Way back in July of last year, someone gave me the idea to track how much money I was saving by not having to pay rent in the area. I crunched the numbers (in reality, like two numbers) and wrote the code, and the savings clock was born. When I flipped the switch, it showed a fairly disheartening negative $6,000 because I was still half in the hole from purchasing my Ford-fabricated flat. But in the intervening seven or eight months, I've had the pleasure of watching that number dwindle its way to zero (where I hit my break-even point), and as of this writing, work its way up to five digits in our (just as arbitrary as my formula) base 10 number system.

So Brandon, you've successfully saved $10,000, plus another $10,000 or so if you sold the truck. Has it been worth it?

This is ^{a paraphrased version of} a question I received recently, and it definitely made me think a bit. First off though, I'm not sure I agree with the phraseology, because this is basically the equivalent of saying: Would you live in a truck for nine months for $20,000? and I don't think that's the right approach. The short answer to both of those questions is unequivocally "Yes.", but I don't think that's really doing it justice. Phrasing it like that makes it sound like a dare, like it's something I'm enduring just for the money. It's not about being worth it or not, it's about finding a lifestyle that fits my needs. It's about figuring out where my priorities lie and what my goals are, and then picking a life that makes them achievable. I've said before that being in the right mindset really is everything. And that applies more generally than just software engineers living in trucks too; going into any situation with an open mind and some goals will do wonders for your perception and overall happiness. I've written pages of posts expounding all the good things the truck lifestyle has done for me, but to put it into perspective, let's take a stroll through the hypothetical life of a much more vanilla Brandon, who chickened out of his crazy truck-centric life plans. We'll call him Normal Brandon™, or NB for short

What would Normal Brandon's life look like?

When NB first moves out to California, he spends two weeks living in his corporate housing, filling up his days with an endless search for long-term housing. After trawling around Craigslist, Zillow, and the "New Engineers" group his company set up, he eventually finds a roommate or two who are interested in living in South Bay, and together they find a place to inhabit. They all agree on the cheapest option they can find, which happens to be a second-floor apartment just outside of Mountain View. For ~$1,500 per person each and every month (plus utilities), they each get roughly 80 ft² of bedroom space. They also each get a complimentary half-hour commute in the consistently bumper-to-bumper traffic along the 101. In the event there is any amount of water falling from the sky, make that an hour-long commute. Not ideal, but certainly not the worst thing that's ever happened.

NB starts work and quickly settles into a routine. Since the corporate buses don't start running until around 7 am, he ditches the early morning exercise routine he adopted in college, and instead exercises after work, around 5 pm. As it turns out, this is peak gym time, and half of his workout consists of aggressive thumb-twiddling while waiting for a squat rack. To pass the time, NB silently judges everyone around him, criticizing form, or outfits, or any number of other silly things because NB is jaded and cranky over wasting so much time. He starts going to the gym less frequently to save himself the frustration. Back at his apartment, his roommates are thinking of getting some furniture to make the place less spartan-looking. NB agrees and chips in, and the trio pick up some Ikea couches and end tables, and a 46" flat screen TV.

NB spends most of his waking time during the week working. Normally he'll either go out Friday or Saturday, and then spend the other nights hanging out and watching a movie or two and playing some video games. Oh, and he sleeps in until like noon.

This goes on for a decade or so until NB's biological clock kicks in and he finds himself in a serious relationship, at which point he gets married, buys a house in the suburbs, produces 1.9 children, and spends the next 30 years working to pay off his mortgage and finance trips to Disney Land.

You're probably thinking, "You know, NB's life doesn't actually sound all that bad." And I'd have to agree, it sounds like he has everything in order and is living some variation of the American Dream. He certainly doesn't sound unhappy.

He does sound boring though.

