Please Help if You Can

Hello Everyone,
I've reached a point where my art addiction, combined with that of my fellow artists has overgrown our personal pocket books and you all are people that are friends or family of the artists, or among our network of other amazing artists and creators or patrons and saints.

It pains me (as you all know) to even begin to ask for assistance this way - my first time, be gentle with me -  but I was convinced by a very wise woman that since I'd freely given throughout my life to worthwhile projects and had created all this time without ever having done this, I was not "begging" to ask for assistance for my own worthwhile projects. So here goes:

My partner and I have assembled an amazing group of eighteen volunteer artists who are all diligently at work creating fun and meaning in this world and we are asking you to consider assisting us as much as you are able. We all do this as a gift and expect nothing for it, but, we haven't been able to convince the gas stations, truck rental companies or lumber yards to do likewise (yet).

So please take a moment to look at this website and if you feel moved, please help us finish and transport this project by clicking on the "DONATE" button at the bottom of the page and make whatever donation you are able, through paypal so we can continue to bring art to the world.

http://glancefloor.anticonformityusa.com/PHILOSOPHY

Thank you for all your help! And please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think would be interested in assisting us.

Take Two! On Cages and Sages.

It's been a month since my last post here. The RV has been in the shop this long. Apparently the previous owners decided to do some interesting Frankenstein repairs and the new mechanics had to pull in experts from all over the world, either that or they found the good scotch in my hidden cabinet and have been having weekend parties. I just hope they restocked.

My son is with his father for some orthodontist appointments and I have been staying with friends. I seem to have developed into a sort of modern day Mary Poppins and, in fact, told this by a friend, I was promptly given a delicate ruffled polka-dot umbrella, which I will attempt to employ for levitation but I'm not holding my breath.

A few weeks ago, I realized that my very well laid out plans of building the Glance Floor in Flagstaff and then installing the first Abundance Tree at the Star School were not going to happen. The Abundance Tree is now postponed until September and all the wood painstakingly packed onto and inside the RV was removed and loaded into a friend's backyard in Phoenix, a new Phoenix crew assembled on the fly and we've been working on it in the 114 degree heat and record humidity for this desert region. I can honestly say that I'm now acclimated to Arizona. The burn will be a breeze compared to this.

I have, an amazing crew - always looking for the silver lining or what was "meant to be" has opened me up to some amazing opportunities to get to know people with similar mindsets and good work-ethics. It may be strange for a homeless woman whose entire worldly possessions have been sitting in a dealership trying not to explode to say that she's been blessed, but the fact is, I really have. And I've learned a level of patience that is frightening.

A friend told me that I was experiencing "Holy Poverty" and I think that will need to be the name of an art project some day. The same friend suggested an interesting name for the RV - I've decided it needs a name, since it's now taken on a bit of a personality. The friend suggested it be called the "Sage Cage" when I told him that I'd been considering painting questions on the sides of the RV to inspire conversations in the passing cars. I told him I was a bit uncomfortable with this as it implies something about me that I'm not really feeling I adequately embody - but perhaps I could assign the moniker to my son and feel better about it. Then he suggested that I could assign it to everyone else in the cars around.

So all the world is a cage. And all it's players, sages. I like this.

Thank you, all the sages I've been lucky enough to cross paths with. I'll see you all on the road.

Stuck

Well,there isn't much to report this week as I'm still stuck here in Tempe, although slowly picking away at the issues with my RV. There are a lot of things I'm just going to have to deal with. And a lot of things I'm going to have to learn to fix. The ETA on departure for Winslow has been moved back a week because of airline issues getting my son back from his father's but we'll work through those. Inspiration comes in many forms and I'm working on finding the inspiration in being stuck. My personal mythology (some would call spirituality) includes a sort of overall meaning in everything that happens. So these stuck times must mean something. Perhaps there is an energy that is only created when starting from a dead stop and that sort of energy is what's necessary to complete something big. Or perhaps there are lessons in being stuck - lessons in patience, in tenacity. But then, I often feel as though I'm running out of levels of those particular lessons to learn.

Any day now, I'd like to be faced with having to learn how to handle fame and riches. I am really up for a new challenge.

Go Slow

The Learning Curve
So far, we've moved exactly nineteen point seven miles from East Mesa to Tempe, Arizona. I took a brief trip (less than a week) from here to Witch Well, Arizona to attend the Arizona regional burn, Toast and to test the RV functions. All was well except for what we think was a little vapor-locking. We're hoping the adjustments and repairs my mechanic friend made will take care of that and that we won't have this problem on the next trip to set up the Abundance Tree at the Star School outside of Winslow. Although we're not quite "on the road" because of repairs still in the works, we're meeting all sorts of good people. The serendipity is already working. In the house we're parked live artists and others we're sharing stories and helpful input. There is something that happens when you leave your house and enter the larger world that feeds the serendipity - that alone, begins the process.

I knew intuitively that this experiment was going to teach me things. I just didn't know what, or how much. So far I've learned things ranging from ways to find free everything, low cost whatever is left, and exactly how many truly decent people there are in the world when you get out of your house and start meeting them. I've learned how to patch holding tanks with fiberglass and epoxy - which has me seriously considering more artistic uses of the material, and several minor mechanical processes. I have a really good understanding of what the construct of an RV septic system looks like. I can tell you where to buy some pretty cheap plumbing and vent cover supplies, and I'm not as afraid of things failing as I used to be.

Slowing Down
The one thing I didn't count on learning, however, is exactly how important it is to slow down. The first week in the RV left me battered and bruised. I flung myself around as I, apparently, have been doing all along and knocking into just about every surface of both the vehicle and my body. I bruise easily. People looked worried. But I've begun to notice myself slowing down - physically, I'm moving more slowly, stepping more lightly, and seem more aware of my surroundings - the minutia of those surroundings. This has caused my mind to also slow and reason a little more carefully.

In an RV or other small space, it's extremely important to be aware of where everything is, and so organizational systems become a lifeline. Without knowing where everything is, you can easily spend hours moving things around trying to find one thing that you know you have, but have no idea where. I anticipated this journey making me more organized and facilitating my already in motion simplification strategy, but I had no idea just how much. Stepping over things gets very tiresome, very quickly. Everything is suspect - everything must be justified. CD Jewel cases make no sense. Drawers turn two cubic feet of usable space into one.

Good Things Come to Those Who Stop Complaining
There is no way to make everything work all at once, or to create the usability of the space I want as quickly as I want, and the comfort level in the meantime is vastly different than it would be in a regular home environment, and so the patience it takes to keep at task, instead of attempting to escape, and to pick away at the space while maintaining sanity is its own new skill. And this bleeds into all areas of life. My patience for all people, all situations, even the most annoying has doubled. Spending my birthday at the airport - all day long? Not nearly as bad as bumping into four boxes of things to be organized on my way to, well, everywhere, in the hundred square foot area I now call my only home.

Someone on a mailing list I'm on shared the Buddhist concept of Dana, or the practice of the perfection of giving. I realized that what I'm doing has a lot to do with this type of practice. The trees are gifts, and represent this virtue - allow people to experiment with the concept. But a little more digging led me to the Six Paramitas - Buddhist perfections or virtues to practice - and I began to think that somehow, intuitively, I've been set on a path to practice what I can of these. True believers of Buddhism may take issue with my stumbling upon these ideas and taking from them what has meaning, but it's not so much that I am pulling piece-meal from a religious philosophy as it is that I am intuitively following a path that only after being set in motion is revealed to be closely aligned with an established path. This all leads me back to my reliance on the intuitive mind. It keeps bringing me closer to peace, happiness, and a magical existence. Even the drudgery is fruitful - learning to work with new materials and becoming more self-sufficient beats coding papers for meaningless entry into databases any day.

Home Free
I've begun joking about being homeless to people I know, or new people I meet. I'm trying on the label for size. It sets people's minds at ease somehow and makes for some fun conversations. A new friend that I tried this with shook his head and refused to buy my label and instead told me that I wasn't homeless, I was "home free". It's funny, isn't it, how words and the ways they are manipulated can make such a difference in how we perceive our reality.

Checklist for New Towns

The repairs on the RV are within sight of being wrapped up (knocking furiously on anything resembling wood, rhyming with wood, or reminding me of wood in any way), and so my mind has begun to turn to where to go next. We've been afforded a wonderful spot in front of a friend's house in Tempe for the last few weeks and a hookup to electric for twenty dollars (thank you friends!) but the focus is on self-containment and so although we've still got a ways to go to get there, I'd like the plan of action firmly in place for the big kickoff. So I've assembled a checklist of what to do upon entering each new town. Some of these steps will be skipped (for instance when we are not setting up an art project, or when we are staying with friends) but having the checklist will ensure we never forget something important. Some fo these may be done before entering the new town, but they all should be in place soon after.

Checklist for New Towns

Quickly find local free campgrounds or bookdocking here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+find+free+campgrounds&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=

http://www.freecampgrounds.com/

http://freecampsites.net/

Settle on a couple and meet up with the people staying there, or ownders/ managers where applicable and make sure that boondocking there is really ok. If possible, offer some small exchange - ask what you can do to help, etc. I think it's important to always keep in mind that this is not an effort to take advantage - just a way of bypassing the quid pro quo system of exchange. Giving is always at the forefront of my thinking on this.

