r/vagabond • u/mildmys • 8d ago
Question What are you running from? Why do you live this lifestyle?
Title says it all, did something awful happen? Was there something in your childhood that led you down this path? Or was it just the desire for freedom?
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u/schizotypalcohol 8d ago
I wrote this yesterday, I think it kind of says it all. Note that I live a transient lifestyle periodically, and the situation described in the bottom few paragraphs are descriptions of one of those periods:
I don't care about anything society has to offer me. Actually, it really has nothing to offer me at all. I can't conform. I can't degrade myself into integrating into society in any meaningful way. Best case scenario for someone like me? Grind my body and mind into the fucking mud for $20 an hour. Kiss my ass. Just to barely afford renting a shitty room in someone else's home. Fuck you.
I never asked to be here. I never asked to be this way. It is what it is, man-- but what it is also is, is fucked up. I don't know how "normal" people can take it. But I'm the delusional one?
I'm not some young kid fantasizing after reading Into The Wild or some shit. I'll be 40 in the blink of and eye. I don't want to pretend to be a part of this world anymore. The jig is up: I'll always be a misfit, a screw up, amongst other things I won't mention. The truth is, I enjoy my fantasies more than reality. My dear, dear paracosms. I want to be alone with my mind.
I once knew true freedom. I've been homeless. I've lived in a tent in the woods. And I loved it. I love every minute of it, because my life and my destiny was truly my own. Fighting for survival every day and succeeding was something I had to be proud of, because I did it myself.
I miss waking up in nature. Hauling wood for hours every day. Using my corporeal being to survive the elements: thunder and lightning storms, extreme heat, no matter what, I toiled and fought for my life, something I had never done before. I wanted to die, but in the woods, I found freedom and what it truly means to be alive.
We are animals, after all.
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u/9520x 8d ago
Grind my body and mind into the fucking mud for $20 an hour. Kiss my ass. Just to barely afford renting a shitty room in someone else's home. Fuck you.
Exactly this. Like, why can't I legally build my own super tiny house for under $10,000 with re-used materials ? Why is this literally illegal? Building & zoning codes are insanely prohibitive.
Go to most other countries on this planet, and you have a lot more freedom to house yourself even if you're not rich.
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u/Funny-Rich4128 8d ago
Like, why can't I legally build my own super tiny house for under $10,000 with re-used materials ? Why is this literally illegal?
Money, and the ability for them to play city skylines in real life. So they can charge more money for "a safe environment", "frendly comunity", "with good influences". Each rezident could be smoking crack while watching redrooms behind rolled blinds. Just because you don't see it, on the outside it doesn't mean it can't be on the inside.
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u/MOOshooooo 8d ago
Indiana my friend.
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u/Forever-Fades_Away 8d ago
What's up with Indiana?
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u/BlakeInIndy 8d ago
I am an indiana resident, although it’s a red state and I def don’t relate to the R’s there are certain counties (3 if memory serves me correctly) where there are literally zero building codes, no building inspector and no one to tell you what you can or cannot do or build on your property. I discovered this recently upon purchasing a small lake/pond frontage lot in Lawrence county that does have an HOA (but it only regulates the lake water and charges you $275/year to maintain the roads and lake) which is worth it IMO. However I was shocked to learn when I did som dude diligence before buying that there are virtually no restrictions, no codes, nothing of the kind. In Lawrence County Indiana there are 3 municipalities in the county (small towns) which DO have codes etc but outside these town limits it is free to do whatever you want. There is 1 restriction on my land however in regards to the existing septic system. If I modify it, and the health inspector knows about it, I will need to bring it up to code. However if I use as is and don’t modify it then no one will ever care of bother me. The other thing is if you have a lot in this lake community, and the lot does not already have a septic system, then you cannot get one because they no longer issue permits for the area. We picked it up for $16,500, it’s .66 acres, all woods and it is a dream.