And that's what I'm most worried about. He sounds comfortable, he sounds complacent, and he sounds decidedly average. I'm worried he's going to wake up one day and realize he's 65 years old, wondering where the time went, all while he watched his perfectly unextraordinary life pass him by. I'm worried that he'll forget all of his goals and dreams and aspirations and he'll be content simply existing, a passionless lump of aging and dying cells smiling soullessly and nodding along to the tune of yet another water cooler conversation. And then he'll retire, ready to experience his new-found freedom just as his body begins to fail him.^{I apologize for the grimness, I swear it'll lighten up now}

So yes, I've saved $10,000+, but I've also reshaped the path I'm travelling on. Granted, this whole discussion suffers from the straw man fallacy, it's not like I can grab myself from an alternate timeline and see how he turned out. Nonetheless, the relative comfort and ease of the life I didn't choose leave a lot to be desired. For one, I wouldn't be as painfully aware of my work/life balance. I enjoy what I do for work, and it's easy to get lost in it. If I didn't have to think long and hard about how to live so close to work without it becoming my life, it's likely I'd end up like the slowly boiling frog: working ever-longer days just because I didn't know what else to do, until eventually that's all I do or know or am. Without the threat of not showering and becoming a total bum looming over my shoulder, I wouldn't have nearly as much motivation to stay active and exercise, and I wouldn't be as consistent with it. And god forbid I had electricity and a living room, I'd end up buying a whole host of things that do nothing to make me a happier, healthier person.

But if it really came down to it, I could handle working longer, I could handle being less healthy, and I could handle owning things I don't need. What I would have trouble handling is the idea that I could lose my passion for life so easily. Getting into a routine is a double-edged sword. On one hand, everything goes much smoother when you've figured out a schedule that flows from one thing to the next. On the other hand, it's too easy to fall back to a routine just because it's what you're the most comfortable with, even if it isn't the best for you, or even what you want. And while I have all these websites and apps I want to build and posts I want to write and books I want to read and languages I want to learn and places I want to go, I could see all of those things just casually fading into the background noise of my perfectly acceptable normal life. The truck is a ridiculous, obnoxious reminder that I'm not ready to give up on any of that. And that is what makes it "worth it".

_{Brief note: I wrote most of this on the plane, but it took me a few days to getting around to polishing it up.}

I've thought travel, I've talked travel, but aside from a few fleeting flirtations with decidedly domestic destinations, I hadn't really done much of it.

Until now, that is.

By the Numbers

I'm currently writing this at 35,000 ft, traveling at 556 mph on my way back from a business trip. By the time I touchdown in San Francisco, I'll have covered 13,587 miles in the sky and 34 hours and 31 minutes in airplanes and airports, meaning that this trip handily accounts for more travel than any two of my previous trips. Spanning four countries and as many languages, I had the chance to explore what might as well have been new worlds to me and dust off my paltry high school French knowledge in the process, which was actually même pire que je pensais. My genuine apologies to anyone who was forced to struggle through a conversation with me and my rusty, awkwardly accented French.

Making Memories: Montréal, Munich, and more

Aside from the business portion of the trip, which proved to be wildly insightful and informative, I had some opportunities to really get a feel for what certain sections of the world have to offer. In short: new perspectives and a few centuries of lush, vivid history to explore. I ogled at Old Port, partook in poutine and attempted to understand the underground. I meandered around Mont Royal, savored smoked meats, marveled at massive museums and cathedrals, and even won a few Leva at a Bulgarian casino. I chowed down on Currywurst in Frankfurt and put back a beer in Bavaria. I — I could keep going, but I'm sure you get the idea at this point.

