I've survived my first (nearly) whole week of work. Granted, it was mostly filling out forms, hearing about benefits packages and retirement plans, and going to developer workshops to get synced up with various company policies and infrastructure. Not that it wasn't interesting (it was), but I'm not a fan of how little I've gotten to contribute thus far. I understand it'll take time to get caught up to speed, I'm certainly not unfamiliar with the concept, though I'd like to start actively applying myself to it. Aside from actual work, there are a few things I hope to accomplish, once the orientation presentations start to quiet down next week and I start to fall into a consistent schedule.

The Gym

While I was in school, especially for the last two semesters, I'd settled into a very structured workout plan (Jim Wendler's 5/3/1) that I'd tailored to my needs. I've started going to the gym again (after a three week hiatus), and I'm definitely feeling that intense, all-over soreness that I missed oh-so much. Starting on Monday, I'll get back to my routine, start the first week of a cycle, and put myself back on the road to physical self-betterment, a part of my personal philosophy that I'll probably detail in a future post. Basically, the carrot I dangle in front of myself for motivation is an improved, future version of me.

Planning The Future

Falling into a routine means dedicating time after work each day for planning my future. The goal of this whole intense money/resource saving expedition is to save money so that I can travel the world in 4 to 5 years time. I plan on spending the majority of my time until then charting out my course around the world: picking out which countries I want to visit, which sights I want to see, which languages I want to learn, and what events I want to experience. The adult world quite frankly freaks me out, and having a future goal to work towards (aside from retirement) takes the edge off, and gives me more of a sense of purpose. Again, I'll probably dedicate multiple future posts to my travel plans, this is just a snippet of what I'm working towards.

Basically, consistency is key. There are all sorts of physical and chemical processes that occur in the body that expect routine and consistency. If I can wake up bright and early every morning (okay, maybe to a lesser extent on weekends), hit the gym, go to work, eat three square meals, and then plan my trip and work on personal projects before heading to bed at a predictable time, I'll be doing a service to my mental and physical state, and it'll make me more productive overall. More important than being productive, it'll also bring me closer to reaching my goals.

My first two Home Improvement Projects weren't exactly the highest caliber works of craftsmanship. For example, putting more than two or three articles of clothing on the clothes rack caused it to bend, shake, and warp, and the rope around the bed came undone approximately once a day. So my third Home Improvement Project was setting right what I had previously done so, so wrongly. And it's the weekend, which means that after my workout and shower, the sky was the limit as far as errand-running was concerned.

Back to Home Depot

Home Depot is a recurring theme/location of these posts, and I'd be pretty lost without it. I recently found out that Home Depot will cut 2x4s for you to whatever length you want, which I thought was pretty sweet because it means that I don't have to buy a circular saw. So I used my handy dandy tape measure (also previously purchased at Home Depot), and took a few measurements.

Reinforced Clothes Rack

I cut some 2x4s to be the length of the gap between the pre-installed wooden railings. Learning from my mistakes, I purchased some wood screws this time around, which made the whole process far less painful. I measured out the distance between the 2x4s, again learning from my previous errors. Then I re-secured the hanger mounts and screwed everything back down. The end result is pictured above, this time with a fully loaded rack of clothes, including my heavy jackets and sweatshirts. I have much more faith in this refined, sturdier clothes rack, and I'm starting to get comfortable with do-it-yourself projects.

Bed "Frame"

So I didn't quite build a bed frame per se, but I did cut a 2x4 to the width of the box, and then secure it with some angle brackets. This will keep the box spring in place, and I doubt the mattress would be able to overcome the static friction keeping it on top of the box spring. In other words, I ditched the rope, and I'm pretty confident this will work just as well, without the inconvenience of a having a length of rope running through the middle of the box.

What Next?

The box is starting to come together! My next project is going to be some carpeting, a little bit for aesthetics, but mainly for noise reduction and for keeping things from moving around. I also purchased a dresser from Ikea, but I'm only half way through putting that beast together, and it will definitely get its own post when it's done.

Look at that stupid thing. With its silly little drawers and its wooden frame. Pfft.

In reality, it's just a simple four drawer dresser from Ikea, which I definitely needed because I've been living out of a suitcase my mother lent me, and I need to return it eventually. This project was my first two-day project, and in total took me about six hours to complete. Nothing went horribly wrong per se, it's just that Ikea is Satan incarnate, as it turns out. As you can probably tell from my demeanor, I've never assembled anything from Ikea before, but I figured for something as simple as a dresser, it couldn't be that bad.

Wrong.

