I don’t need an office, I just want one.

I’ve been writing for a very long time. I started as a kid, using mostly lined notebook paper and a pencil, but sometimes writing in a little journal adorned with cartoon characters and quirky little writing prompts. 

When I started doing the “serious” writing, the writing I thought of as my work, I still did a lot by hand. I used spiral notebooks and sometimes something fancier, like the little cloth-bound red and black Record book I must have picked up from a grocery store somewhere. My idea of fancy, anyway. 

I’m big on journals and notebooks—I’ve had hundreds of them. Mostly I hand-write things in my little pocket Moleskines, but over the years I’ve collected dozens of leather bound journals, some super fancy, some only kinda fancy. I’ve also filled more spirals notebooks and legal tablets and ring binders than I can count. 

But I’ve always had a hankering for the keyboard. 

When I was in high school my grandmother bought me a Canon Typestar 110 electric typewriter. I was learning to type on those giant, blue IBM Selectrics in school, and the idea of a battery-powered typewriter that would actually allow me to scroll up and edit, in-line, was an amazing novelty. I wrote every school paper and tons of short stories and “first thirds” on that typewriter. “First thirds” is what I call the starter chapters for various novels I began and abandoned over the years. 

Having a portable typewriter was handy, but at school I transitioned to the computer lab and to the computers in the journalism room. And that’s when I discovered the wonders of writing digitally. It wasn’t long after that I managed to snag a Commodore 128 and a dot matrix printer. My essays and papers and short stories didn’t look quite as crisp and clean as they once did, but there was suddenly a lot more of them.

After graduation I started college, and at the same time started working for Radio Shack. This was fortuitous, because I met my good friend Bob, who has been a lifelong pal, and who introduced me to flea markets. And it was at the flea market that I found and purchased my first laptop—a Tandy 1000 that was, at the time, nonfunctional. I paid $25 for it. A steal, even if it was a brick.

I have a background in electronics, so I was unafraid to open that laptop and see what was going wrong inside. It turned out to be something very simple and minor—a tiny short in the circuit regulating power, of the type that someone at a repair center must have made and overlooked. I removed the short with a soldering iron, and bam. Working laptop. Just in time for college English.

My English professor favored a particular word processing program, called Norton Textra, and had ensured that it was available for purchase in the college bookstore. It wasn’t expensive, from what I recall. But it was... glorious.

I had used various word processor programs up to that point, mostly whatever came with my computer. Which probably means something like Notepad, or whatever text editor was there by default. Norton Textra gave me a whole new lease on life, writing-wise. It had features, like grammar and spell check, and even a tool that measured the Flesch-Kincaid readability rating of your document. 

Norton Textra was my word processor of choice for years, until Microsoft essentially overwhelmed the world to become the dominant word processing tool. I was, eventually, forced to trade my beloved Norton Textra for Microsoft Works, and then eventually traded that for Microsoft Word. 

I still miss Norton Textra. Sometimes I Google it to see how it’s doing. 

Since those early days, there’s been multiple technological revolutions. Writing went from being an activity I did while locked in my bedroom to something I could do while sitting at a cafeteria table to something I could do literally anywhere I was. I’ve had an evolution happen under my fingertips, from the humble pencil and sheet of notebook paper to desktop computer to clunky laptop to portable and handheld devices. 

Even on that list, things evolved in astounding ways. At one point I was doing all of my writing on a Palm V with a portable keyboard—this was the era of the PDA, the “personal digital assistant,” which was the precursor of the smart phone and smart tablet. And from there I’ve had so many small, handheld writing tools and folding keyboards and Bluetooth devices, I couldn’t possibly recount them all. 

The current version of all of that, though, is that I have multiple devices to allow me to write in whatever way I need, whenever I need to do it. 

We’re currently on the road full time, so I’ve culled down some of what I had in my home office to be more portable. I was using a Mac Mini as my “office computer,” and my MacBook Pro as my “portable computer.” Because some of the work I do requires more computing power and options than writing requires. But because I’m obsessed with portability, I eventually started writing almost exclusively on my iPad Pro. Its “always-on” internet makes it ridiculously useful for quick research, and for instantly backing up everything I write to the cloud, which facilitates writing on whatever device I need, whenever I need to switch.