Since Free Campsites often do not have ammenities, you need to find free or cheap dump and fill sites soon after:

http://www.sanidumps.com/

Here are a couple good reminders about maintanance on holding tanks, of which I am becoming somewhat more aware than I had hoped.

http://www.camping.com/rv-stuff/rv-articles-a-information/1756


Find Local Library - interview Librarian about local resources, history, sights

Find Closest Hospital , 911 system, Police, Ambulance- add to emergency list on fridge
Find Free Newspapers - best source of free stuff to do.
Find a few discount RV supply stores and hardware/ auto supply stores so there's no panic if something goes wrong.
Find Chamber of Commerce
Find out permiting requirements for art project from City Hall - usually Treasury Dept (I have no idea why).
Send emails to network looking for waylays, land to occupy, businesses that need watching, remember references.
Check craigslist site (and papers and yellow pages) for free food, items needed, supplies, gigs etc.
Check local camp grounds for jobs
Post gigs wanted on craigslist and check gigs sections.
At library check out local edibles and medicinal and calendar of availability
Make list of Free and educational events
Check out local hiking and other sights to see.
Make a loose calendar of events and day-trips
Check out local flea markets and find craft and art shows
Check out local museums and galleries, find free days.
Meeting people - mailing lists, on the road groups, etc. Get to know people, meet up with friends in the area.
Register with temp agencies
Go to local food banks and food kitchens - offer volunteer for dinner each day.
Figure out best deals fast - ask around.
Fresh and Easy in AZ - has deep discount deals on foods about to go bad. One store usually has meat on manager's special or eggs on discount - where they gather all those left when a carton breaks. There are restaurant supply places for bulk beans and such, Aldi's and Trader Joes on East and West coasts respectively. I recently discovered that a local dollar store in Tempe has great deals not only on things like medicine and vitamins (for a dollar!) but also things like produce.

Which brings me to:


Ask the locals - talk a lot with the locals when you first get into town - about where to stay, where to eat, what to see, and what they do. People love talking about their town almost as much as they love talking about themselves - ask them the best places to get great deals, the best little known pub or diner, and what the place is famous for. You'll get a lot of experiences out of these conversations and make a lot of new friends. It helps to ask people who seem similar to you to get what you're after. I remember asking a nice enough lady who was very different from me to give me a recommendation for a really nice seafood restaurant in Maine on my way to Bar Harbor. I was shocked when she replied "Red Lobster". Now I choose wisely before my fact finding mission begins.

You can check for low clearances in the area here:
http://www.aitaonline.com/Info/Road/Low%20Clearances.html

Please share any ideas you have for additions to this list. I'll do a follow up after our first couple new towns have tested my planning abilities and I'll add in any new information you all share as well.

Do Something

There are many things we're trying to accomplish with this journey we've undertaken and one of them is to find new ways of interacting with the world than the pure commodification of goods and services, and consequently of people and relationships. The method we've chosen to do this is to give freely. This brings up the question of volunteering, which I think has been a bit bastardized by the industry that has sprouted up around what was essentially a very good idea. Having worked many years in volunteer organizations, I've come to the conclusion that most are really just businesses in disguise. And the magic of giving has been strip mined from this essential dynamic.

Helping people is a natural part of our human drive - it makes us feel good, useful even. With time and our basic needs taken care of, we all tend to branch out and lend a hand to those around us - starting with those closest, but when their needs are also sated, our good works naturally rupple outward. These days, we're often guilted into "volunteer" work - or children are told to do this for a reason - to get into college, to show future employers that they are well-rounded, or to keep a job. The CEO's of some volunteer organizations are making upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars and throw lavish parties for potential donors, justifying the exchanges of money as being necessary to get these important works done. I don't buy it.

So we've decided to volunteer for the pure joy of it. A few weeks ago I helped pull weeds at Harvest for Humanity in Gilbert, AZ and will go back to do so again. The director of this organization is out in the fields every day and invites anyone who wants to drop in - no filling out papers or writing off on your taxes - just giving food to those who need it. The project we're creating will also be a gift to the communities we call our temporary homes, and the serendipity it creates is also created in the pure giving of our time and energies in other ways. Since beginning this trip - which has not yet left the metropolitan area in which we resided - we've met a mechanic who has offered his services for meals, a solar energy designer who has offered to help outfit the RV with solar panels and have been offered extra food people in this neighborhood have extra, showers, interenet access, help with a website, singing lessons, and more. I believe this serendipity happens because of the giving - the kind of giving that happens when you are not looking at what comes back to you.

So if you need help, let us know - we're looking for things to do for people when we're not building trees. Two strong people can add a lot of value to your projects and I want to use this post to offer our services to anyone reading this - I can't guarantee that I can spend the gas money to get to where you are - but if we're in the area and you need some helping hands, I want all readers here to know that you can call on us and if we can make it, we'll be there - no payment necessary. Sure it's idealistic, but you know, if everyone did it - even just some of the time - it also just might work.

Just a Light Drizzel

We are in Denver for the hand-fasting ceremony of our good friends, Tim and Aicilla. There's a mad dash of activity after a lovely night spent meeting up with all of their friends. It's wonderful how well everyone meshed. I guess living a life authentically facilitates that. I've discovered that my new laptop has no spellcheck for any application. And I've not been able to fing the mind power to search out a fix yet. Be warned. We're still working on the many leaks on the RV we bought, but are blessed with good friends and wonderful help. We're docked at a house right now but are slowly gaining in autonomy. I guess I should have known that this would be a slow process. We did not take the RV to Denver - it's not quite ready for its maiden voyage but this weekend we will be taking it to Witchwell for the regional burn, Toast. We'll also be doing some more work on it there as it still has no bathroom.

Well, that's about all my brain can offer this week. Next week I should have adventures to share and insights to explore. Till then...

Of Mice and Other Funny Creatures

So on the day following my first missed weekly blog post, I am reflecting on where exactly expressing oneself falls on pretty much anyone's hierarchy of needs. When faced with electrical, sewage, and mechanical issues that would worry Job, typing away on a coputer seems a bit too Nero to me. Besides, all the wet wipes in the world won't make me comfortable going back and forth between pulling a black water tank and molesting my brand new, albeit very cheap, laptop. I'm just about set to hook up to the internet in a less tethered fashion, through my Blackberry Blast - I'll report on it once the deed is done. For now, we're sitting outside the home of a friend and piggy-backing on their service for a small fee towards their electric and internet bills - with bathroom privileges too - a godsend considering we have none yet in our little box on wheels.

Most of the last few days since leaving home-dwelling, have been spent asking myself "why the hell do I have this?" or more often even "Why the hell do I have two (or four) or these?" and tossing all but the essential. Fear is being tossed too - out in the trash with my excess baggage go thoughts like "What if this one breaks, gets lost, gets stolen?" It's not easy trusting that I'll be able to find another of whatever that thing is but it helps reminding myself of all the times I did without it and even enjoyed myself in the trying. Cheese graters are awesome - but knives work to make things into small bits too. If my cheesegrater ran off with my spoons, I'd survive, so carrying more than one small one becomes suspect. The difference between need and want is so obvious to me now that I wonder how that line ever was so obscured.

I woke this morning to a call from my old landlord - who is just the sweetest man I could have hoped to have as a "last landlord" and since I've had some very not sweet ones in the past, it was a nice way to say goodbye to the species. We had a little glitch - no one's fault really, where I'd told the electric company to shut the electric on a specific day, months ago and then forgot I did. The landlord asked if we would mind leaving the electric on a few extra days since the people would be moving in, I said "of course' and well, chaos ensued. He called me, and I called the electric company. We were all just trying to help each other out and then I realized, in talking with the very professional Electric Co. rep on the phone, that I didn't like how companies treated us people in general these days. So I said "You know, we're people here - just trying to help each other out - decent, kind people living in your community. And you, your company, you are also memebers of our community and if you are not, you are simply profiteering off us. That's not what you're doing, is it?" Of course the manager I'd been put in touch with had her lines down pat, all acquiesing without really giving anything - like a sociopath really, if you think about it.

So I said "Do you ever just go home and look at your children and ask yourself what you're doing with your life? What are you adding to their future world? But of course, most companies do not really want people to have families - I wonder why? I said to here. I  think we all have to start treating each other that way. We need to start paying attention to other people and stop just trying to use each other and you all are going to have to change to accomodate this because this is the way the world is going.

And I realized, at that moment, I spelled out something - still in a bit of twightlight from just awakening and lack of caffeine - I'm making this world around me - I told my landlord the story and he said "I love it". We created between us a bond that transcended our business dealings. I'd like to tell you all that the electric company called me and offered to wave the seventy dollar emergency turn on fee, but of course, you wouldn't believe me. But my landlord, the new tenants and I have agreed to each pay one third of it and that's a start. And maybe if all of you will start demanding that companies act like members of their community, some day, they will too. But in the meantime, at every turn where we can, we have to begin to make the world we want. Don't get upset that it's not that way already - I can tell you from experience, that never works. But what does work, imperfectly to be sure, is to be what you want. Act as you want to encounter and never give in to "that's just how it is" because that is only how it is now, not how it always has been, and not how it has to be in the future.