Reaffirming the Future

The trip also served to remind me of my plans for, well, the rest of my life. As a refresher, the current course I've been carving (hopefully) leads to retiring young, traveling the world, and working on technically challenging projects of my own design. But up until now, most of what I liked and knew about travel was learned secondhand, vicariously absorbed through books and videos of people who'd actually made their way out into the world. Looking back, it was probably a little risky to plan for a future I knew so little about, and dedicating years of my life in pursuit of it. But now I've gotten a taste, and I can imagine myself spending several seasons in the cities I basically sailed through and still have more to see and explore. It's easy to get caught up in your own little comfortable corner of reality, forgetting that there's a whole world full of ideas and perspectives and cultures that you'll never experience if you don't dive into them. I've said before that I enjoy stepping outside my comfort zone, and being dropped in a country where I can barely tell the bathrooms apart was certainly a great way to do that. So on that front, it was nice to see reality lining up with my goals.

There's this weird dichotomy that exists with planning things. I like to be spontaneous and leave myself flexible for anything that may pop up, yet I'm planning details for things ten years down the road. It's confusing, to be sure. I recognize that I'm not the same Brandon I was two years ago, and that Brandon was different than a Brandon from two years prior. I'm an undulating, four dimensional stream of Brandons being shaped by my own ideas and environment, trying to figure out what makes sense to do with the one shot I get at this whole "life" thing.* I can't expect that Brandon ten years from now will be anything like The Brandon I Am Now™, except for hopefully a few guiding principles. Trying to setup for a future is dangerous like that, and the best I can do is open as many doors as possible while I'm young so that all I'll have to do is pick one when the time comes.

_{*Reading this over, it sounds like I'm stoned out of my mind, rambling on about the universe and higher dimensions. I can assure you that that isn't the case, but looking out over a stunning skyscape above a glimmering Greenland will do strange things to your perspective.}

I know, I know, I don't write as often as I used to. I have an excuse or two for this week though, I swear. Between helping a friend move, drinking some Puzzled Pints, volunteering with Destination Imagination, trying out (and struggling with) yoga and swing dancing (not at the same time), celebrating the Chinese New Year, and biking 50 miles to watch the Super Bowl with friends, I've been a reasonably busy bus bum. I also have a ton of half-finished posts that are just waiting for me to get my act together and polish them off, so stay tuned.

Anyway, people seemed curious as to how my daily routine plays out, so here is a play-by-play of what my (surprisingly normal) work week looks like.

My Weekday

5:00 - 6:00 am Wake up. I use an alarm clock app called Sleep as Android, which I talked a little bit about in this post. The gist of it is this: I place my phone on the bed next to me, and it takes accelerometer measurements while I sleep. Based on these measurements and some combination of magic and science, it can try its darnedest and guess if I'm in light sleep, as opposed to deep sleep or REM sleep. If it's between five and six in the morning, and it catches me in light sleep, the alarm will go off. If I sleep soundly til six, it'll wake me up then. Considering sleep cycles are anywhere between 70 and 120 minutes, it's likely that I'll be in light sleep somewhere in the hour. In my experience, the alarm normally senses my wakefulness around 5:30, at which point I get up feeling pretty grog-free^{if that's a real expression}. I blink a few times and stretch out before rallying myself onto my feet and stumbling around in the dark. Eventually I find my best (read: only) pair of athletic shoes, normally by tripping over them. I work my way over to the back gate and hit the lights, then remove the vice grips I use to keep the door locked. I toss my already-packed gym bag over my shoulder, and (quietly) open up the back gate to head over to the gym.

6:00 - 7:30 am Exercise. I've mentioned before that I'm doing three-week cycles of a modified 5/3/1 routine. This means that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are press, squat, bench, and deadlift days, respectively. Wednesday is a toss up, but it usually involves me sleeping in, forcing myself to do cardio, or targeting core and underutilized muscles (calves, trapezius, lower back, etc). Normally, I set aside the last 10-20 minutes for stretching, foam rolling, and the inversion table. At some point in the near future, I'll have a week exclusively for working on personal records and one-rep maxes; my goal is to have a combined bench, squat, and deadlift of 850 pounds. I'll follow up my attempts with a post.

