Help Yourself

I am visiting my mother in a smallish town south of Sacramento, California. For the first time in four months I have neither a job nor a residence. I spend too much time surfing the Net and far too little figuring out what the Next Step is. I have savings, but that is earmarked for acquiring a home, whatever shape that takes. The van is semi-set up for travel and living out of; I had to look at old pictures to remind myself what goes where. Where will I be in a month? Six months? Unknown.

For a third of year I rented a room in Sacramento, California. I commuted in traffic, I worked a normal job (delivering auto parts for a major auto parts chain), and lead a life I swore I'd never lead again. It was not for me. I got some dental work done and recorded music, things made possible by that normal job and having a living situation with space and electricity. I found an old suitcase full of CDs to listen to as I delivered parts. On my last day I left the suitcase behind with a note reading "Help Yourself."

I do not mind work but I don't want another job. I have no problem building a cabin or digging out rocks, but I've been done with normal jobs for a long time. The reality is that I will need to get another one. Maybe I will get a job with another branch of the Major Auto Parts Store (MAPS, from now on), perhaps at a shop in the northern Central Valley where apartments are less expensive ($800 versus at least $1200). I was paying $815 a month for a rented room in Sacramento which is not sustainable on minimum wage ($15 an hour in California). Paying rent is something I am strongly against, investing in someone else's future, but what's the alternative? Live out of the van again? Not my top choice but I can do it if I have to. Buy a house in a small town somewhere? I was trying to put that in motion but for the amount I am qualified for the selection was close to nothing. Buy land? Realistically, in the areas I've been looking I have roughly a quarter of the money required to buy land (which is usually a cash transaction). So...who knows?

Three days ago I packed everything from my rented room into the van---all my possessions fit in a minivan; barely, but they fit. I will store half of them in a closet at my mother's house until I have a place to live. Right now I am leaning towards getting an apartment in the northern Central Valley but who knows. I'm not really feeling ordinary life, if that makes any sense. Part of me contemplates just driving around in the van until I run out of money around the end of the year. That would be, obviously, fucking stupid, but I'm kind of done with everything. I only include this because maybe you feel the same way after a year of Covid and everything that has brought with it.

On my last day of work I left behind a twenty year old CD suitcase with "Help Yourself" written on it. That note was suggesting people could take CDs to listen to in the delivery vans but it has come to mean more. There are opportunities out there, possibilities, if we are open to them and I would like to think I am. This is an adjustment period, leaving a so called civilized life of a normal job, life in a town, and a residence with indoor plumbing, but something else is out there, something meaningful, I can sense it, I just have to find it....