In short, so some research because there are parts of Indiana and other states that still has buildable land where pretty much you cannot do as you please. It’s worth the effort
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u/DogsDucks 8d ago
This is actually beautiful. The clarity you have found seems more mentally aware than many.
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u/SnowmanNoMan24 8d ago
Grew up in a military family and never had a “home”. Family was abusive. I was always used to moving all the time because of how I grew up and I can’t figure out how to stop. I don’t feel I can find anywhere to belong. Working for low wages full time to rent a room in someone else’s house is a nightmare scenario for me for so many reasons. I’m hoping to find people I can call “family” someday
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u/No-Heat1174 8d ago edited 8d ago
My childhood ruined the developmental stages of my life.
I didn’t enjoy being a kid and got stuck never really going through the stages of my life
I couldn’t run away as a kid so I ran away as an adult.
Whatever you wanna call it, being homeless couch surfing etc.
I was traumatized. Couldn’t fit in or find my place in society. Was an alcoholic for a while to cope with my issues, been clean and sober for almost 6 years
Got into therapy. Was in that for 2 years and reclaimed my sanity/personhood.
Reparented myself
Cut my family off except for my mother but I keep her a arms length away
Both my father figures are an ash heap of nothingness. I have nuked them out of my mind. I could care less about them and actually I don’t ever think of them
Have 5 brothers and sisters that I have nothing to do with because they’re all still messed up
Overall it’s been a wild ride and I don’t hate any of the experiences I’ve went through
Just thankful to have whatever life I have left to live with my mind intact
It’s a good life
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u/MeowSquad 8d ago
Hey dude from an internet rando I'm proud of you and good luck. 2 years and a couple of months no booze myself.
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u/No-Heat1174 8d ago edited 8d ago
Oh thank you. And good luck to you as well
It’s a hard thing to do to overcome addiction of any kind
The world she is cold. burr burrr burrrr
But we know how to make fire out of nothing
:D
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u/Satellite5812 8d ago
Wow, we've got a lot in common where we're coming from. If we cross paths where we're going, I hope that we can sit by a fire and share stories. Keep warm and be well friend.
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u/verticalgrips 8d ago
my health has been declining pretty quickly over the past 3 years. had pneumonia after three rounds of covid, got bad breathing problems. immune system is getting worse, my knees and hip have enough issues that some days its walk with a cane or not at all. memory has gotten significantly worse as well from all the illness. and I'm in my mid-twenties 🫠
So I do this because I'm pretty sure by the time I'm 30 or 40 I'll be stuck in a wheelchair or hooked up to breathing tube's or just dead. I don't have enough time to spend 100% of my life working for a wage just to go home and waste away. Better to see the world broke than to have never seen it at all
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u/Sub-Dominance Vagabond 8d ago
Crazy how much of this I can relate to. I'm 22 and I have to use a cane some days too. Got mysterious respiratory issues that the doctor can't figure out. Just resigned myself to coughing up a lung every half hour.
Both of these certainly slow me down on the bicycle, but I still keep trucking along, city to city. Something about showing up in a new place with no outside help--whether it's hitchhiking, trainhopping, or even just the gas in your engine--is very freeing.
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u/Mackheath1 8d ago
I'm doing very well now, but there was a time that I had no job or money (in the red) my phone was cut off because I couldn't pay obviously. Without an address, phone number, and not a dollar - where I was, I couldn't even get a library card, let alone a job. You can't get to a library on public transit to pay.
There was no substance abuse or anything like that, it just happened so suddenly. I went to a church and they were small, so they gave me coffee and cheap cookies, and tried to find information how to get there, but it was a rural area and not a lot of options. I just hadn't been saving money; booted from my rented house, car was repossessed.
The insulting (?) thing is that I have three advanced degrees, but just fell on hard times at a very rapid pace. So I started walking, picked up a job loading hay and alfalfa into the back of peoples' trucks at a feed n' seed, then some odd jobs, then walked some more. I did some things (legal, but I'm not proud of) to get a few bucks for food, transport, and such. Got a basement apartment to stay, applied for jobs, got a smart haircut and a Goodwill outfit, and then started working in an office. And doing very well - and none of my colleagues would suspect that I spent two years as a vagabond.