7:30 - 8:00 am Making myself pretty. By the time I'm done with my workout, I'm normally a hot, sweaty, angry*, solemn mess, which doesn't translate well into maintaining positive relationships with coworkers. Sounds like something that could be (and is) perfectly solved by a hot shower. My morning prettification looks something like: shower, brush teeth, throw on the carefully folded clothes from my gym bag, send a few "you got this" looks to myself in the mirror, and head over to my office.

8:00 - 8:30 am Breakfast. Normally I'll grab the undisputed most important meal of the day with a coworker or two. I do my best to refrain from talking about truck stuff unless someone explicitly brings it up. Even though the cat is oh-so out of the proverbial bag at this point, I recognize that most of my life outside of work is still weird as hell to reasonable people. Even if they can understand why I do it, there's no reason to constantly remind them that I make highly questionable decisions — it's really just self-preservation for when performance reviews roll around. As for the food that I spend a continuous half an hour shoveling into my face, I spring for some combination of scrambled eggs, Greek yogurt, fresh fruit, and a bran muffin. Boring yes, but not unpleasant, and it's way better than dying of any number of maintenance-related ailments before I have a chance to travel the world.

8:30 am - 4:30(ish) pm Work and more food. My actual day job consists me arguing with computers and being aggressively indecisive about which mode I want my sit/stand desk in, which I'm sure annoys my coworkers. I take breaks for lunch and occasionally to have a cup of tea on the roof if it's particularly nice out, because it's important to stop once in a while and recognize all the wonderful things we have in our lives. I make a conscious effort to make sure I'm not working too much, and head out when my work has reached a logical break point.

4:30 - 8:30(ish) pm Everything else. After work, I'll usually have some event planned for myself, like checking my mailbox, grabbing dinner with friends, or any of the things I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I like to have things figured out in advance, because I'm sure as hell not sitting in a small metal box for four hours on top of the eight I already sleep there. If I haven't planned anything, I'll grab my bike and find a quiet place to work on this blog or any of my other pet projects.

8:30 - 9:30(ish) pm Bed time. I share a bed time with toddlers and the obscenely old. I'm a morning person, and I have been for the past four or five years. It works particularly well with truck life, because it means I'm normally not accidentally scaring the hell out of poor, unsuspecting passers-by when I crawl out of my truck-dungeon. The obvious downside is that when I want to go out on the weekends, I find myself nodding off at the bar, passively grunting to feign engagement in a conversation like the zombified, half-conscious shell of a human being I am by 10 pm. Anyhow, when it's time to hit the hay, I'll grab my gym bag from my desk, wash up in a (preferably single-occupant) restroom, and head over to my truck. My nightly truck-routine consists of me tossing the old gym clothes into my laundry bag, loading in new clothes for the next day, calculating and filling in the weights for tomorrow's workout in my log, and measuring out protein powder like a discount Walter White. Once everything is in order, the vice grips go back on the back gate, I plug my phone into my battery pack and open up my alarm app, and curl up under the warmth of my cozy blankets and heat-reflective mattress pad. I've actually ditched all the gear from this post, as my blankets are far more than warm enough.

9:30 pm - 5:30(ish) am Sleep like a small child. Unless I'm sleeping in an unfamiliar place, I normally pass out pretty quickly and sleep soundly through the night.

Analyzing the Routine

What would be the point of having a routine if I wasn't content with it? Sure, it's nice to have structure and regimentation in your daily life, it undoubtedly makes things go more smoothly. In the end though, it's all utterly useless if you aren't enjoying it. To me, finding comfort and complacency in a monotonous rut sounds like the most efficient way to watch your life pass you by. Luckily, I don't feel that's my case, and overall, I'm pretty happy with my routine. Waking up early minimizes the likelihood that I'll somehow annoy someone with my truck activities, and my nearly non-existent commute means I spend more of my time doing things I actually care about, like this blog and hanging out with friends (as opposed to simultaneously killing the environment and my ability to enjoy life). Not having a shower or place to safely store food means I'm forced to be consistent with my diet and exercise. I normally come back every month or two and make sure my life is still aligned with my goals, and make changes as necessary. From where I'm standing (err, sitting) right now, life is good and exactly where I need it to be.