For a long while I was traveling to conferences via airplanes and rental cars, staying in hotel rooms just long enough to sleep and shower, and spending most of my time in hotel bars and lobbies. For those trips, I started using my iPhone for writing. All the same software is there, and it’s always in my pocket. 

At first I made sure I always had a folding keyboard or a Bluetooth keyboard with me, to make writing on my phone easier. But at times that’s tough, too. And sometimes I find myself sitting in space or waiting in a line or seated at an event that isn’t keeping my attention, and the urge to write strikes. So I have learned to use the onscreen keyboard of my iPhone, which allows me to write and edit from literally anywhere, literally anytime.

It’s been quite an evolution.

The point is, people often ask me about what it’s like to write from the road. They wonder if I ever feel cramped in the van, or if I ever get tired of having to “find a place to write.” They ask me if I miss my writer’s space, my little home office.

I do. But not for the reasons they may think.

The truth is, I’ve learned how to have an “office anywhere” headspace. 

My typical writing setup, in the van, is to turn the passenger seat around, kick my feet up on a little folding camp stool, and place my iPad on a little lap desk that rests on my knees. It’s probably one of the most comfortable writing spaces I’ve ever had. I may keep doing it, once we’re back in a house full time. 

And of course, I have my iPhone, which lets me write from literally anywhere. 

And to keep distractions at bay, I plug in my AirPod Pros, which dampen outside sound and let me “close the door” to what I think of as my “mental office.” 

This setup is flexible, and portable. Which is exactly what I need. It’s also kind of inspiring. 

I’ve come to realize that I have always preferred keeping my life and work portable. I have always preferred the “write from anywhere” philosophy. And technology has been evolving as I go, allowing me more and better options. It’s been wonderfully accommodating. 

I’m blessed to live in the era I do, but I think that in any era I would eventually have made my writing portable. What is a pocket Moleskine, after all, if not the ancestor of the iPhone? And portable typewriters... those have been around for centuries. I own a couple as collectibles now, and in a pinch I would definitely carry one along with me and set it up wherever I needed to work, if I had no other options.

Office anywhere. Write anywhere. It’s a philosophy that’s allowed me to travel full time and still produce books, stories, blog posts and more. The evolution of my writing life has made given me the flexibility and power to be a writer on my own terms. And that is something pretty wonderful.

---

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

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I was in an Meijer’s grocery story in Michigan, about a year ago, taking the time to explore the aisles and be “not in the van” for an hour or so. Kara was doing some solo browsing of her own. It was some private time for both of us—something we need, every now and then, when circumstances (such as rain or other inclement weather) have us cooped up for too long. 

I have this thing for grocery stores. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but they bring me great comfort. And especially stores like the one we were exploring, which was more of a big box store chain, I guess (albeit one I’d never heard of prior to that visit). In addition to food and groceries the place sold just about anything you can imagine—tools, camping supplies, electronics, and best of all, books. In fact, there were at least four aisles of books, including tables where titles were stacked and displayed.

At that point in our #vanlife journey, we hadn’t had much opportunity to visit bookstores, thanks to pandemic restrictions. And this was heartbreaking, because there was a time where I visited bookstores nearly every day of my life, browsing the titles, sitting with a cup of coffee to read or write, soaking in the inspiration and ambience, the sheer psychic energy that comes with being surrounded by the works of other authors. 

I missed it. Sorely. I’m so very grateful to have it back.

In addition to my weird passion for grocery stores, I’m particularly fond of the book sections. This may be due to the fact that I grew up in Wild Peach, Texas, where bookstores were nonexistent, and even public libraries were hard to come by.