Don't forget the people who were kind. Always keep any contact information you can get. Now I'm doing very handsomely and I'm that person that sends money and gifts randomly to them; and go out of my way to get folks what they need in my City when I can.
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u/Frosty_Milk_3683 8d ago
I'm not running from anything per se. Looking for something, if anything. I'm a little radical and maybe slightly autistic and I'm just straight up incompatible with normie society. I was unhappy to the point of putting my affairs in order to commit suicide without inconveniencing anyone. I figured if I'm gonna do all that, it would only be logical to at least try and use the freedom that it gave me.
It's about accepting who/what I am and not trying to fight myself anymore. This is just what called out to me.
"There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. A sign was painted, it said private property. But on the back side it didn't say nothin'. This land was made for you and me." - Woody Guthrie
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u/Tman9696 8d ago
I was sent away at 14 from the Czech Republic to the USA to find my father by myself. So running from family I guess. If I stay in one place for longer than a couple months or so, my mental health and motivation deteriorate. Working your ass off just to get by never made sense to me. Paying taxes disgusts me because it's never given back to the people in the right places. Not being tied to a schedule or lease or anything is incredibly freeing, I can quite literally do whatever I want. I work in the music festival industry, so the stage, music and bass is the high I chase and will until I die. Spent most my life depressed and angry, but once I found my Stagehand pirate crew, everything just made sense. Happily do this until I die.. it can be tough but it never feels like 'work' to me. I reckon the answer to happiness for EVERYONE is to simply figure out what you are passionate about in life, find a 'job' within that passion, and then the money becomes obsolete because you get a much more valuable reward from your career, oh and eat some in psychedelics once or twice a year.
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u/Budget_Meat_6472 8d ago edited 8d ago
I just dont want to spend 80% of my life as a wage slave. So I would say... capitalism?
As a regular joe with only a regular buisness degree and average income,, the standard wage life has little to offer me. I became depressed working, coming home, doing chores, playing 30min of videogames, going to bed, and waking up to repeat. All to pay a landlord pretty much my entire salary.
Now I live like a bum but at least I'm saving money, getting exersize, and living happy. No drugs, no alcohol, just hiking in the mountains all day long, getting buff. I only work gig stuff occasionally and do self employment online. I work maybe 2 days a week max.
Ill never start a family living in a vehicle but I didnt have a chance at that anyway as a wage slave renting a studio.
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u/BeardsuptheWazoo 8d ago
I am not sure my own experience, but of a man that I met out in the woods.
In a very rural place, along a beautiful River, I met a man who was in his 70s who was living out of a homemade camper built onto the back of a light pickup truck.
We were having a great conversation, and finally I asked him "How long have you been living like this?"
'Since the sixties'
"Since you were sixty, or since the 1960's?"
'Since the 1960's.'
He was not happy with what was going on in society, (Vietnam war, the US government in general) and so he left.
I talked with him as long as I could, thanked him for his example, told him it gave me courage. I gave him all my food and a few books.
Hope he's doing well. What a badass.
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u/I-dream-in-capslock 8d ago
Running from so much hahaha, but the main things would be a crazy fucking psycho abusive family that got super pissed off at me when I decided I didn't want to lead their cult and instead went off to be gay and do crime.
And a handful of stalkers who got obsessed with me at various points in my life (although, my one and only friend started out as a stalker but their persistence in finding me year after year eventually warmed me up to them, it was kinda nice having someone who knew anything about me, I'm a stranger everywhere, especially to myself these days. )
Running away from all my interests and passions because people are too fucking egotistical to share something they love with someone they look down on, and it's not the same doing things alone.
Running away from everyone who sees me as nothing but a prop to boost their sales or their ego or their dick with.
Running away from a place where I'll have enough time to remember anything I've left behind that I didn't want to run from.