Damned Hippies!! (On Values and Principles)

A few years ago, I found myself in a debate with a man who was adamant about the fact that no one should pick up hitchhikers because they are users and are giving nothing back to society. He went into great detail about how he, a normal American citizen, was working his forty plus hours a week, paying taxes, and buying gas. That gas had a tax which helped to maintain these roads that we are driving upon and that those damned hippies hitchhiking on those roads were not contributing at all to their upkeep - leaving more for him to carry.

Now this offended me at the time although I also could feel his deep anguish about being so trapped, but my thinking on this subject was not clear enough to have offered an effective rebuttal. I pointed out that he was driving in that direction anyway and they were not really adding to the gas burden by much at all - most of it being used in transporting the tons of metal and not the meaty creatures of considerably less weight within. But to him it was a "principle" question and there really was no arguing with that.

Over the years, this has gnawed at me, as unanswered questions often do, and recently I've been thinking on this again, being now on the verge of planned homelessness and joblessness. I would likely get a pass because of my savings and the fact that at some point along the path I was "paying my way" but the whole experiment has me thinking more deeply about this issue. And I think I've reached some conclusions.

I think this is a question of value, more than of principle. Our culture values one thing above all else and that is the thing that has the least intrinsic value: money. It's at best an artistic rendering upon which we bestow some sort of magical power and value of exchange. No one really believes anymore that it is a stand in for something of any real value. And even when dollars stood for coins and coins were actually made of gold and silver, the "value" of those metals was only in the fact that they didn't rust and were considered beautiful because of it. They weren't strong metals that could be used to make tools - they were beautiful things that wouldn't die. Our understanding of value is always based in these sort of fantasies instead of in the real worth of things.

In our world, what we consider to be of value almost always links to money. We give lip-service to valuing our teachers, farmers, mothers, firefighters, etc. But far more of us would shudder more thinking of our children marrying a teacher or a farmer than a stock broker - someone who arguably adds the least real value to the world. Something is askew and if we don't look at it, it's just going to get more surreal and seem more normal at every step.

So back to my friend who was angry with those damned hippies, wasting their lives and taking from other people. I sort of understood where he was coming from then - I, too, was working hard and paying my taxes and the thought of these people not having to do that and still being able to be mobile, to live and love, kinda irked me - this was jealousy, of course, and that's the point. It seemed so unfair that I was trapped in a sort of slavery to my principles - principles it took me a long time to identify as not actually being mine. Principles, it could be argued, that were instilled in me precisely to keep me from questioning my position in a machine of slavery that failed to feed me or anyone I knew what we needed to live a fulfilling life. And what exactly is this machine producing? What value are we all adding in a larger sense? When I think in these terms, the guy with his thumb out at least has the value of not raping and pillaging as much as those of us buying into a consumer culture that is wedded to slavery at some point in its production.

I think I have an answer now to this man: as I embark on my new journey, I am questioning my value in relation to my value at other times in my life when I worked for corporations, pushed papers and labeled codes so people could file them appropriately, when I drove forty miles to and from work every day, and felt the need to shop at malls that sold objects I didn't need made by people so poor they couldn't turn down slave wages or they would risk starvation, so that I could scurry to keep abreast of the made up world of fashion and "cool" and "cutting edge", to keep from looking out of place in the conforming world that I thought was my only choice. I am comparing the value I added then, to the value I am adding now to the world - holding swap meets where people find treasures, eat and create good food with friends, listen to and engage fully with other people. I'm noticing the satisfying value I am adding in spending actual time with my son and ensuring that he grows to be a decent man, who knows he is loved and cherished, or time with my friends and neighbors - time weeding a garden that will feed the hungry and homeless - those who didn't choose it as I have. I'm building art, for free, and giving it as a gift to the world. I'm creating beauty and perhaps some pause to think. If I do it right, I may end up creating a portal for people to enter into their own dreams for their future, and the future of the rest of the world - to think about their own choices. I won't be making money - so I have no way to quantify my value. No way to explain myself or my actions.

But maybe this is the point - to walk away from the need to explain ourselves. To recognize finally that this action has no value at all. If we all stopped keeping track - I wonder what we would produce. If we began to think in terms of quality of production instead of quantity, I wonder how our world would be different. So I plan on picking up all the damned hippies I meet - giving them a lift if I'm going their way - and dedicating myself to finding the value that they do add, and since I know I can't quantify it, I'm going to sing their stories so that their value is recognized, so all our value is recognized.

If this type of thinking makes you uncomfortable, don't worry. It's easy to dismiss these thoughts with a simple label - I'm a damned hippie and so my words hold little value - no one's paying me for them, so what could they possibly be worth?

The Gift

The beginning of this adventure was the Abundance Tree - an ephemeral installation project that my son and I will be installing in various locations. The Abundance Tree is a gifting tree made of discarded branches that forms a sculpture of a tree with a room inside, which we hope facilitates community and discussion like the concept of the Liberty Tree did for our ancestors. It's fitting that the Abundance Tree was the impetus for our adventure because we're exploring living on the road from the perspective of giving. We aren't charging for setting up our project - we're approaching people with the concept and if they give us a venue, we will create it - alone if we have to - and present it as a gift to the community that has hosted us. We will be self-sufficient and expect nothing in return. Of course, the idea of giving freely is not easy. In fact, it goes against everything we have been trained to do, every way we have been trained to approach our interactions with other people, that establishing it as a habit is nearly as difficult as actually building the trees.

But the trees themselves are not the full project - our own changing methods and mindset are equally important. On the tree we hang two signs. One says "Give More Than You Take" and the other says "Abundance Creates Serendipity". This is how we will be living while we are creating this piece. Every experience, from searching for the RV, to setting up the mechanical repairs, to working odd jobs and getting rid of our excess belongings has been a lesson in giving and receiving. Already, people are helping, and I'm trying to give as much as I can - not in return - that's not the point. The point is to give what you have. To give it all out to the world. This is not a quid pro quo arrangement. And I can tell you that practicing this has created abundance for us already.

In his book The Gift: The Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde concludes not that our culture of monetary exchange for goods and services should be usurped by a gift economy, but that we need to reinstate the gift economy beside the capitalist arrangement. Some things need to be exchanged in that way, but others just don't work in any way but a gift exchange. Our culture is increasingly breaching that line - we pay for medicine that we used to expect as a gift, we pay for art and it has become detached from our every day experience. We are now so deep into this arguably diseased way of living that we are paying for care of children and creating a record number of children who need pharmaceutical treatment to live in this culture.  Something is wrong and the only way that seems appropriate to fix it is to start to give.

I met the man I bought this motor home from just a little over a week ago. He came off as a little rough and I wasn't sure if I could trust him, but soon realized he was feeling the same about me. At some point while I was examining the vehicle, he asked what I was going to do with this motor home and although I had previously thought I would not reveal the nature of the project to those I was considering buying from (very few people really understand this and I didn't feel the need to share), something made me tell this man precisely what I was doing. And when I did, he said "Trees? Really? Let me show you something..." and we walked into one of his outbuildings on the property. He'd bought a small manufacturing plant a few years ago that made hand dyed raffia made silk trees for florist shops and craft supply stores. He didn't want the business, just the property. He had bales and bales of raffia and boxes and boxes of parts for silk trees that he said he tried to burn but couldn't stand the smell. When I asked him how much he was asking, he replied "Cheap" and laughed.

This sweet man, masquerading as a curmudgeon let my mechanic friend and I work on the RV in his lot, is letting me store the RV there temporarily until we leave this house and has become almost a friend in a short period of time. Speaking of mechanics - just before the inception of this project, I did some yard work for a man who I ended up trading for some mechanical help on the motor home - also a giver - he's helping me for food and conversation and a promise to help him out in any way I can later. I lucked into good people and coincidentally supplies that were exactly what I needed for the project I am planning. Is that coincidence? That's serendipity.

So the tree says "Abundance Creates Serendipity" and I didn't make that up - I discovered it from installing that tree before and watching what happened. My project is teaching me. I think that's what art is for an artist - it's a teacher. Or it's a method for your own internal voice to reach you with its wisdom. But now I'm learning from this phase of this project that in addition to abundance, serendipity is also created through the gift. Gifts given freely, without expectation, open a portal to a giving world. And that's really what this entire project is about - not giving in to the scarcity model world that we've been handed. Not expecting returns of equal or greater value, but just giving, learning to give freely. And flowing through the serendipity as a full agent of the change that we want to see happen.

What Do You Do?

One of the first questions people ask when they first meet you is "so, what do you do?" From this question they will define you, compartmentalize you, and evaluate your worth. Instinctively, we all know this and we can come to aim our life's journey toward producing an answer to that question that will earn us a higher general evaluation - sad isn't it? When you make a decision to do something radically different from the norm, this questions arises first in your own mind. You ask yourself, "What will I do?" and your fears center around being able to make enough money to both survive and feel some sense of safety, as well as the latent fears of losing your social worth. In this issue, we'll address some of these concerns directly, but we're also hoping to begin expanding beyond this way of thinking entirely, because it's going to become obvious that it's just another face of fear itself. And the whole reason for detaching from the cultural norms, is to find freedom from fear.

