Five Years

It used to be a thing, asking “Where do you see yourself in five years?” during job interviews. I played the game, had a bullshit answer to ride a smile: Well…

We can have a plan, we can build our careers, our 401ks and credit rating, work towards owning a house and having children or whatever we desire—

And then a lay off happens, or cancer, or something not negative like finding the love of your life or coming into enough money you don’t have to worry about money…for awhile. If someone asked you five years ago where you’d be today could you have predicted you’d be where you are? Ten years ago I got a job in Portland at a hotel. I’d been in the biggest city in Oregon for eight days and landed a job. The year before it hadn’t been meant to happen, in 2013 it was.

Five years ago I was married, had been with my employer nearly four years, and “owned” a house with my wife. Two years ago the plan was to find rural land and build some sort of tiny house on it. If you read my book No Signal it seems that every few pages I am sharing my plans for “The Land,” this mythical place or ideal. That was before I understand the downside of solitude, how perilous to one’s mental health being alone all the time can be. If I could find other people to own land with, yeah, I’d pursue that goal again but alone? No. A little solitude is good, healthy even, a lot is detrimental.

I have a good thing going right now: I work in a beautiful place, have company housing, like the people I work with. The Brown Palace has a full sized kitchen and room to record music. I have to move out at the end of March but a travel trailer should be coming available, it’ll be smaller but still much bigger inside than the van. What if it doesn’t come available? What if I needed to buy a new vehicle and build it out? I really like my local managers but we are, ultimately, run by a corporation. What if, company housing out of the equation, I felt compelled to ask for a raise? This is as far as I can take this line of thought in a public setting.

One observation I have about the United States is that we are big on personal freedom without accepting personal responsibility or, at the very least, accepting the consequences of personal freedom. I have all this time to do art shit or write these blogs that four people read but I lead a very lonely life; loneliness doesn’t get to me as it gets to other people, but I still feel it. I have all this freedom to create and the price is that I am usually alone and I accept that. I have very little “security,” I have very little “stuff,” and I found it suits the life I want to lead. Oh, but I am always looking at musical instruments or books so, believe me, there’s a hoarder in all of us. Some sort of classic car? Oh, yeah. All these things I daydream over I understand they are just that. Most likely, I will buy a box truck or small school bus at some point and build it out so I can cook in it and record music in it and that will be my place the rest of my life. The odds of me finding people to own land with are so low that are not worth mentioning and that’s okay. I am not the same person I was five years ago, that person would worry about that “what ifs,” the me that exists today can turn on a dime and not look back.

I’ve been writing a lot about the wage disparity and other social issues in this country. Believe or not, I am not going off topic with this piece. I need to share some tough love because I could not say I have compassion unless I can be brutally honest when it is needed. Things are going to get harder for working people, all this shit with AI and other automation, environmental issues, the American Dream is not just dead the ghost has been exorcised…or should be. What we expected, what we hoped and dream for…odds are we will never have, or having it will be this monumental, stressful struggle. But it’s not all negative, it’s about learning to find happiness in a different setting, to find beauty and joy wherever you find yourself. I’m lucky, I guess, I need very little to be happy, I don’t even have a television. Everything I own fits in a minivan and a closet in my mother’s house. Eventually it will be whatever fits in a twelve foot box truck or a short bus.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

No idea and it’s not a bad thing, for any of us. A year ago I was delivering car parts and renting a room in Sacramento. The plan was to transfer to another branch of the company in a smaller town that would be cheaper to live in. Attempt after attempt to make that happen failed. I finally, as a back up, decided to give being a camp host another go; three days after making that decision I had the gig I am still working at. It was meant to be and I am grateful for it. But if I ended tomorrow it ends tomorrow. I’d probably backpack around Europe for a month. No, I don’t have some romantic idea of what “backpacking in Europe” entails, but keep in mind I lived out of my van for two years; I am pretty skilled at finding safe places to sleep and hang out. Five years ago it might have stressful, now it’s just a life I have adapted to. I’d come back, get some minimum wage job, and figure out how to live off it. This is what I do.

LIKE NON FICTION? I have three non fiction books available on Amazon, all three under the Americna Outback “brand.” Disappearing is a Young Man’s Game is about what when I lived a normal, stick and brick life but felt compelled to live out of a van, closer to nature. No Signal is the story of my first year in Pandette, my 2010 Honda Odyssey. Where the Fires Are tells of my first year as a camp host, giving the stick and brick world one last chance, and then moving on:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00EG7OKUY