The Purchase

Before I even made it into the store, I had to maneuver my unwieldy box truck through the massive fields of tightly packed parking lots. After two unsuccessful laps around, I opted to park across the street. This would turn out to be a Grave Mistake^TM. Once I finished my box truck slalom session and parked, I found that "Ikea" is Swedish for "Labyrinth". Okay, so maybe not literally, but it really might as well be. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted, and if I had been more well-versed in the art of Ikea, I might have headed straight to the "Self Serve" section of the store. But alas, I'm new to this whole process, and found myself waist-deep in screaming toddlers and strollers as I waded my way through the "Showroom" section of the store. Despite moving at nearly a jogging pace for the entire time I was in the store, it still took me about 15 minutes to make it through all of the twists and turns of the Showroom. I'm not sure if that is a testament to how slowly I jog, or just how massive Ikea stores are. Once I made it to the Self Serve area, I loaded up my un-assembled dresser onto my cart, checked out, and wheeled it down to the parking lot. This part of the process would have been the smoothest, if I hadn't parked across the street. As soon as I wheeled my cart outside the store, the wheels locked up, and unceremoniously tossed my box to the ground. Tragic. Huffing and puffing, I carried the large, awkward, hundred pound box the quarter mile across multiple major intersections back to where I had parked. Sweating profusely, I unlocked the back and tossed the package in.

Bringing it to Life

Day 1

As I spend more time with the truck, I realize more and more that people really have better things to do than worry about what the crazy box truck guy is doing. As a result, I had no problem ripping open boxes and hammering things together in the back of the truck, parked in the middle of a Nordstrom's parking lot at 7 PM on a Saturday.

This is the part where I realize that assembling the dresser is literally a 24 step process, with 10 different types of screws, nails, and bolts, and nothing but pictures to serve as instructions. I do my best, and make it as far as getting the frame together before I realize that the height of the dresser doesn't line up with the wooden railings, and I have no way of securing it. Exhausted, and mildly discouraged, I wrap some rope around it to hold it in place, and head home for the night.

Day 2

After sleeping on my predicament from the previous day, I came up with a solution. Can you guess where it took me? That's right, right back to Home Depot. I measured out the space between the two wooden railings, the same space that lined up with the dresser's mounting bracket. I went into Home Depot, had some wood cut, and picked up a few brackets. Twenty screws, four brackets, and two planks of wood later, I had jury-rigged my own mount to attach the dresser to. I spent the rest of my time in the Home Depot parking lot assembling the draws, securing everything, and unpacking the suitcase.

The End Result

The final product is pictured above, and though I'm happy with the result, I can't help but have a bit of disdain for the thing because of the amount of raw effort that it took to get here. I added one final touch, which was securing the draws closed with adhesive Velcro strips, because I don't want to dump all of my belongings on the ground every time I take a sharp turn.

The place is starting to come together. It's clean, organized, and has everything I need. I'm ready for the long haul.

Ok, so I have a confession: this is the first post that I'm actually typing up FromInsideTheBox. By the magic and miracles of modern technology, I'm actually able to access the internet by tethering to my cellphone. I've already talked about how this place is starting to feel like home, but I think calling it a dorm room, as someone said to me today, is much more appropriate. It even looks like one (see the picture above for the current state of affairs). The only differences are that it's larger than any dorm room I've lived in, and I'm not sharing it with anyone, which are both pluses in my book (sorry Zach). And while I don't have any problems with it looking like a dorm room, I do have a few plans to make it a little more "homey" in the future.

The Box and Beyond

Most of these future plans revolve around a company I stumbled upon called Happy Vans in San Jose. They specialize in turning cars, trucks, and RVs into homes, and do all sorts of conversions. How perfect is that? I contacted them about some modifications, and they said they're backlogged by about two months, so it'll be a little while before anything actually happens, but here are some of the ideas I've had.

• Carpeting. I've considered doing this one myself actually, and it's probably the simplest job on the list. It would have been smarter to do this before I started bolting things (the bed frame piece and the dresser) to the walls and floor though. Oh well. The main reasons I'd like carpeting is to soften the loud creaking sounds I hear when I walk across the hard wooden floor and to stop things from sliding around while I'm driving, not that it's much of an issue now. I guess it would also look and feel nice too.
• Sunlight. Just like I have 128 ft² of floor, I have 128 ft² of ceiling space, which is more than enough room to put in a sunlight. Also note that I call it a sunlight and not a sunroof, I live in this thing far more than I drive it. Anyway, in addition to looking pleasant and letting in ambient light, a sunlight would enable the next item on my list.
• Solar Panel/Power Bank. This one may seem a little outlandish, but it's a legitimately feasible modification (and also one that Happy Vans offers). Attaching a small solar panel to a part of the sunlight would handily collect enough energy to fully charge a power bank, like a Duracell Powerpack 1300, for example. And since it's nearly always sunny here, I'd consistently have AC power (aka wall outlets) that I could use for whatever I needed. In my current situation, I charge up a small battery pack at work during the day, and use it to charge my phone and headphones at night. It works fine, and I don't even have anything in the truck that requires AC power at the moment.
• Wall Paneling. As you can see from the picture above, the walls are lined with wooden railings, which is super convenient for securing things, though not all that aesthetically pleasing. Covering them all in some drywall, hell, maybe even some wallpaper would make the whole place look significantly nicer.
• Soundproofing. Before I could do this one, I should figure out a good way to lock the box from the inside, but in a way that nobody could lock it from the outside, which is tricky. But even without that modification, the benefits of soundproofing would be twofold: decreasing the sounds I hear from outside, and decreasing the sounds people hear from inside. Neither of these things have proved to be an issue yet, in fact, I kind of like falling asleep to the sound of crickets and waking up to the sounds of birds.