First let's explore why we believe that what we do defines us. Sure, the whole world is telling us constantly that this is true. You may even have lost a potential friend or lover because of some superficial lacking - car, money, job. But deeper than that is the real issue - you believe this crap. There are people without the car, money, job who seem to still get the girl/ boy/ friends. What they have that you may lack is confidence in their choices. But it's admittedly hard to be confident when you are terrified that you'll be living out of a cardboard box eating day old McD's hamburgers you luckily got out of the dumpster just before it was being taken by the dump truck. And there are legitimate concerns for anyone wanting to mate with you if you do go down that path. But as with most things, these dichotomies aren't true. There is not a neat division between being safely employed and being a homeless bum. Life can be defined on your terms and I intend to give you some skills here to begin doing just that.

As with anything, when you first begin to think about making some choice that is not aligned with the status quo, the new information can be overwhelming and, although it's exciting to think of so many opportunities, it's important to let yourself digest what you are learning and experiment in a fashion that stays close to your comfort zones - at least in the beginning. Look over this blog and see which ideas seem to resonate with you and write them down on a notebook. Then pick the one that seems most like something you would normally do - it will be your safest choice. Try that first. The reason I'm giving you this advice is that your successes will build upon themselves. And your early successes with the safer choices, will act as a cushion and a fallback for your more risky adventures. Far too many people, when they taste the first bit of freedom, jump in head first only to forget that the pool wasn't full yet. Go slowly, take your time figuring things out, review often, and once you feel like you've got one thing running smoothly, begin to experiment with another. This way you will have a manageable but still exciting adventure into working for yourself in a sustainable and low-stress way. Trust me on this. I did it wrong the first time and freaked myself out. You don't have to. But sure, get excited about the possibilities as you read through - just stop before they make your head explode.

Ok - first, do not fall for anything that seems too good to be true. Not in person and not online - especially not online. There are a lot of scams out there - surveys that say they will pay you for filling out a form - sure - a dollar for a half hour of your time - and maybe you get the money if you do enough of them. Or pay you to click email - know anyone who wants to sit inside clicking on emails all day? And these sites actually rarely pay out - they limit how many you can click on a day, pay pennies on them and require you to reach thirty dollars before a payout. Not worth it. But here I'm going to explore a few things that are worth it. They require real work, but not slavery to a job. And that's good enough for us. Since my son and I are traveling together, we have twice the manpower to offer and so we hire ourselves out at whatever the going rate seems to be per person on places like craigslist in our temporary homes. Craigslist is actually a pretty decent place to look for gigs. They even have a "gigs" section. They also have a "services" section where you can post an advertisement telling what skills you have, but I have to say that I've had a lot better luck contacting people who've placed gigs ads than posting my own. However, since there is no cost, there is no reason not to post one anyway. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

It's always a good first step to ask everyone you know (through facebook or an email blast) if they know any people who lives where you are headed and wouldn't mind making an introduction. If you are a person who always does more than is asked and leaves places better than you found them, your friends will love to introduce you to those they know and you will soon have an excellent network of friends and acquaintances all over the world, and those new people know more people and also will love to introduce you. This is your best resource for everything. People who want to work are always valued and if you're also willing to work cheaper than most people, you're valued even more. And why not? You have so little overhead! Often, when you work this way, you stumble across all sorts of opportunities. It's going to be hard, at first, to think in terms of opportunities - for those of us who have worked very limited jobs until now, this entrepreneurial, serendipity tour thinking is alien. But it will come to you. Barter with people with whom you share mutual respect almost always comes out with a better deal for both parties. Commerce thinking tends to undervalue whatever the other is offering, whereas barter seems to level the playing field to "you have what I want and I have what you want", hence, the rare sense of equal trade of goods and services. I would caution against bartering with people who have limited their bartering to a strict sense of the external money value of goods and services - and gravitate towards those who value hours for hours or need for need regardless of what is offered. Finding a Dentist who thinks that his hour is worth the same as yours cleaning his office is a blessing that should never be overlooked. These people and these situations do exist. But you have to promote yourself and what you offer to find them.

Tell your friends that you will be pulling into X town and to let you know if they have any friends who live there who might need a hand around the house or yard, weeding, organizing, cleaning, babysitting, or more skilled needs if you have them to offer. These situations often end up with free giveaways in addition to money. People assume poverty if you're living in an RV and who are you to talk them out of their assumptions? I caution against instilling this idea, but you don't have to give more information than you're asked.

Be friendly, show up on time, do a little more than you are asked and stay a couple minutes later than agreed upon. This will make a great impression for a temp worker and your temp employer will likely think of you again the next time he or she needs some help. You can get their email address and promise to keep them posted when you come back into town - add their name to your X town contact list and you won't have to hit up your original friends for jobs the next time you're in town.

Below are some proven methods for making money without being tied to a job. Many of these work equally well while stationary, so you can test some out in the comfort of your own home state before hitting the road. Not all of them will suit you or your needs, but each has the potential for sparking your imagination to think in terms of opportunity and to detach you from thinking of what you you do and being an indicator of who you are.

1.  Buy and Sell on Ebay.
There are always things that are common in one area and premium in another. Keep your ears open, ask questions of people to get a bead on what those objects are, and experiment to see what sells and where. You can find amazing deals at garage sales, or even on the side of the road on trash night - I've found many antiques this way that just needed a little TLC or cleaning and sold for fifty dollars or more on ebay. Thrift stores have extensive book collections and if you know what you're looking for, you can get some rare finds and sell them on Amazon or sites dedicated to rare book sales - or on ebay too.

When you attend a yard sale or garage sale, remember that these people want this stuff gone. They will take less, a lot less. They may sell everything they have left if they've been doing it a few days. It's tiring sitting out there all day watching people look disapprovingly at your life. If you see something that you think may sell on ebay (which you find out from just looking at what is selling there), make a very low offer that would not really be much of a loss if your instincts aren't correct. Experiment.

2. Buy or Gather Local Items for Personal Use or to Sell in Other Areas.
Oranges in Arizona or almonds in California - check on craigslist for people giving them away or knock on doors - people with abundance usually freely give away, especially if that abundance turns into a cleanup job in a few weeks. Drive along alleys and pick from the overhang onto public property.

Consider things that are deals in one venue but highly sought after elsewhere and try to match your buying and selling with your trip. Let's say, you are at a flea market and find a dozen perfect house paint brushes for a dollar takes all. That's a bargain, but what will you do with that deal? If you take it across town to the local paint-shop and ask how much he'll buy them for, you could turn a nice profit for just a few minutes of work. If you get in the mindset of doing this with every deal you run across, while keeping your layout low to absorb any mistakes, you'll likely make a lot of contacts who will keep you apprised of what they are seeking and soon you are not taking any risks as you can call them and ask them what they'll pay and know exactly what your profit will be. This is a fun way to play on the road and there are lot of these opportunities you'll notice when you begin to look.

3. Sell to Fellow RVers.
We've sprouted and sold baby herb and lettuce plants to other RVers and random people on roadside or flea market booths for a few extra dollars. A lot of plants can grow from one seed packet - you just sprout them inside, re-pot them an set them outside while you're out exploring during the day - just be sure to take them back in before you take off again. You'll have to work out a good shelving system if you do this in your kitchen area or be satisfied with just a few dollars in addition to the savings by growing your own. But every little thing you do for yourself can be made into a little profit maker. And that's the way to think about this.Saving money is better than making money. There are no taxes on saved money, there are no special uniform requirements, or gas and other overhead to save money (usually). It's a general rule of financial success, that your penny saved is worth more than your penny earned. Sharpen knives and scissors - a dollar a piece, or offer to wash another rver's rig for ten dollars when you stop at a campground and thereby cut your park fee in half.

4. Sell at a Local Fair or Flea Market

You can sell balloons - kids love them, helium and balloons are cheap and parents routinely give their kids five dollars to buy a little uninterrupted time to bargain hunt. Make it creative in some way, and they'll line up. If you have a talent, or can fake one, you can go to the same places and put out a hat - juggle, play an instrument, sketch portraits or caricatures, do a clown act or a moving statue act, paint kids faces or adult's nails. You can shine shoes and do other mundane tasks or make them more entertaining - a clown shoeshine would attract a lot more attention than the normal variety. You can check with the local city or town hall to see if you'll need a permit, but you often can skirt around this need until someone brings it to your attention, claim ignorance and then go get the necessary permitting. If you have no real expectations - why not experiment? Check to make sure there are no fines, but beyond that, don't be afraid to make mistakes.

5. Ask For Work Where You Camp. 
If you aren't boondocking, ask at the front desk of the campsite if they ever have any temp work and let them know you'd be interested in making a few dollars while you're there. You don't know unless you ask. You can ask for free camping from campgrounds in exchange for work camping - and perhaps also make a little spending cash. You make a short seasonal commitment and the owners are sometimes flexible if something comes up and you are a good worker. And if they are not, you're quitting what is essentially an unpaid position. This won't go on any permanent record, so it's not really worth sweating. You'll also learn the inner workings of owning a camp site - if this is something you may one day think of doing, it will pay to know people who already own - either to tap for information, or perhaps to be on their call list for when they want to sell.