It’s not that there weren’t any—Lake Jackson had a Hastings, and there was a wonderful used bookstore called The Book Rack that formed my mental template for used book stores. And in the Brazos Mall there was, of course, a B. Dalton and a Walden Books (God rest their souls). Brazoria, West Columbia, and Sweeny all had public libraries, of course—the closest to where I lived. But all of these options were only available to those who had motorized transport.

if I couldn’t ride my bike to it, then it didn’t exist. And besides, I didn’t have any money.

So the only real exposure I had to books, outside of a school setting, was when we went to the grocery story, or to a Walmart, or even better, when we went to a Sam’s Club. And in these places I would move as quietly and reverently as if I were in church, picking up paperbacks, reading their covers, opening them to read a few pages from the front. Heaven. 

I’d say that a full 90% of the books I owned from the ages of 0 to 16 came from grocery stores. After I got a driver’s license and access to a car, I also gained access to book stores and libraries that were out of bike range. My collection expanded to include things that weren’t necessarily on a bestseller’s list.

But I’ll confess... even then, I still bought a lot of my books from Walmart. Old habits die hard.

I’ve gotten off the path a little here. But the point is, when we were stretching our legs a little in that Meijer’s in Michigan, and when I stumbled onto their fairly impressive book section, it was like traveling back in time. It felt, just a little, like going home again.

The whole van life thing makes owning paperbacks a little impractical. There’s just no space for them. Of course, the RV life in general has this issue. Which is why so many people buy a book, or borrow one from the laundry at an RV park, read it, and then pass it on (such as putting it in the laundry at another RV park). With the rise of Little Neighborhood Libraries, this kind of buy/borrow-read-donate thing is going mainstream. People seem to love donating their books for someone else to enjoy.

Giving away books, though, has always been tough for me. I’m better at it now, but it was rough going for awhile there. Which, I guess, is one reason why reading ebooks has been such a great advance in my life. Not only does it save space while we travel, I can always have a book on hand to read, without having to wait until we can find a place that sells them, and I never have to worry over giving the books away. 

Ebooks have lots of great advantages. I love them.

Still... there really is something magical about holding a paperback in your hands, smelling the pages, seeing your progress as whatever slip of receipt or Post-It Note or candy wrapper you’re using as a bookmark travels from front cover to back cover. 

I love paperbacks, too.

All of these things—feelings and emotions, nostalgia, and the sheer excitement of being in a place that sold books, after most of a year of isolation—all of these things must surely have contributed to me picking up a copy of Camino Island, by John Grisham.

I’ve read Grisham’s work before. Classics, by now. The man is a heavy influence on me as a writer, with books like The Firm and The Pelican Brief and A Time to Kill. I’ve read a lot of his work over the years. But something about Camino Island felt different right from the start. 

For one thing, there’s that cover. It looks like a romance novel, if I’m being honest. Like something Nicholas Sparks would write.  And even though I’m not much of a beach fan, there is something inviting about the scene of a wooden walkway terminating at a line of sand, ocean, and sky. 

But the thing that hooked me was the description, which promised a tale of intrigue regarding a  set of stolen, rare manuscripts that end up in the hands of a bookstore owner who has his fingers on the pulse of publishing. 

The first part of the book is a heist story, which is always appealing. The rest is a hunt for the stolen manuscripts that feels like a spy novel. 

The characters are intriguing and appealing—to the point of having me fantasizing about life as a bookstore owner in the Florida Keys. Bruce Cable, said bookstore owner, isn’t even the primary protagonist of the first novel, and yet his demeanor and style and history make him someone you absolutely want to know. 

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And in the sequel, Camino Winds, Bruce is the primary protagonist, and we get to follow along and know him better, which feels like scratching an itch left by the first book. 

The fact that these books provide a kind of deep dive look into some of the nuances of the traditional publishing world, at least in terms of the authors and the booksellers, makes them all the more appealing to me. It’s a bit like seeing that world from the inside, alongside Grisham himself, in a way that typically feels inaccessible. 

Grisham expresses an unfavorable view of self published authors, in the first novel, but I don’t even mind. I still felt right at home, sitting at the dinner table with Bruce Cable and his eclectic collection of quirky, broken author friends, gossiping and backbiting, teasing each other mercilessly about books past and books not-yet-present.