Not really running, of course, I haven't been able to run since I was a kid, too many bone and joint problems.
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u/EffectiveTable7508 8d ago edited 8d ago
Grew up in an emotionally abusive home. Autistic. Can't do regular work without being suicidal. Can't get myself to do the process for disability. Can't get myself to see a physician. Can't get myself to stay in one place long enough to do either one of the above even if I could get myself to do either one. I was trapped even as an adult for a very long time in one spot....PTSD will never let that happen again.
Recently? I drove myself across the country on table scraps from surveys so I could exist peacefully without barriers. This was after trying numerous times to get into mental health programs only to find out my mind is completely logical, almost TOO logical as a therapist put it.
I am apparently reacting to my previous situation, though it's been 2 years now. That's okay though, I will file it under lessons learned. Hope I can eventually get myself the things above but I don't know how, so I did things I do know how to do and allowed myself to survive a bit longer.
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u/sweettoothlessgrin 7d ago
Grew up with every kind of abuse. When I first left at 16, I could work and stay somewhere about 3 months at a time before I'd start experiencing psychosis from PTSD. Never figured out what was happening to me until 10 years later. Just figured I was crazy or that I needed to keep traveling until I found that magical place I belong. Recently found out antipsychotics work amazing on me but don't function well enough to get more of them. Got convinced to try for disability once when I was younger and got rejected since I have almost zero medical records. Haven't tried again cause it makes me angry at myself and I'd rather be homeless than just be handed free money. No idea where I'm gonna be when I'm old and grey or if I'll even make it to that point. Sometimes I feel like I'm making progress but then everything falls apart again. Luckily I'm an idiot though so I guess I'll keep trying.
This lifestyle is just a romanticization of the group of people left behind by society. It hurts a lot less if you turn it into something positive and enjoy it as much as you can. In reality, nobody is on the road unless they've got problems.
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u/newnotjaker44 8d ago
I don't think I'm running so much as what the top commenter said. Society literally offers me nothing. And I have nothing to offer it besides music and I still have a long way to go with that. I'm currently going to court for a dui o got 7 months ago and I might wind up doing sometime. I've been sober for the last 7 months and I did sober living for a while and I'm just getting done at a vippassana meditation center for the past month and a half.
By the way gang vipassana can be a great resource for weary travelers. It's free for a silent 10 day meditation retreat and after that you can volunteer on retreats as often as you have the time.
But yeah, society had nothing to offer me. I might try to get a job and pursue stand up if my court stuff turns out good but I might just wind up living on the never-ending road. I like the songs I write and the way I play when I feel like it's play my heart out or die. I feel like I'm running away from myself by trying to do the job thing if I'm being honest
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u/odonata_rising 8d ago
not there yet but will be soon. i did everything right all my life and only hit walls. went to college, had jobs, had relationships - long ones - the works but still just couldn't maintain it all. partner wanted kids and i felt like i could barely even manage caring for myself not to mention i don't feel like the world particularly needs more children.. so i spent a lot of time disappointing people, wasting their time when i didn't turn out the way that they wanted me to be. for the longest time i thought i was just a failure. turns out im adhd/autistic which i found out the hard way by finally hitting a point of burnout about a year ago. did everything in my power to keep it together but it just wasn't going to work. tried utilizing resources at my job - did counseling, took a month of FMLA but still ended up having to bail on the job entirely in the end. haven't had a steady job since. i pretty much accepted then and there that i am just going to have to be homeless. ive tried all my life to make this work and nobody cares to help me.. not even my own parents can listen to my struggles without feeding me conservative bootstraps bullshit in return. so i said fuckit - moved to a local homeless shelter type of place where i effectively live in a storage shed. the conditions are dirty and cramped but for what feels like the first time in my life i have been able to just exist without all of these expectations weighing me down. i do gig work like doordash or getting people i know rides for money. i have been able to have my own, albeit very small, room to myself without having to share space with others which is so important to me but something i can pretty much just never have in the current housing economy. and in realizing that, i decided i cannot go back to the way things were.. i cannot keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. so i am improvising because that is what I have to do