Thinking like this - in terms of opportunity, is what is exciting about this sort of life. It's a frontier life. Speaking of frontier lives...

6. Panning for Gold
There are people who make a larger seasonal salary panning for gold in the spring in America every year than most people make at a normal level corporate job and then have the rest of their time free to wander. Check this out:

http://www.goldpanningsite.com/where-to-pan-for-gold.php

http://www.infowest.com/life/goldpan.htm

7. Temp Freelancing
Try randomly entering businesses, explaining that you are traveling in an RV and wanting to do some temp work - give them your card and make a good impression. Tell them you'd be happy to provide some references - use your friends first, then the last people who did temp work for. You don't want to overload any one reference with too many phone calls. But a little known fact is that most business people do not check many references. They may check your first or your last one. They more likely will go with their gut - if you are a good person who is not out to con them and you make that impression to them, they will either hire you on the spot to do some random organization task or moving/ cleaning task that no one else wants to do or they will put your card somewhere and call you later.

Get emails and phone numbers whenever possible so you can add them to your "I"m back in town" email blasts. Soon you may have more work than you can handle this way. These jobs often end up with more perques - either an invitation for dinner with the family, a tour around town, tickets to some show or sporting event or some other extention of hospitality. Most people are very nice, and most people are extremely nice to travelers as long as you come across as trustworthy - if a little odd for doing what you've chosen to do.

8. Temp Agencies
If you're planning on staying in town for a couple months, head to the temp agencies and sign on to them. Of course you'll have a cell phone and they won't bat an eye at the out of state number since it's so commonplace these days. You can get an "address" from places like Mail Boxes Etc. - instead of using their "box number", call it an "apartment number" on your applications. Any correspondence will still get to you.. Don't tell them you are living in an RV - let them think you have just moved to this location. when you get a job through them, you can choose whether or not it would be beneficial to tell your boss. This is a gut decision. Some bosses with heart might extend hospitality to you and let you park your RV near the work site - making you feel safer with your belongings near, and perhaps even them feel safer with you watching the place at night. The best time to reveal this is after you feel they've gained some trust in you and you've made a good impression. Until then, find a nice safe grocery store nearby to park your rig and either drive your car/ bike/ etc. or take public transportation to the site.

You also need to let your employer lead - don't ask for favors - tell them your situation - don't whine - make it sound interesting and exciting and explain that this is why you are working temp. That's acutally one of the better reasons for wanting to do temp work and many employers will understand this. If the boss doesn't care, just let it be and go about your normal business and work to the end of the job, take your money and move on. Some people are judgmental but a lot more will be interested in your odd choice, or may even be excited to hear of your adventures. The key is to not become attached to whatever might happen.

Whatever you do, do not park outside the jobsite without it being offered - you'll lose the job and any possible later benefit or work. You can easily establish yourself in a good light with a temp employer since they are so used to people who really don't want to be there. If you take on responsibility, show up early and leave a little late, are self-motivated and get all the work done, they will be exstatic and your biggest problem may be that they offer you a lot of money to stay on. Your call. When you leave, be sure to give enough notice, a little parting gift - something small - a card, some flowers for a female boss, or stop to get a cup of coffee you know they like on your way to work on your last day - get their contact info and ask if they'd mind if you let them know when you were back in town to see if they had any work at that time for you. You're building a network that will help you far into the future and not just for temporary work situations. A lot of people love the adventurous spirit of what you are doing and will want to help support it by hooking you up with people they know in other cities as well.

You may ask at the temp agencies if there are ;specifically any jobs in food service - this will provide for free meals as well as income, and often pays well in tips. Banquets are great for this, but be open to anything.

9. More Buying and Selling Opportunities
You can buy and sell roses, or other flowers, at local bars - ask the bar owners during the day if it would be ok to do at night - they will likely want a cut of your take. Pick that sweet spot between eight and eleven when men are often trying to catch a woman's attention or win her over - double the price for the individual roses and add whatever portion the bar owner wants. You can often talk the florists down on the price of flowers later at night as they know precisely when they will start to wilt. Check out supermarket prices and perhaps do this gig when they are on sale only. Dress nicely, or in some costume that is appropriate (if you do such things) but don't outshine the women that are the eventual recipients of these flowers.

While you are there selling flowers, you can hand out cards with your phone number on them offering "unique" taxi service home. Figure out your gas mileage, double that times the miles from bar to location - this is easy to find with googlemaps now and you ask for the home address and bar address when they call. Tell them that you'll offer them a discount or free ride if they can find you four others to take advantage of the service. Often they can. Buy some popcorn and bottled water and set them out on your RV table. Sure it will be odd when you walk them to an RV but they will soon warm to the idea of the added comfort - you can even play a funny movie for them while you're driving. There are, of course, risks associated with this opportunity - I'd caution against single women doing this one alone, and you'll have to plan ahead for the possibility of a quick cleanup if one has had too much to drink.

Storage units will sell the belongings of the people who store there if the rent is not paid. You can ask at the front desk how they deal with that - could be an auction or another kind of sale, and if they like you and are a small independent, it could just be that you happened in at the right time and if you can parse it out, you can have it. It pays to have a trailer for such an occasion, but you can rent one, and if you've made a lot of friends, you might know one who can help you store the stuff till you sell it. Or, you could just re-rent the unit in arrears and go through it there if you think it will still earn you a profit. Be open to the opportunities wherever you find them.

10. Yard Work on the Go and More
Drive through residential neighborhoods where all the houses are nice, pick out the lawns that are unkempt. Knock on the doors and tell them that you will weed/ mow/ etc. using their equipment for (name a less than market value price) let's say five dollars an hour. Now you may think this is terrible - why would you want to work for that? But you're not thinking clearly. If you worked a job for ten dollars an hour, you would only actually see five of it anyway after federal and state taxes and clothing to look a certain way, office Christmas presents, etc. and your goal here is to keep ahead - so every bit you make helps that and if you don't like this idea, then don't do it. But when the times come where this is the only one available, you will know that you can. I always think of these jobs as a "workout" that I get paid to do. They are usually physically demanding (meaning you will end up muscular and strong) but mentally they are easy. I spend my time, when doing yard work, plotting my next art project or business venture, or figuring out sticky philosophical problems. If you're creative, you might find that you love the mental freedom that the low responsibility menial job offers.

Another job no one wants to do that people will pay for is dog waste pickup in their yards. It's harder to find these jobs but if you can, they can pay well - especially if you get serveral all in the same area and can spend just a few minutes in each yard and walk away with ten dollars for five minutes times fifty houses.I've seen people making between eight and twelve dollars per house for five minutes of work doing this. You do the math as to how much you could make if you lined up a whole bunch of them in one complex.

11. More Resources for Jobs
You can always stop at a church and tell them you are on the road and have run out of money - ask if they know of someone who needs something done that can help you to earn some. They very well could have some work there and may help you find other resources as well. It's good to approach people who are used to helping out and then offer to work, instead of asking for a handout. You're not begging, you're offering your services.

Here's a fun newsletter that will update you with fun and unusual ways that people make money to keep you interested throughout your travels:

http://www.unusualwaystomakemoney.com/

12. Treasure
In researching for this blog, I've run across a lot of new interesting ways that people make a little money. There are people, for instance, in some northern cities who have found that when they peruse areas in the spring where all the snow trucks have been stacking snow during the long winters, there are treasures to be found - all the things that have collected over the winter have been brought to that one area and when the snow melts, they are sitting under the snow - money, jewelry and more. It's funny to think about, but it makes sense and if you find yourself in such a place at the right time, it's a good idea to poke around a little to see what you can find.

At auctions, look in the lot boxes, all the way to the bottom, to see what sort of treasures may be hiding. No one can look in them all, and you could run across something hidden that no one else has seen and walk away with a treasure of value for a song. Look inside of purses, the lining of books and the lining of jackets and blankets. Our grandmothers used to hide money and other valuables in these places and often forgot where they were. I once picked up an ugly quilt off the side of the road and brought it home to use as a grungy throw or dog bed. I had it at the bottom of my bed one very cold night and my dog began pawing at it, tearing the fabric and revealing an antique quilt that had been sewn inside the new ugly one. These things happen. And if you're observant, you might catch them happening in front of you.

13. Sell Your Family Secrets
Recipes that is. People are always looking for recipes and if you can write the ad copy well enough to entice, you can put an ad in a local paper, magazine, or on bulletin boards at supermarkets across the country and wait for the money and self addressed stamped envelopes to pour in. easy enough to print out a recipe and send it off for a couple dollars in profit.

14. Low Cost Crafting 
You can find natural things - rocks, sticks, dead cacti etc. and make well made crafts like walking sticks and sculptures from them. If you're artistically inclined, this could be a good income - even if not, you'll likely make something. Again, people like supporting others who are doing something - even if they aren't particularly fond of what is being made. You can also do the same with recyclable items - go along neighborhoods on recyclable day and get cans and such out of blue bins - you can either sell the cans for their refund at many grocery stores these days or recycle centers, or you can convert them into crafts.