*Hey, workouts are a great way to channel all your negativity into something productive, maybe even cathartic.

I've discussed my homelessness on here before, but between my camping trip a few months back and my early retirement revelation, I now have a whole new lens to examine it under.

Getting Nostalgic*

So let's take it back more than 12,500 years: humans aren't doing anything productive. We're hunter-gatherers, we set up camp near wherever we think the food (berries, plants, and huntable animals) will be at. We build simple structures to protect ourselves from the elements, but we take them down and start over somewhere else when the food supply dwindles. Most of our time and energy is put towards the highly productive task of not-dying.

It isn't until we get our collective act together and develop agriculture about 12,500 years ago that we actually settle down in one place and make permanent homes. Here, homes still have the purpose of protection from Nature's hissy fits, but also act as more durable places to set up shop for the long haul. So people build settlements, but naturally there's not a ton of infrastructure; it's not like you can ride 50 miles in any direction and still have your daily Starbucks latte. Anchored to their large slash-and-burn farms, people tend not to move around much, barring war or particularly malevolent acts of nature.

How 'bout Now?

A lot has changed in the past decade or thousand. It took two days of me lounging around in a tent to realize that we have the luxury of an unprecedented level of mobility. Long before home ownership became something to check off of the "American Dream Bucket List," homes were just a place to not die, conveniently positioned near your farm and the rest of your relevant infrastructure. In this wondrous modern era, resources like food, water, plumbing, electricity, and even Internet are more or less ubiquitous in most of the desirable parts of the planet, and we have the modern miracles of cars and planes to travel to them. This means that, for certain lifestyles, the home can take a position of obsolescence. Anecdotally, I had no problem leaving everything (not that there was much to leave) behind for a weekend, and settling down 200 miles away with nothing more than a wallet and a bag of clothes. That's a big difference from 12,000 years ago: if you packed your bags and traveled 200 miles you'd likely find yourself 200 miles from the nearest human being, and you'd make some nice puppy chow for a pack of wolves. More comfortingly, now that humanity has settled pretty much everywhere and bent nature to our will, we have all the allowances of modern life all over the place, with a greatly reduced risk for puppy-chow-ification.

The reason we don't take advantage of our profound mobility is obvious: we've cast our anchors. We're anchored to our jobs, to our families, to our weekend tennis club meetups, and even to the piles of stuff we've been accumulating in garages, sheds, desk drawers, and cabinets. For the majority of people (who by and large are not travelling salesmen), it's completely unfeasible to dig this ever-more massive anchor out of the mud it's so firmly embedded in. Who would have thought that a basement full of forgotten Christmas presents would be a modern day Excalibur?

Loosening The Sword

I'm making a very conscious effort to make sure my life doesn't play out like the scene I set above. While the truck is still my "home", the traditional idea of home plays a much less important role in my life. Yes, I'm still anchored to the Bay by my job, but if all goes to plan, that'll only be the case for a proportionally short period of time.

When I first set out on this journey eight months ago, I thought I had it all figured out. I was going to truck it up for a few years, and then spend six whole months travelling before returning to work for the next 30-odd years. This was before I knew about the Trinity study and withdrawal rates and 401k's and HSAs and IRAs (oh my). But now, with everything falling into alignment, it seems silly that I thought six months would be enough time to do all the travelling I've spent my youth dreaming about. How could I possibly see everything there is to see when travelling 500 miles in any direction might as well be a new planet?

I guess I was worried that if I didn't travel soon, I'd never do it at all. But, if a bit of delayed gratification is all it takes to turn a six month trip into a lifelong adventure, I'm more than on-board. Plus, now that I'm more settled in my job, I'm finding that I do get to do a fair bit of work travel (in fact I'll be visiting two countries next month alone). My work-sanctioned excursions will be more than enough to tide me over until I can make travelling a full-time job. Then, I won't even have to drag up my anchor (since I'm hellbent on keeping this metaphor going). I'll just quietly cast the chain overboard and watch it sink down as I drift off into the sunset.