The plots of these two books are filled with intrigue and danger of the kind one only finds when a great deal of money is involved. And Grisham has managed to weave tales that have so many side paths and turns, you get that “heist story” vibe throughout. Even the more mundane elements of the story feel exotic and enticing. 

I read the first book as a paperback, taking great pleasure in lounging in one of our camp chairs under the awning of our van, as we moved about the country. From lakeside in Holland, Michigan, to the foot of the Black Mountains in South Dakota and the Rockies in Colorado, to the long and mournful plains of Wyoming, and finally back in my home state of Texas (just in time for an historic bout of winter weather), I read and enjoyed Camino Island as a new old favorite. 

And upon finishing that first book, I immediately bought the second book, Camino Winds, this time as an ebook, and read it as the polar vortex swept through Texas, knocking out power and damn near freezing us all to death. 

If I never hear the phrase “unprecedented times” ever again, I will be astonishingly grateful.

Reading a book about the aftermath of a hurricane while bundling up next to a fireplace in a dark room, trying to keep my frozen appendages warm, is kind of head trip. But it did make the book all the more memorable. And again, another “old favorite.”

These books are wonderfully adventurous. And if you happen to be interested in the world of writing and publishing, they’re a playful treat you’re sure to love. 

I’ll be rereading both, in the future, and I look forward to more in the series. 

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

“Isn’t it kind of cramped in the van?”

When Kara and I first started this whole RV-lifestyle journey, the first thing we did was sell our four-bedroom, 2,800 square foot house and downsize to a one-bedroom 940  square foot apartment. We lived there for almost two years as we figured out the best next step. Eventually we bought a 38-foot motor coach that was just under 300 square feet.

Getting tighter.

And yet, somehow, that motorhome ended up feeling more spacious than the apartment did. Sure, there was some shuffle—we, like a lot of people who go full-time into an RV—made the mistake of trying to transfer our whole lives into the rig. We tried to replicate our house in there, which meant we had too much stuff. And too much stuff meant we were living around our space instead of living in it. 

Over time, we came off the road and got another apartment. This time it was a vast, luxurious two bedroom with about 1,500 square feet. Room to stretch!

About two years after that we decided to move yet again, and this time relocated to an apartment that was referred to as a “flat” in their brochure, which amounted to about 2,400 square feet of townhome living, complete with three bedrooms and a garage. Massive. 

Enter the goldfish principle—you and your stuff tend to expand to fill the space you occupy. And we did. We pulled everything we had out of storage and filled that flat, really settling in and occupying the space. It was comfortable, and we enjoyed it.

We were house hunting when the idea of getting back on the road occurred to us.

We had put a bid in on a house, and we were approved on a loan, and then they came back asking for a bigger down payment. We felt pretty strongly that we could come up with that, if we needed to. Or I could probably have worked some writerly magic and convinced them to stick to the original deal. 

Instead, it got us thinking.

Why were we trying to buy that house in the first place? Did we need more space? No, we decided. It was about ownership, having property. We wanted something that would gain value over time. An investment. 

So... why there? 

If the idea was to be strategic about buying property, about making an investment, why buy in that neighborhood? Why buy in that area? Property values (at the time) were pretty stable. Any appreciation would be fairly minimal. And in the meantime we’d own a place in an area we were constantly road tripping to get away from.

So why not just get on the road again?

Ok, that was part A. And it was enough to get us excited about the idea. 

But part B was all about downsizing.

Kara was always the more nervous one, of the two of us, when it came to living in a smaller space. She likes to spread out, to cook big meals in a well-appointed kitchen, to have plenty of space for projects and creating. I tend to work from a desk. I like to have a space that’s all me, but it can be fairly small and I’d be fine. In fact, in each of the massive home spaces we ever lived in, my office was where I spent the most time, and it was typically one of the smaller rooms in the house. 

But Kara surprised me when we started talking about getting back on the road. She was the one who suggested we put everything into storage and downsize to something tiny. 