I once met a man who made tiny furniture for doll houses with tin cans and a pair of tin snips - sat in a pub all day sculpting tiny furniture and setting them up along the bar an ended up selling to specialty shops for quite a nice penny. And I knew another woman who would go around to all the fancy restaurants and collect their old used candle nubs, melt them down and add her own pigments, leaves and other things and resell them at craft shows. Oddly enough, thinking small sometimes brings big money. Miniature items cost a lot more than you'd think - whether it's for doll house enthusiasts or model train nuts. Another interesting thing to sell are small pieces of fabric for quilters. You'd think they would want large pieces but really they are looking for small pieces of unique patterns . If you find some interesting or attractive fabric for free or very cheap - cut it up into one foot squares and fold them into smaller squares - perhaps around a piece of recycled cardboard and charge a dollar - any quilter or crafter coming upon a table filled with lots of little squares of different unique prints of fabric will be hard pressed to resist buying any. This is an easy way to make money in the right locations - try flea markets or craft shows that specialize in quilting and other fabric crafts. Often you can sell interesting supplies like this and make more than the crafters at craft shows - they turn all their profits over to you.

If you run across a good amount of grapevine in your travels, you can sell it there too - perhaps you find some growing along a fence - many a farmer will let you take it for free and may even pay you to take it. If you see a fallen barn, go ask if you can take some of the wood for crafting - if it's old enough (and if it's fallen, it likely is) you could make a good deal of money from selling that to crafters too - cut it to manageable lengths and sell at craft shows or through crafters newspapers and magazines.

15. Seasonal Jobs
If you're living the RV life, you may be following the seasons anyway - pumpkins in October and Christmas trees in December - you can offer to help clean up either lots and get all sorts of bounty and pay. There are also festivals like Renaissance Fair where you can sell specialty items, craft shows of course - check out SAC and (research other sources) for comprehensive listings of shows and price/ demographics. You can also get temp jobs at ski lodges as instructors, photographers or nannies.

16, A Picture May Be Worth a Thousand Dollars
Speaking of photography - taking photos even if you are not very good at it can be sold if nothing else as stock photography - pick up a copy of Photographers Market at the library or if you want to buy it - help us out by clicking on the Amazon button to the right of this article. This book will walk even the beginner through opportunities to make money with your camera.

17. Blog It
You can also do what we're doing and blog about your experiences and set up a little affiliate marketing. There are many resources out there to help you pull together your ideas and market the information you have to share. I can't tell you that this works all the time, and we certainly haven't figured out how to make it work for us yet, but the consensus seems to be that if you offer good information, people will find you and follow you and if you create value, you can at least make a little money through advertising. But to do it for that reason doesn't work. You have to love sharing information and ideas because this is a lot of work and there are no guarantees. I've begun thinking of this blog as a way to remember information I've come across so that I can remind myself when I inevitably forget how to do something that needs to be done on the road. I'm sharing it because I know there are others who desire this freedom as well. If it makes money, that's great, if not, I'll still have a fantastic record of our journey and all we've learned. I think that's a good attitude to start with.

18. Sell Advertising or Content
I've known people who sell advertising for camper newspapers as they travel around. They find RV dealers and suppliers and other related businesses and sell them ads in papers that they either work for, or have created and publish themselves and then hand out for free to other campers along their travels. You'll have to offer some content to do this. But if you're a writer, this is your market.  You can also become a travel writer - start by writing about your travels, perhaps in a blog like this, or just in a journal. Next you can submit to magazines that deal with the type of travel you're engaged in - you can find these in a book called the "Writer's Market".

19. Freelancing
You can offer up skills you have - web design, painting, murals, faux finishing. If you can carry the tools and you have the skills, advertise through your network, on bulletin boards, craigslist, etc.This is harder to do without local references, so this is a good thing to market through your growing network. Just keep people aware of what skills you have to offer by sending an occasional blast (asking first if this is ok) or perhaps doing a little of what you do gratis for a friend of a friend.

20. When On the Road Isn't Free Enough
Consider a break from the RV working on a cruise ship or yacht. If you're experienced at sailing (and sometimes if you are not), you might find some temporary work on the open sea.

21, Make Money From Your Old Electronics 
In addition to making you money, selling your old, unused electronic components will help you to streamline your life and make traveling a possibility. This can be done before you leave or while you're on your journey and discover that you have things you are not using with you.

This list is, in no way, exhaustive. There are countless ideas of how to make money without a job and on the road, and I can only share a few. You'll find that the more you work outside the normal grind, the more opportunities you will see, and the more creatively you will think about how a person "makes a living" and what that really means. Ideally, you will take from this article a feeling that this can be done, and that you will never have to be a slave again - you may choose to have a normal job, but knowing that you can make a living without one creates a sense of freedom that can't be taken away once it's established. Don't try to do everything at once. Choose one thing that seems close to what you normally do and slowly begin the journey to self-sufficiency. And the next time someone asks you "What do you do?", tell them that you're an Explorer.

Evolving

So, after a week and a little more of this once a day blogging, I've come to the conclusion that my time would be better spent doing a once a week update and putting more research into it. This will be the last of the daily blogs. I'll update on Wednesdays and when on the road, I may share special finds, but the daily grind becomes just that and leaves less time for preparation. So until Wednesday!

Baby Blogger

I consider myself a sort of baby blogger - I just called myself that today to a friend. I'm learning the ropes, learning my own voice and how all the bells and whistles work. I think I've stopped fiddling with the layout here, although the limitations do bug me quite a bit from a designer point of view, and I'll likely need to pay attention to that part later. Right now, I'm focused mostly on how the flow will go. I'm doing this in the same way I manage my life - experimentally. I'm jumping in and working out the kinks. That seems like such an ineffective way to learn, but my years of unschooling with my children have taught me that this is precisely how we learn and any other method proposed serves mostly to give the illusion of order to a necessarily messy process.

Babies learn like crazy - their desires are so far out of reach of their skills that they must. And they're such sloppy learners too. They try to stand and fall over, try again, fall again, until one day, they stand with a big toothless grin on their slobbery little faces. That's learning without the sanitizing of school systems. It makes some people very uncomfortable, and although I understand that, I've decided that I don't really care.

I watched my son teach himself a skill he had avoided for years - cursive writing. Because we unschool, I don't force my children to learn anything. We discuss why people learn certain things, why the school system requires them, and what real value these skills may have in their lives. My opinion on cursive writing is that it was going to be a lost skill set now that we all are so hooked into our machines. But I told him that for at least another generation, I foresaw people my age judging him (and me) because of his not having mastered this skill and that it would likely interrupt some aspect of his business life. This year he listened to that and saw that it was likely true.

My son is a bright boy, but probably not much more than a lot of boys in school. But because he understood why he was learning this thing, what value it could have, which we also discussed, and was old enough to value these things, he sat himself down and mastered this thing in a week. We do a review, every once in a while, to see if he is retaining his knowledge and with a few exceptions he is, but honestly, I use the skill so rarely that I, also, have forgotten things - does anyone make the upper case "Q" correctly?

So this story is about me though, and I guess my son's experience gives me hope that I, too, can overcome  obstacles quickly by jumping in at the right time and learning by experience, observation and review. I'm still so fascinated with the process of learning and all the interesting serendipity that enters a life when the mind attached to it is open to change and growth.

Week Two - Digging Deeper

The preparations have reached a bit of a slump. I've procured a storage unit, cut down my belongings, held a sale and a swap meet and now I have to dig deeper. I lost a bid on an RV and don't have a very good possible replacement and I'm beginning to consider expanding my search. Perhaps I will be open to a different style of RV, or a bus conversion or a van conversion with a trailer. I'm also considering cutting down my belongings even more. Reconsidering what the difference between "need" and "want" really is. Distractions are seeping in - some welcome social engagements, some confusing situations, and some likely dangerous red herrings. I'm keeping my head in it all but I'm aware that I need to focus more during this month or things will not align as they need to.

Luckily, I'm surrounded by good, low-drama friends and they inspire me to keep going. I'm paying close attention to how long the daily habits take to complete - just cleaning/ cooking/ checking email (and writing this blog) take longer than I'd like/ RV hunting has been frustrating - driving hours to look at an RV that the owner forgot to call me to inform me was sold before our appointment, and other similar adventures. So I'm looking at ways to cut corners, go faster, stay more directed, call ahead, ask even more qualifying questions. Productivity, for me, has always been interesting only in so far as it allows me to pursue my dreams.Fingers are crossed now as I get the shovel out to dig in deeper and see what changes I can make this next week.

Simple Steps

You sure learn a lot when you jump in and decide to do something like this. In just one week, I've already been challenged and educated. One thing I've learned is to never say what I'll be writing about next week, there are too many variables and too many changes occurring in my thinking on this project. So unfortunately, I'll be postponing the blog about RV buying until I've actually bought one. That just seems like a better idea to me. And this week, I'll be writing about simplicity instead. It occurred to me that writing about the cart before the horse that drove it would be like, well, putting the cart before the horse, and we're not going anywhere with that configuration. So let me share with you some resources that took me from a chaotic life that kept me from my dreams, to a being a pretty lean machine these days,  that makes everything seem possible.

