Don’t give up

I am frazzled.

For the third time in less than a month, my life has turned upside down — all my stuff stacked up on the ground while I rummage through it trying to find: my toothbrush, some clean clothes, an aspirin.

It’s all been for good and necessary reasons: first, moving from the old van into the new one; then, reorganizing and decluttering the new van for a better fit, and now removing everything so my friend Linda May and I can install super-dark window tint for better privacy.

Also planned: hanging my new hammock diagonally across the back of the van so I can sleep more comfortably than on the back seat, and making and hanging blackout curtains so I can have a light on or work on the computer while camped on a city street at night. (We van dwellers call this ‘stealth camping’. Light control is super important to avoid that unsettling late-night knock on the window, usually by a police officer.)

Scout, LaVanne Too, and I are parked outside the lovely Southern California home of Linda’s family and their four adorable, territorial little dogs who do not like strangers (and especially strange DOGS) walking in the door.

Almost everything I own is stacked up against a wall on their patio. My carefully arranged life is a shambles again, and Scout and I are nervous wrecks. Again.

Our messy home

I know it will be worth it, I really do, but it still sucks

This is the down side of vandwelling for those of us who (apparently) have control issues.

I used to wonder why some homeless people haul around huge piles of stuff in shopping carts. Now I know. When you need your stuff, you need your stuff.

If you have a ‘sticks ‘n bricks’ (house or apartment), you have closets and cabinets and drawers in which to keep your stuff. In big RVs, storage space abounds. Sure, you have to downsize before you can live comfortably in one, but there’s a place for ALMOST everything.

That’s the way, ideally, living in a van is too — only with zero storage space built in. You have to find or make your own.

. . .

I wrote the above two days ago, but what with canine distractions and other frustrations, I didn’t finish this.

The window tint still hasn’t happened — despite numerous attempts — due to wrong tint, wrong time of day, a rain forecast that never transpired, and so on. We will get it done today, come hell or high water.

Meanwhile, we made the blackout curtains yesterday.

Already, I feel so much better

Is it the curtains or just the knowledge that we are at last making progress?

Getting shit done is like that. It’s discouraging when things go wrong and it seems like we’re not getting anywhere — but we are.

As long as you keep trying, you are making progress.

The breakthroughs will come, again and again. You just have to trust and keep trying.

Don’t give up

And don’t forget that I am here to support you personally with weekly phone calls and daily check-ins. (You can still get the half-price deal with the discount code ACBETA.)

Scout relaxes while we humans work