We ended up buying a 24-foot camper that was, maybe on the high side, about 180 square foot of living space. Our smallest home yet.

Again, we took too much stuff with us. But at least this time we had the additional of the back of a pickup to cram some things into, so the living space itself was relatively open. And for a few months, we lived in it just fine. We each had our seats at the table, where we could work. We had a cramped little kitchen, but it was enough for Kara to do some cooking. It just turned out that cooking on the road wasn’t really something we cared to do that often. More on that later. 

We were comfortable in the camper. But there was a downside we could never have predicted. 

We had planned all this, bought the camper, moved our stuff into storage, and terminated the lease on our massive townhome, all in the first couple of months of 2020.

Remember 2020?

In fact, the last day of our lease was April 1st. And it was on that day that the whole world suddenly went into lockdown over COVID-19.

I won’t kid ya... we panicked a little. 

Because here we were, effectively homeless, at a time when traveling was sort of frowned upon. Campgrounds we’d planned to visit were shut down. Restaurants and cafes we’d planned to work from were turning people away. Stores we planned to shop in were limiting the number of people who could come in per day, and their shelves were stripped bare. 

We couldn’t find public restrooms. We couldn’t get groceries. We couldn’t find places to park. 

Thank God for Kara’s folks. As much as we hated to impose on them, we really had no other place to go. So we managed to get a storage space for the camper, we grabbed our stuff, and we moved into a single bedroom of their house, about 100 square feet.

We stayed there for two months before things started calming down out in the world. It was still hard to find public restrooms, and you still couldn’t go into restaurants, per se. But things were beginning to open up just enough. And we got on the road again.

We didn’t get far. We stuck to Texas for the first few months. And living in the camper was just fine. Small space, yes. But we were learning how to live in that space.

So one unexpected downside to the camper, though, did come up.

We were parked in a pretty amazing campground in Kerrville, Texas, which is a couple of hours in all directions for anything you might want to do or see. Shopping, dining, activities... all of those things were a trek. And since public restrooms were still kind of hard to come by, and only a few businesses were opening up in reasonable ways, we found we were a little screwed if we were more than an hour or two from the camper. We’d have to ditch and drive back, just to use the restroom or have a meal.

That was when Kara asked, “What if we traded the truck and camper and downsized to a van?”

Downsize. Again.

We were already living in a space smaller than the bathroom we’d had at our last apartment, but sure... downsize. Again.

We were driving back to “home,” to her parents’ place, when we stopped at an RV dealer and took a look at what would ultimately become our new mobile residence. It took some negotiating and some haggling and some dealing, but eventually we managed to swing it. We traded our brand new F-150 and brand new Lance camper trailer and got a brand new Coachmen Beyond conversion van. About 70 square feet.

Downsizing to that space meant getting real. We knew we couldn’t take all of it with us. Not even half of it. Not even a third of it. 

So for about a month we went back and forth from our storage units (plural), loading and unloading, trying and discarding, figuring out what we really needed, what we could get by with, and what had to stay. 

In a lot of ways, even after a year of living in the van and traveling the US, we’re still trying to figure it out. 

I think we’ve gotten to a fairly good place with it, but we still, occasionally, have to reassess. I have a backpack full of production gear, for example, that I’ve barely used. A backpack. And I’m still considering taking out only the things I’ve used and putting the rest in storage, the next time we pass through. The same goes for some of my clothes, some of my tools, and a few other odds and ends. 

You’d be amazed at how little it takes to get by, out here. Living in 70 square feet wakes you up to the fact that all the living space is outside.

And cooking...

Well, we don’t want to eat out all the time. But cooking in the van is a very challenging event. We do have an induction cooktop, and we have pans and pots and utensils. We have a tiny little fridge, though, that can’t hold much more than a meal at a time. So the cooktop ends up being our coffee maker (we heat up water in a kettle and use French presses). 