Eight years ago I attempted this whole "on the road" thing for the first time - completely on a whim and with so little planning that I'm ashamed to remember it. I packed way way way too much stuff into my RV - trying to think of everything we may possibly want. Seriously, my kids can remember having to move boxes out of the way to move around in the space, or use the bathroom or their beds. We had a TV and tapes - yes, vcr tapes, and a vcr. We had a game cube with games for the kids and I had stuffed so many books in alongside the beds that we probably had an extra hundred pounds in books alone. We had a stock of food and alcohol and all my art supplies, tools, clothing that we never wore, craft supplies we never used. And more than that, all the stuff that was left in storage, that had to be paid for and moved around when we decided to not be on the road anymore - it cost over a hundred dollars a month to store things that I later gave away, or sold for very little money because I couldn't figure out how to get it where we now lived.

A friend of mine gave my daughter a book about the women traveling on the Oregon trail and she would read it aloud as we drove that trail. I remember vividly reading about these women needing to leave furniture and beloved belongings along the way because horses had died and the remaining beasts could no longer carry the whole burden. We marveled at their ingenious solutions to packing - eggs packed in sacks of flour - and empathized with their agony, leaving heirlooms sitting alongside the trails and watching out the back of their wagons as they disappeared in the distance.We were living these same experiences. It was easy to empathize. I learned a lot from that time. And you would think that my pack-rat ways would be changed forever, but it actually took me several more years to take that inspiration and do something with it.

The first step was noticing that it was a problem and that trip sure helped me figure that out. After realizing that any further travel would really require a full life overhaul, and getting past my brain's internal chatter justifying repeatedly that all artists are this way - that chaos is part of the process (this is a lie, by the way - it actually keeps you from your process) - I began to look for resources that would help me to streamline. This exploration led me to a better understanding of how these belongings were stifling me and how they were even related to my health - both emotional and physical.

I found a yahoo group that revolved around the concept of minimalist living or simplicity. What drove me to that step first was how I felt when I was in the home of a friend. He had a very streamlined, organized and minimalist home. He made minimalist art, and I felt completely at peace in his presence and in his home. From that first email list, I was introduced to the excellent blog of Leo Babauta, called Zen Habits. For me, finding this blog was the first step in understanding what I wanted. Leo's words are simple, and reading his streamlined blog made me feel as I did in my friend's home - peaceful. From there, I learned about GTD, Getting Things Done - a productivity book by David Allen. I bought the book and tried to work with it for a while to organize my life. I learned a lot of useful things and I recommend the book for getting your whole life in order, but it does read a lot like a business manual and that's a bit of a turn-off for artsy folks like me. I think Leo has pulled some of the best of the book into a more streamlined version and is giving it away on his website, but I still suggest the original for a few important things.

Managing my time and my projects came next and GTD helped a lot with that, but I have to tell you that it was not until I began to get rid of my things that my life really turned around. For me, dismantling a mindset that had been ingrained throughout my childhood was extremely difficult. Just the act of constantly reminding myself  that this is not who I am, but what I was is almost a full time job. Regularly reading blogs like Zen Habits and joining mailing lists like Fly Lady helped me to make new habits that stuck so well that I no longer needed the daily reminders. Good resources expect you to grow out of them. I think that's the best sign that you're onto something good.

Fly Lady is a website that I learned about from some people who hated it. And it's not really my cup of tea either (sorry Fly Lady). But the daily reminders in my email box and the way of looking at cleaning and decluttering - set your timer for fifteen minutes and pick a small area to do so, and think of your home as having quadrants that you clean only one of each day - changed how I approached the daily routines. I have managed to get rid of nine-tenths of my wardrobe and useless belongings using the techniques learned there. This means that only the things I adore and use all the time will go on the road with me, and only the things I adore that I can't use all the time will be taking up storage space. I can't relay how happy that makes me. I just rented a five by ten foot storage unit for thirty five dollars a month - inside and air conditioned. I've never been able to afford a climate controlled unit before because I always needed the largest they had and was already paying over a hundred dollars a month. I think I'll have room to spare this time.

Once I began to look at my belongings based on how much I loved them and how useful they are to me, I began giving a lot of stuff away - making a lot of other people very happy. This eased the pain of thinking about all the money I'd wasted buying things that were not amazing. But there was that little pinch and that pinch taught me to never again buy a single thing that was not more amazing than the things I already owned. And I've implemented the tried and true method of "one in/ one out" - if I buy something, I have to get rid of something else. This keeps me from buying anything frivolous. I've developed an intuition about objects now - I can hold it out and ask myself, "will this add to my life, or hold me down?" and the answer I first think is the right one.

For a while I was on a mailing list related to the project The Compact which you can read more about here. The Compact is a pledge you make to buy nothing new for a year (or two). There are rules and certain allowances (for food and a small number of "cheats") but essentially, you pledge to buy nothing new. There are mailing lists for support, to confess your cheating, and to get guidance. You don't need these but having support for any new habit goes a long way towards keeping you on task long enough to let it take hold. On The Compact, you can buy used items at thrift stores and yard sales, get freebies on freecycle or from free boxes or friends. So, this doesn't directly help you with simplifying or streamlining your life. However, although I've never been a big mall shopper, I was shocked to learn how many of my new item purchases were made without even thinking about other options until I took this pledge. I resisted the urge to buy a food processor and then bragged to a friend about my first "compact" moment - the next day, he brought me a small food processor he'd found in the free box at his work. Through the process of thinking about every purchase I made, I became aware of not needing things as much as my initial thought told me I did. I undid a piece of the brainwashing. And that's an important step.

Somewhere around this time, I began to rethink everything having to do with property. My family decided to have an all thrift Christmas to keep to The Compact - we all took fifty dollars and went thrift shopping for each other. And we held it after the actual holiday so that more people we loved could gather at a lower air fare. Then we began thinking about why we let someone else tell us when to have a holiday - or even to have a holiday at all. Why weren't we just making up our own holidays? So now we do. Sometimes we have "after valentines" holidays where we give each other deeply discounted gorging amounts of candy or flowers. We're no longer tied to what we must do. And it's hard for any of us to remember why we ever were.

This brings me to the final streamline focus - the body. We've never been an unhealthy group - I, personally, have always had some sort of exercise routine, tried to eat healthy - didn't eat a lot of sweets, etc. Probably like most moderately healthy people. A couple of years ago, I had my first run in with a real health problem and the medical industry that exacerbated my issue. I was put on a steroid medicine to treat adult onset asthma and began developing all sorts of side effects and feeling generally less healthy - although it did, of course, solve the asthma symptoms, while I was taking it. When I would forget, I would gasp for air - and it showed no signs of ever getting better. In fact, the doctors suggested that I'd probably be on the inhalers for life. Two hundred dollars a month and steroids that lower my immune system - for life! The doctors were not trying to cure my illness, they were treating the symptoms and that is mostly what our medical industry does. I thought for a bit on this and determined that not one time have I ever gone into a doctor's office and come out with a cure, except in the case of antibiotics. And they have their own special issues.

I began my search into alternative medicines about the time I developed a steroid related UTI - a quick, sharp and painful one that made me consider a trip to the ER. Sending a friend to get as much cranberry juice as could be found, I typed in "home remedies for UTI" in my trusty google search bar and came up with the unlikely combination of a small amount of baking soda dissolved in a glass of water, but being desperate, I tried it and in moments, all the pain was gone. I began to search for other cures for things that ailed me, and natural cures for the adult onset asthma and found vitamin therapy, ideas about ph balance causing bacterial and viral infections, and information about candida that was suspiciously close to many of the ailments I had. From this information, I decided to make some serious changes in my life. What could it hurt?

I cut sugar from my diet as completely as I'm able. This is no easy task in this world. You cannot eat any processed food without getting sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup, which works on your body the same as sugar. This one step made me feel so much better that I kept making more and more steps. I put my family on the South Beach Diet and now we eat very similarly to this most of the time. You can learn a lot about how to eat on that website without even buying the books. You can then type in whatever your favorite foods are and "South Beach" in a search engine to find recipes that fit that program. Unlike other diets, this one actually is a sustainable way to eat and the phases train your body to begin to eat better for life. It's the only one I will ever recommend. My family, now, have collectively lost about seventy pounds and have all taken up hiking - I'm up to a regular three times a week. We walk to the store and my daughter and I do yoga at home. We play with hoola hoops and poi and dance and have learned to love the movement of our bodies. And I haven't been on the inhaler in over six months - all the signs of asthma are gone. These things didn't happen over night. They happened by changing one small thing, and then another, and another. I'm not a doctor, and I can't dispense medical advice, but I can tell you that industry supports itself and to all those I love, I suggest that natural cures will usually (but not always) help you to get closer to health than drugs made by companies that make their money by selling you more drugs, and the people they bribe to dispense them.

