Dude, are you homeless? Its a tricky question to answer because homelessness has such a stigma. And it shouldnt, because every person and every persons story is different. I dont consider myself homeless, per se, but if I am, I volunteered. My journey from beginning to now is documented extensively on my site (but no longer front and center), but heres a summary... In 2009, I quit my job as a Senior Artist at Rockstar Games, terminated my lease, and sold or donated everything I own. Again, my motivation for doing so is documented elsewhere. [I say sold everything, but everything I couldnt fit in my car. I do have a small storage unit in Las Vegas... where I keep super important things like a really cool garlic press, a coffee grinder, and a desktop PC & monitor bought in 2007. I used to store about a dozen gym towels there, but I really couldnt live without those. Theres other stuff, but I constantly surprise myself when I visit my storage unit with what I sold and what I kept back then. It happened so quickly that its hard to remember. One day I had a lot of stuff. A couple weeks later I didn’t. The stuff I kept is apparently stuff I didn’t think I could ever live without. Turns out I dont need any of it (except for gym towels. I was right about those). Its like Christmas day every time I see what I actually still own.] Then, as I was about to embark on my journey, something came up (with a friend) and I went and lived with him for 9 months. This 9 months gave me time to enhance my upcoming journey. What was originally going to be a personal journey became a project that I would share with people through social media. I wanted to use the experience to connect with people in a deeply meaningful way, and not one often found through social media. And then in 2010 my journey began. I became part of a real life choose your own adventure. Criss-crossing the country and letting people tell me where to go, who to meet, and what to do. I posted live updates. Let people follow me in real-time on a map using GPS. Accepted personal challenges and more. It was self funded, so I slept in my car each night as a way to conserve resources. I sought out sponsors, but never found one. Sponsors kind of have to find you. Since I rarely spent more than a couple nights in one place, and covered nearly 60,000 miles in the process, it made sense. But as that project finally ended about 18 months later, I continued using social media to share my ongoing experience. I had an audience who was still interested in what I was posting. So why not? And then, somewhere along the way, I made it official. I would voluntarily live in my car for 1,000 days. Id already been doing this, but simply set an end date as a challenge. This became my personal 1,000 days of discomfort challenge and an extension of something I desired when I started my journey. Which was to intentionally push myself beyond my comfort zone as a means for personal growth. Its just that somewhere along the way 1,000 days turned into 5 years (this May). I have volumes of things I could say about this experience, and occasionally it comes out in my posts (I mostly write about what I learn from my experiences, not what I lived through to learn them), but in short, its been interesting, its been hard, and its been rewarding. But, I dont want to do it forever. But until I stop, I continue to learn valuable things from the experience. And I share these things with people who follow me. And I do other things on the side (photography, art...). But mostly, I try to do some good. Thoreau went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately. I went to my car to do the same thing. It worked for him. Its working for me. And when I finally give my TED talk for real one day, some folks who dont get it will have a bit more understanding.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 20:02:32 +0000