We do have a microwave, but we don’t use it much. Most of our food is lighter fare, things we can eat straight from the fridge or the pantry, supplemented by the occasional pick-up meal. We avoid fast food, so a lot of those meals come from Whole Foods and grocery stores, and sometimes restaurants.

I’ve taken to cooking on a camp stove, though, which is fun. We do that maybe three times per week, and we typically pick up whatever we’re cooking the day we’re going to make it. 

We aren’t starving.

So living in 70 square feet, we get a lot of comments and questions. “Isn’t it kind of cramped in the van?”

Yes and no.

We’ve learned how to live in this space. We’ve even learned how to be “apart” in the space. Kara tends to work from her bed, where she can set up like a sofa. I tend to work from the passenger seat, which turns around and allows me to kick my feet up on a camp stool and use my lap desk. It works. It’s enough.

But the real breakthrough is that point about all the space being outside.

We don’t feel cramped in the van, because the van takes us to places that are expansive, wide open, vast. I work outside sometimes. We take walks and hikes. We visit historic sites and tour monuments. Things have started opening up out here, so we even go to those cafes and restaurants and coffee shops we were missing.

It’s pretty amazing, how much space you can get out of 70 square feet.

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

Photo courtesy of my amazing wife and resident sleepy-head photographer, Kara Tumlinson

Greetings from chilly Leander, Texas!

This morning we’re parked in an RV park in Leander, having rolled in from Sugar Land yesterday evening. We’d gotten a much later start than I had wanted—a lot of prep, packing, and organization got left to the last minute. But I think that worked out to our favor—it meant a few last hours with the in-laws, a very hearty breakfast, and a chance to catch a nap and do some reading before we got on the road.

A good day, in other words.

There was, of course, the obligatory stop at Buc-ee’s—the Texas landmark super-sized convince store chain that started it’s life in the same town where I started mine, Brazoria, Texas, ten years after I started roaming the Earth and asking where I could get some Beaver Nuggets. Ask and ye shall receive, Young Kevin.

Buc-ee’s has been a long-standing part of my mental and cultural landscape. I knew it first as a tiny, dingy convenience store in downtown Brazoria that in my teen years got an upgraded, fine-looking sister store several blocks away, and miles closer to my house. Just in time for me to get a driver’s license and a teenage lust for sodas and junk food, Buc-ee’s started its meteoric rise to Lone Stardom, establishing itself and its colorful red and yellow beaver logo as true Texas staple. With billboards punning and winning throughout the state, if you’re driving through you’re going to see it. And you are going to be intrigued.

And when you see the mega stations, with hundreds of pumps and crowds that would be envied by Disney World, you’re going to stop. Because nobody can pass that kind of spectacle.

Try the Beaver Nuggets, trust me.

Speaking of billboards, one of my favorite roadside ads in the entire world is a Buc-ee’s billboard, and the only one i’ve seen outside of Texas. It’s in Florida, of all places, and reads “Cleanest Restrooms Anywhere! 797 Miles. You can hold it!”

You gotta respect that kind of advertising acumen.

As much as I respect and love the Beaver (sounds dirtier than I intended), Buc-ee’s is just a way station, not the destination. Once Kara and I had our required road trip fare, it was back to the highways and byways, rumbling along in the Novel-T—our pet name for the 2020 Coachmen Beyond travel van we lived in for four months as we roamed from Texas, through lesser states (sorry Indiana), and into Michigan. We hadn’t intended to go there, hadn’t even heard of Holland, Michigan, before essentially throwing a dart at a map and deciding, “Yeah, that sounds good.” But that was maybe the best place we could have ended up, accidentally or otherwise. It was a healing kind of place, and a good start to an adventure that Kara and I had dreamt about for years.

We made our way through the rest of the country from there, not quite seeing it all but seeing enough to sate our travel lust for at least a short while. We had some bumps (literal and figurative), we had ups and downs, good times and bad, sickness and health. It was a good trip. Four months of travel, just the two of us and Mini, the tiny dog with the biggest heart of any living thing I know.

In November we had planned to go to Utah for Thanksgiving, but between snow and the pandemic and getting sick and a very unpleasant incident with the black tank that I’ll tell you over some stiff drinks, we decided it would be better to go “home.”