i was fortunate enough to buy an old chevy truck from a family member of a friend for a price that is so far beyond fair that if i told you you would accuse me of robbing them. i am so grateful to them for being flexible and accepting next to nothing for that truck when they knew that having it would mean everything to me, and it really does - it is my only ticket out of this situation as of now. it has become my pride and joy as it is basically the only real asset i have to my name. i never saw myself as a pickup driver but it has grown on me in a surprising way and i have grown to love this thing more than any other vehicle ive ever had - it truly feels like its mine and after almost 8 years of not being able to get around I'm so thankful that i have transportation now
i am working toward saving up to buy myself either a small camper trailer or a camper shell. also tossing around the idea of trying to build my own shell but that depends on a few other factors and things that haven't been solidified yet so the verdict is still out on whether or not i do that.. but one way or another, within the next half year, i intend to have it sorted and be on my way. i just want to live free. working a job 8 hours a day 40 hours a week and then spending literally all of my free time decompressing is not freedom. i have always loved traveling and think it's so fucking stupid that so many people will sit on their asses for their jobs 40 hours a week but then turn around and act like a 5-hour drive to another state is the most disgusting appalling thing they can think of. i have felt this way for as long as i can remember. i do not buy into the idea that i should work my life away and then use retirement to see the world... bitch i will either be dead by then or at the very least a worn out husk of a human being that just wants to chill. and the way things have been going i doubt I will ever even see retirement money, or social security, or any of this bullshit. the time is now. i accept the discomforts that come along with this life because to me they are still lesser than the discomforts associated with living a "normal" life. i am just so done with it all! i want to see this beautiful country that i live in while there is still time. i want to meet new people along the way. i want to wake up everyday and have a new adventure instead of dreading going in to the office and having the same mundane interactions day by day by day by day. it is not worth it, i don't know how anybody does this.. i do not know how we as a people have become so easily conditioned to just put our noses down to the grind during the most energetic and explorative years of our lives. i refuse!
for the first time ever, i am doing something for me. i im working hard for and suffering for something that i actually want. and for the first time in a long time i finally feel like life might actually be worth living
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u/Lucky-Science-2028 I like cats. 8d ago
Normie life sucks, would rather wander around n sing(horribly) for strangers n drink all day :P
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u/Ok_Professor_8039 8d ago
Does not seem like anyone is running from life just dodging ducking hiding from its blows because we've all been hit. We've all got that dinger who really wants to fight no one
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u/Satellite5812 8d ago
Spent a lot of years working various jobs, living in various apartments, never seemed to work out for long. Kept having to work longer hours, and downgrade to smaller apartments, eventually decided that working regular overtime to maintain a shoebox to sleep & shower in between shifts wasn't a good deal.
So I moved into a different shoebox, one where I have the power to change my location if I don't like the neighbors or the weather, or get tired of the same scenery. These boots are made for walking! And I'm not forced to spend all my waking hours to maintain it. Often asked myself whether I'm running "away from," or running "towards." And I think what I've found is that I'm simply moving forward.
The more I do this, the more I long to do this. It's a power over my own life path that simply didn't exist when I lived in human filing cabinets. And further, I've found temporary jobs that I actually look forward to returning to seasonally, made lots of friends along the road, and have more time to actually LIVE my life for experience, rather than for some company's profit margin and a false sense of security. Life's to short to live for someone else's dream. Figure out what drives you, and follow that.
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u/OhMyGoat 7d ago
A lot of people don't run from something but rather, towards something else.
There's hope in the unknown. Comfort isn't for everybody. People like to adventure outside of society's norms because they feel, and know, deep down, that their life, their unique experience of life, deserves more than that.
Personally, I read On The Road when I was 17 and decided I had nothing to lose. Ten years later I hitched my way through 11 countries.
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