Remembering My Goals

I also think it's important to note that I don't actually need any of these things. I did need a bed and a place to store my clothes, and if I'm really trying to live in line with my minimalist and utilitarian ideals, then carpeting, a sunlight, paneling, soundproofing, and power are excessive and a waste of resources. Most of the reasoning behind wanting those things is for aesthetic value, and if I really cared about that, why would I be living in a box truck to begin with? I've already accepted my self-induced (truck-induced?) celibacy, spiffing up the back of a truck doesn't exactly scream "romance". And if that's out the window, and these things don't provide any real, necessary benefit to my life or increase my happiness, why consume unnecessarily, and waste money I can put towards my goals?

This is another post on philosophy, take that as you will.

I went out with a couple of co-workers last Friday, and naturally the conversation eventually ended up on my living situation. I've been continually surprised at how receptive people are to the whole concept of living in a car, normally once I explain all of my motivating factors. Mainly, I get a lot of "That's really great! I personally could never do something like that, but power to you for going through with it!", and that's vaguely encouraging for me. Coupling these conversations with all of the time I have for reflection, I've come to realize a few things about happiness.

But first off, before I get into this, I'm going to paraphrase a quote from the movie Pursuit of Happiness, with Will Smith. The quote goes something like:

The Founding Fathers wrote that we are all entitled to "the pursuit" of happiness as a basic fundamental human right. They specifically didn't say that we're entitled to happiness, because everyone seeks happiness in different ways.

-(kinda) Will Smith, Pursuit of Happiness

Defining Happiness

What is happiness, and what does it actually mean to be happy? At a rote biological level, it's just a specific concentration of various chemicals in various parts of your brain, an evolutionary construct loosely coupled with the concepts of risk, reward, and feedback systems. But that's a boring way to look at happiness, and it totally misses the point. Happiness is a unit of fulfillment. Being happy means that you've established some metric for how you want to conduct yourself, and you're following that metric pretty well. It's how we let ourselves know we're satisfied with our situations, a bit of feedback saying, "Hey, I'm okay with the way that things are going". Conversely, if you aren't happy, it's generally a sign that something needs to change in your life, or you need to reevaluate your metrics for happiness. And naturally, as the diverse bunch of human beings that we are, we all have slightly different metrics for happiness.

A Metric for Happiness

Alluding back to what I said in an earlier post, we are constantly being conditioned to think that happiness correlates with how much stuff you have. We treat consumption as if it's the only way to add value and meaning to your life. Even worse (in my opinion), it's not even just about how much you have, it's about how much you have relative to those around you. Indulging in our primal urges for supremacy, we're conditioned to believe that we should only be truly happy with ourselves when our television is at least 4" larger than our neighbors', or when we're the first ones to get the newest iPhone, or when we have landscapers cutting our yards and our neighbors don't. To put it in frank (and mildly vulgar) terms, we're constantly engaged in a dick measuring contest with those around us, and some more good ol' "natural male enhancement" is only a credit card swipe away. And you know what?

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Now certainly, as you can tell from how I'm writing this, this isn't what brings me happiness. But who am I to say it's wrong? If it legitimately brings someone else joy to own more things, regardless of whether or not they need them, why should I trample all over their happiness? It's not my place, and (aside from all of the child and slave labor camps they're indirectly funding), who are they really hurting? That said, I think if we all took a moment and stepped back from our everyday existences to introspect and figure out what genuinely added meaning to our lives, I don't think "buying stuff" would come out at the top of the list. I really don't.

My Pursuit

The way I pursuit, and find happiness, is by going to sleep a better person than I was when I woke up. I want to add value to myself, in the form of knowledge, health, and ability every day. In business-esque terms, I'd like to be an appreciating asset. Without trying to sound too much like Ayn Rand, I firmly believe if you work on bettering yourself, the world around you will thrive as a result. And following in that vein, I try to treat myself properly. You only get one body, you're doing yourself a huge disservice if you aren't actively working to keep it functioning well. Exercise, eating right, sleeping well, and removing stress from your life do absolute wonders for every other aspect of your life.

Now this isn't to say that you shouldn't be happy and content with yourself. On the contrary, I believe it's about realizing that we're all fallible and we're all flawed, and that's perfectly fine. It also means that there are always things we can do to be "better" people, in whatever ways we think make us "better". And that's why I think it's important to reflect on what happiness means to each of us, because if we can actually get down to the root of it, we can throw away all the noise and fluff and clutter, and focus on living our terrifyingly short lives in the way that makes them the most fulfilling, and the best they can be.