar panel actually kept all his shit charged most of the time.

I never been the kind who let fear of something bad happening keep him from living the life he wanted. Sure, I'm mad and crazy and all that, but it didn't ever fail me before. I start giving in to fear and worry, I already know I'll have a sorrowful future ahead of me.

Only thing I'll miss about not settling down in one place is gardening. I want to grow morning glories and make Tliltlitzin for my head. I want to grow a forest of weed and collect several logs that have been soaked in water for a year so I can churn up crops of lion's mane and mushrooms.... or I can simply adapt to a more nomadic lifestyle and forage good shit wherever I go.

On the plus side I'll have many more species of psilocybe available to me in Mississippi. I can try a paw paw. I can harvest saffafras roots. I can't wait to explore DeSoto wilderness with my kids. I can't wait to bring them up here to hike in the mountains again. They love it. Hikes with dad and mommy spoiling them with toys, bubbles, balloons and food were the only happiness those poor boys had in their childhood.

Everything else about it sucked and they'll be in therapy their whole lives for it, and my part in that was probably worse. Mommy's problem could be hidden. Daddy's problem came out the the Hulk.


It would be fucking ideal.

 

Perhaps a boat?

 

Coz, Check out Bob Wells Cheap RV Living website. He also has a U-Tube Channel.

There are plenty of times, that I think about just dropping out of our crooked society and just living in a van, traveling and seeing the country. Or maybe goin the hermit route like Christopher Knight.

Best of luck to you.