So that’s a loaded word, and it’s one I’ve come to appreciate in a new way lately. Home, as they say, is where the heart is. And since our hearts go with us, OR WE DIE, then home can be anywhere we are. Anywhere that we find the love, support, and joy of family and loved ones.

So when we decided we wanted to go “home,” it told me a story, though I wouldn’t understand it until later. This morning, in fact.

We needed to see family and friends. We needed to see comfortable and familiar surroundings. We needed to take a minute and regroup.

So we stayed with Kara’s folks from Thanksgiving through the New Year, a couple of months worth of chatting and having dinner together, having breakfast on Sundays, bickering sometimes about politics and pandemics, and sharing memories and stories. We saw friends, and took small road trips. And I personally read, and read, and read, and wrote some, too. And healed and rested, because I needed that.

But the itch started about a month ago, and yesterday I scratched like a bear rubbing the bark off of a pine. We got back into the van, back on the road, and headed for home.

The next home.

Something I forgot to mention earlier—on our way back to Sugar Land, we stopped near Austin, and started looking around for where we just might want to set down roots. We landed on a place, near Leander. And it’s currently being built. We’re beyond the moon excited, believe me!

It’s going to be months before the house is finished, and there are all sorts of challenges to deal with. Patience is the biggest. And honestly, the way the world is at the moment, there’s really no way to know for sure if things will or won’t fall to pieces. They could. The whole house deal could fall apart.

That’s the risk we’re all taking right now. The world is insane, and trying to steal our magic back. But to quote Red from Shawshank Redemption, “You either get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.'“

The risk that things could fall apart can’t be an excuse to never try for what you want. Challenges and impossible-seeming odds make victory that much sweeter. Like a bag full of Beaver Nuggets.

Trust me, try them.

So for now, Kara and I are back in the van. We’re doing a little “Texas Tour.” We’re first putting ourselves in the place we’ll be living, trying the fit, getting comfortable with it. That’s something we’ve done since we’ve been married—put yourself in the space. Live as if. It’s led to some pretty amazing experiences for the two of us. We’ve gained a lot more than we’ve lost.

This chilled morning in Leander, with my back propped against a cushion, a cup of coffee at hand, and the sun rising outside the van’s window—with Mini rooting under the blanket covering my legs, and Kara apparently building a 747 out of odds and ends so she can go take a shower (seriously, she is one of the most elaborate preparation people I know), well… with all that, what else could I say but, “I’m home.”

Home again.

So what does home mean to you? Tell me in the comments. If you’ve read this far, you’ve earned some screen time of your own.

Kara and I are back in the Houston area, where we’ve been doing some... shifting. 

First, we came back to the area primarily to get to our three storage units, in an effort to consolidate them down to one. This turned out to be a little impractical—we still own a lot of stuff.

It’s a “problem” we’ve been dealing with for awhile now, but it’s become more prominent as we’ve stared making a move to be more minimalist in how we live. And I put “problem” in quotes because, when it comes down to it, having a bunch of stuff crammed into a storage unit isn’t that big of a deal. We’re just like millions of other Americans. More wealth than we can carry with us. 

But it’s quote-problem-quote because we’re aiming for that more minimalist approach to living. There’s something we’ve discovered, since getting on the road, that makes having multiple storage units—or even a single storage unit—a quote-problem-quote. It has less to do with the stuff and more to do with what the stuff means to us.

Those storage units contain a lot of old memories. Nostalgia, in some cases. But in others it’s just... weight. 

As I was moving around furniture and crates and boxes, I made a joke I’ve made before: “Why is everything we own heavy?”

There’s a sutra in that question. 

As Kara and I have transitioned to living full time out of a small space, forced to travel light because we simply can’t carry everything with us, it’s started to dawn on us that the less we have to be concerned about, physically, the less concerned we feel, psychologically. The weight of all that stuff starts to slough off, and we start to feel free. 