Now we're getting ready for this new adventure - we're healthy, love to explore, love the outdoors, and can look forward to some amazing hiking on our journey. We eat much less, so we have to carry much less food. We eat a lot of fresh veggies and will enjoy exploring new farmer's markets or maybe even helping farmers pick vegetables and fruit in fields we pass for trade. We have pared down our belongings so much that we will have with us only useful things we love, and will pay to store only a few other useful things we love. There is peace in this journey. There is peace in the preparation for this journey. And there will be peace when we settle again.

I sincerely hope that some of the resources here will bring peace to some of you reading this as well. We're all in this together.

Shhhh... I'm hunting Winebagos

Boy I hope the PC police don't come point out that this is somehow improper by assuming that I'm referring to hunting the "People of the Big Voice". In all truth, I'm looking for something with a Ford engine, class C and likely not a Winnie at all.  I asked my mechanic friend to come look at an RV last night with me and am feeling a little paralyzed by the process. I didn't expect this - there are so many different things to consider when choosing a place you are going to call home for the next who-knows-how-long. First, of course, is the mechanical stability and I have been blessed with meeting a great friend who is helping me determine this part of the puzzle. I have a little knowledge from my own past RV experiences, and have a fairly good intuitive sense about things like this, but it's great to have someone who really knows what all those little scary sounds really are, instead of my sometimes over-active imagination believing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the clunking noise is not the water pump going but the engine literally exploding out of the hood.

I seem to have the best luck with meeting the right people at the right times in my life. I guess that's my gift - attracting good folks. This day's update will be short - I need to get back to the hunting now. Shhhh...

Dance With Your Inner Slacker

When you read about the journeys people make from not doing something to doing it successfully, you rarely read about the slack days - those days when the soon to be successful person just can't get motivated. I'd like to read a whole book devoted to this subject, if only so I don't feel so bad about my own slow times. For me this usually comes right after some big push involving a lot of brain-work and preparation. This week, that was preparing for the Soiree and today is my unnerving day of foggy wandering, without a clear destination in my sights. So I figured I would share here some of the techniques I use to get myself in gear when I have no time to slow down, but my body and most of my mind are not fully aware of this. Most of these techniques are not my own invention, but I've long since forgotten where I sourced them. I've read hundreds of productivity and organizational books as a young artist trying to get a handle on the chaos; life from the perspective of many artists seems to be one chaotic event after another and to move to actually completing what you want to offer the world, you have to learn some new methods.

One thing that helps me to get back on track quickly is that I've already simplified my life dramatically (and continue to do so more and more) - my belongings no longer fight for my attention and so my mind has more peace and is able to concentrate better because my visual perception isn't clotted with distraction. So I'm clearer than I was, even on days like this, when it is not working at peak performance. Second, I give myself a little slack. I already know it's not going to be a high productivity day and so I won't fight against it too hard. In a strange way, this makes it more productive because whatever intuitive part of my mind is now in control breathes a little sigh of relief for not having to fight a war for a little down time. I'll take a little extra time with my coffee this morning, read a few more articles on the web and generally lazy about a little longer than usual.

But then, I'll periodically get up and putter. I use the fifteen minute rule - I choose a project - any project I see that needs doing on days like this - and I set a timer for fifteen minutes and just work on it that long. This often (but not always) leads to me just working through the fifteen minutes and finishing the project. If it doesn't, I stop and switch to something else. Another thing I do on days like today is something I first learned from Leo Babauta from Zen Habits http://zenhabits.net/ - I go through my to do list and choose just the three most important things that need to be done today. I tell myself that all I need to do are these three important tasks. I will, of course, end up doing more. But on these days, I lie to my own mind and it believes me every time.

I have all my current projects in one of three places - I have an idea file for things that haven't really begun to look do-able to me yet, and a project folder - for things that don't have a lot of steps or reference material associated with them, and then project boxes (everything from shoe-box to bank box or more) in which I keep those projects that have lots of stuff I need to reference. I keep these all together so that I can just grab the appropriate item and not have to think too much about the steps. When I get an idea for one of the projects, I put it in the appropriate box. The individual boxes are a swirl of chaos if you dare to look inside,  but knowing that all the chaos associated with that one project lives in that box is a lifeline on days like this when I may only be using one percent of my brain power.

I think the thing to remember is to not be too obsessive about anything. If there's a down day, even when it's imperative that the work be done, not pushing too hard seems to have an overall better effect than our often touted high-productivity work-ethic. Down time likely has an unknown necessity just like sleep. So cheers to you reading this during my sleepwalking day. May all yours be mildly productive and satisfying in some deeper mysterious way on your path to your own dreams.

Give More Than You Take, and Leave It Better Than You Found It

Throughout my own journey and the part that included parenting two people into adulthood (one down and one almost done), I've tried to think of pithy mottoes I could offer that they might remember and that will make their lives easier. I remember the realizations I've had in my life - discovering that getting into work five minutes early and leaving five minutes late might initially feel like the employer is getting something undeserved from me, but it made the rest of my life a whole lot easier. One of the things I tell my kids is to give more than you take and this ended up as a directive on my art project too. I've wrestled a lot with whether this sets them (and me) up for some sort of martyrdom, and have come to the conclusion that it does not. In the same way that giving that extra ten minutes to an employer makes them look the other way when you have an inevitable delay, when you routinely give more, even the coldest person has a moment of pause when you are in need. And let's face it, none of us will ever attain pure autonomy.

But more than some quid pro quo ziglaresque approach, giving more than you take makes the world better - even if you're the only one doing it and it's just your small share floating out there all alone - I believe it makes a difference. And when I realized this and began living my life this way, I started to really attract better people into my world. And that led to feeling like I could set up some boundaries that kept those who don't play by those rules at the right distance from what I was doing. And that changed everything.

So today I'm cleaning this home I've been renting. I've approached all my interactions with my landlord from the perspective of giving more than I took, and he recently told me that this has been the easiest rental he's ever had - I agreed. I'm cleaning from the unseen tops of the ceiling nooks down to scrubbing the corners of the baseboards - a little every day until will leave. I'm replacing the toilet seat, even though it had a crack in it before we got here, and the towel bar that was missing when we arrived. And you know, these things cost me pennies where I picked them up at garage sales and thrift shops but they won me more than a good reference, they've won me a friend. When I want to settle down again, I know who to call. And I know that he will help me. And he knows he can ask for my help too - perhaps with a job he has cleaning out rental units that were left in bad condition.

So I'll pass on here these two mottoes that my family lives by now - Give more than you take and Leave it better than you found it. If the world worked that way, everyone would have plenty, and everything around us would be better and better every day. Since not everyone practices this, those of us who do keep it all from going horribly wrong - because if everyone practiced its opposite, we'd live in a dump and feel terrified of everyone all the time.And I just can't live that way.



Update on the Soiree:
Lovely people turned out and took a whole bunch of my stuff. I purposefully did not take any of the things they brought since I'm trying to get down to just the belongings that can fit in an RV and the smallest storage unit available - that's the goal.

The bread turned out way better than I expected and everyone left with a full belly, although the Stone Soup did end up with a lot more onions than anything else - still, it was very good. On a personal note, Sangria is very very easy to get very very tipsy on. Must remember this. It's just so smooth going down that you keep thinking you're drinking juice. It's a whole lot more fun watching people look through your stuff when you are giving it away for free than it is when you're selling it. Everyone is happy like it's Christmas morning. I'll definitely do a fun swap instead of ever suffering through the petty competitiveness of a yard sale ever again. 

Of Bread and Soup and Gifting Trees

A big part of the inspiration to start this adventure was a project that I was working on and thought I might get a grant to take around the country. I build these Abundance Trees, which are essentially gifting trees that also act as a room in which to discuss the world around us - my hope is that these trees will eventually be built in every city and people will use their interior sitting area to discuss creative solutions to the problems that plague our society. The trees themselves are made from discarded branches and other recycled pieces and it was our intention to install the trees in areas that were hardest hit by the recession - following a list of places where home foreclosures were highest and hitting a few tent cities and such along the way. Homelessness has always seemed such a bizarre issue to me. We have empty houses and buildings that sit that way because there is more to be made by the owners in tax write-offs than by renting them to those in need for less than market value.

So it's sort of fitting that we're beginning this adventure with a Stone Soup Swap and that's just what we're doing today. Everyone is bringing one piece of fruit for the drink and one veggie for the soup and stuff to swap to start our entry into homelessness. I keep thinking to myself that this cannot be that hard - finding creative solutions to problems. I think we've just been brainwashed into thinking there are only these few, very competitive ways of doing anything and so perhaps the first steps to creative thinking is exploring any other way than the first thing that comes to our minds as a solution. Perhaps I should have had a swap meet before I had a sale.


Note:
For anyone who likes baking bread - check out the More With Less Cookbook - it's a Mennonite cookbook that not only has a bounty of bread recipes, but also has some great how tos on making all sorts of stuff you never thought you could from scratch, like ketchup, mayo, grape-nuts and English muffins. None of this stuff is particularly difficult. Try it. You can get the book on Amazon for a song. Well, a few dollars and a song. They probably wouldn't actually take the song either. But I would - come sing for me and I'll trade you my book as soon as I write down my favorite recipes and take your number in case I forget some.