Month: November 2015

It’s fascinating that a dashboard can transform to reflect current interests in such a short amount of time. When I returned to the platform last year I began by following van, vehicle, and travel blogs. I wanted ideas on how to make a vehicle livable and enjoy that kind of life. I obsessed over the idea for a year and made little changes to the Jeep. Tinted windows, curtains, a mattress. I eventually spent four months sleeping in my Jeep part-time (the rest of the time at the office or motels). It reminded me of my time living aboard and a sailboat except more freeing. It must have been a transformative experience but I could not say just how. I do know that I now feel strongly about housing. Costs, suburban culture, movements such as van life and tiny houses. Homelessness and the difference an enclosed space–even just a car–can make. The absurdity of not allowing people to sleep in their vehicles when it’s their property and their only option. When I think ahead to retirement I don’t think of a house or property, but a properly built and maintained van. Now I have some knowledge about it when I get there.

The first half of this year was also a tumultuous time as I helped ship some projects and tried (and failed) to save money. My ultimate solution was to move to a low cost/high pay situation, at which point I stopped sleeping in the car and found a more standard dwelling. This allowed me to return to indoor interests such as video games more intensely and it gave me the opportunity to pursue something I’d left behind a decade ago: illustration and design.

So with one experience complete and another beginning, it all changed. I followed illustrators and other visual artists en masse and unfollowed many of those travel and van life blogs that I found so interesting in 2014. My dashboard is the wall of art I’ve never managed to put together. I still sadly peruse blogs rich with great writing and feel overwhelmed, thinking perhaps I’ll follow them someday. What once felt like an absolute truth–writing is the way–now withers on the vine. Will I return to literature and writing again in another decade on some new, more refined platform? What will I have lost by not actively maintaining the interest?

For now, I’ll learn something new and see what comes of it. I just feel lucky to have options for absorbing so much creativity, both online and out there in the world.

It’s fascinating that a dashboard can transform to reflect current interests in such a short amount of time. When I returned to the platform last year I began by following van, vehicle, and travel blogs. I wanted ideas on how to make a vehicle livable and enjoy that kind of life. I obsessed over the idea for a year and made little changes to the Jeep. Tinted windows, curtains, a mattress. I eventually spent four months sleeping in my Jeep part-time (the rest of the time at the office or motels). It reminded me of my time living aboard and a sailboat except more freeing. It must have been a transformative experience but I could not say just how. I do know that I now feel strongly about housing. Costs, suburban culture, movements such as van life and tiny houses. Homelessness and the difference an enclosed space–even just a car–can make. The absurdity of not allowing people to sleep in their vehicles when it’s their property and their only option. When I think ahead to retirement I don’t think of a house or property, but a properly built and maintained van. Now I have some knowledge about it when I get there.

The first half of this year was also a tumultuous time as I helped ship some projects and tried (and failed) to save money. My ultimate solution was to move to a low cost/high pay situation, at which point I stopped sleeping in the car and found a more standard dwelling. This allowed me to return to indoor interests such as video games more intensely and it gave me the opportunity to pursue something I’d left behind a decade ago: illustration and design.

So with one experience complete and another beginning, it all changed. I followed illustrators and other visual artists en masse and unfollowed many of those travel and van life blogs that I found so interesting in 2014. My dashboard is the wall of art I’ve never managed to put together. I still sadly peruse blogs rich with great writing and feel overwhelmed, thinking perhaps I’ll follow them someday. What once felt like an absolute truth–writing is the way–now withers on the vine. Will I return to literature and writing again in another decade on some new, more refined platform? What will I have lost by not actively maintaining the interest?

For now, I’ll learn something new and see what comes of it. I just feel lucky to have options for absorbing so much creativity, both online and out there in the world.