That’s one of the reasons we’ve ended up spending more time messing around with the storage units than we first intended. We’re starting to look at “owning things” in a new way. For one, we’re starting to realize that for awhile now it’s our stuff that’s owned us, not the other way around.

Case in point: We’re paying for three storage units, to house a bunch of stuff that is a mix of things we care about and things that we don’t. We’re paying money for it to sit there, unused. Most of it we’ve wanted to replace or dispose of for a long while. 

So... joke’s on us.  Our stuff has us right where it wants us.

When we first got back to Houston I took a week off to just start ploughing through the bigger of the three storage units, with the goal of emptying it entirely. It was harder than I anticipated, because all that stuff kept reminding me of reasons to keep it. “You might need this thingy some day. Wouldn’t this doohickey be handy under the right circumstances? This is a jigamabob that you got from person X... you wouldn’t want them to think you’re ungrateful!”

I’m a contingency kind of guy. Call it Boy Scout preparedness—I like to keep resources handy, just in case. Tools, materials, equipment, you name it. I still have junk I picked up in my teens.

So many things I own are there for contingencies.

The trouble is, those contingencies rarely happen. And though it’s nice to have a few things on hand that I can use to solve problems, it’s a rare day indeed when I need to dig through The Box of Many Wires and retrieve that old cable that I kept from a gaming system I haven’t had since 1992.

So, tough as it was, Kara and I started making the hard decisions, and letting a lot of our stuff go.

Donation bins are currently bulging with my contingency items, as well as clothes and shoes I don’t have room for, tools I have in triplicate, video equipment that hasn’t worked since the first President Bush was in office, and so forth. 

We managed to cull things down from three storage units to just two.

That may not sound like a huge leap forward, but it did wonders for taking some of the weight off of our shoulders. It’s a good start. And it really is just that—a start. Our plan is to come back periodically and do more clearing in the storage units, until one day, finally, we should be rid of a second one. And then, maybe, we’ll try downsizing the third one. I’d love to get that pile down to about half the size of one of those units. 

To be sure, there are things we’ll always hold on to. Kara’s grandmother left us some very nice antique furniture that we want to put in a forever home some day. I have certain studio gear that I want to use in that same home, in a dedicated studio space. There are various items that have nostalgic value for us. But if we are honest and diligent with culling this stuff down, I think we’ll find ourselves feeling less weighted down by it. 

Less mental weight to slow us down as we travel through the world and experience life. Less weight to hold me back as I write and produce more books and content.  That’s just good for everyone. 

And as a part of going more minimalist... we’re downsizing our living space.

A little over a week ago we took a leap and traded the truck and travel trailer for a travel van.

Effectively, we cut our living in space in half, meaning we have to carry even less with us as we travel the US. 

#VanLife

The people who know about this already have been surprised and, I think, a little delighted by the move. It’s tough to figure out, I know. We had a hard time envisioning this at first ourselves.  But now...

So the progression was to first sell our four-bedroom, 2500 square-foot home and moving into a one-bedroom apartment. Then we moved into a 38-foot motorhome. Then we moved back into a two-bedroom apartment, then to a three-bedroom apartment. And then we downsized back into a travel trailer. And now we’re living in a van that has roughly 120 square-feet of living space.

Go figure. 

Downsizing has definitely forced us to be more minimalist, but it’s also forced us to be more creative with what we do carry. Everything has to serve more than one purpose, for example. Things also have to be moved from place to place in what my friend Joe Russo calls “the van shuffle.” (See Joe & Kait Russo’s own van life/camper life adventures at https://weretherussos.com). It’s a bit of work, and a huge shift in mindset. But it’s... well, it’s oddly fun. And, even better, it’s oddly freeing. 

We live in this tiny space, but our lives just got a lot bigger. 

I’ll be covering more about van life and our adventures on the road in future posts, as we learn and grow into this. But Kara and I are excited about all of this. And Mini, despite pouting a little at first, has gotten into her own groove. 

We’re living smaller and it’s making our lives so much larger. I can’t wait to see where we grow from here.