_{*I did really, really poorly on the AP US History exam in high school, so take everything I say with a kidney stone-inducing amount of salt.}

This Q&A is a total potpourri of everything I've gotten in the past month (or three), but I've done my best to group them together.

Relationships and…Personal Matters

Do you have a girlfriend? What does she think of your lifestyle?

I don't have a girlfriend at the moment, so her opinions are nonexistent. If I were to have a girlfriend, I'd like to think that she'd be (at the very least) accepting of my choices. I'm pretty contented with the way my life is right now though, which is to say that I'm not in the market for a relationship at the moment. I don't want to say that I'll never have a serious relationship while living in the truck, because I have no idea how long I'll be doing this. But I definitely understand how ridiculous everything about my life looks From Outside The Box™, from the perspective of a reasonable person who has their affairs in order.

If you do get laid in the box, will you disclose this information on your blog (leaving out names and identifying details of course)?

Absolutely not, and I say that with the utmost confidence. I've chosen a lifestyle that dramatically reduces my chances of getting laid, I hardly think I'd be improving them if potential suitors thought I was going to recount my box truck (s)exploits for the Internet's perusal and entertainment. I'm also just not the kiss and tell type, as part of my Try Not To Be A Douchebag™ credo. On top of all these things, that's like a whole 'nother level of illegal. Like, we're talking sex-offender-registry-illegal, and for obvious reasons I have no intention of opening up that bag of worms and then proceeding to brag about it in a place accessible to the entirety of the Internet-connected planet.

Bike/Exercise Stuff

Are you going to the San Jose bike party tonight (11-20-15)?

I did actually read this on November 20^th (you can tell I'm pretty awful at answering questions in a timely fashion), but tragically I already had plans at that point. But thanks for letting me know those exist, I'll definitely make it to one eventually, especially now that I'm upping the ante with my bike trips.

Have you considered one of those eBike conversion kits that turn a regular bicycle into an eBike?

I (very briefly) considered it, then decided otherwise. As I mentioned at the end of this post, an electric bike is actually worse for rides over 25 miles (which I've been doing a bunch of) because of the whole range thing. Plus, the logistics of how/when/where I charge the bike are pretty nebulous on weekends because I can't exactly plug it into the truck, and it takes 5+ hours to fully charge. Also, if I want my cardio to eventually not holistically suck, a normal bike that forces me to do actual work will whip me into shape much quicker than a glorified moped.

How's the new bicycle?

The new bicycle is doing wonderfully, thank you for asking! I've taken it on several rides that left my legs in a state of matter somewhere between solid and liquid, and it's holding up nicely (unlike my legs). I replaced the left crank arm and picked up some lights, but that was really all the TLC it needed to be in tip-top road-ready shape.

How's the gym going?

The gym is going well. I've been doing a modified version of Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program, and I've finished 11 3-to-4 week cycles of that since starting work. The good thing is that almost every cycle still has new personal records, but I'm starting to see plateaus in press and bench. Eventually I'll do a detailed fitness post.

The Current State of Affairs

So your employer has told you you have to leave their parking lot. What solution did you come up with? | What's your current sitch? You left us hanging when you got the boot. | Where do you live now? Still in your truck? | Are you going to tell us how is going there? Do you like your neighbors, how has your commute and daily life changed?

A lot of people seem curious as to how I'm managing my effective eviction. If I've learned literally anything from it, it's that I need to keep my obnoxiously large mouth slightly less agape. So as an exercise in restraint, I won't be talking much about my current living situation. I will say, however, that I'm still a vehicular vagrant, and all of the reasons I do what I do are still valid. My day-to-day life is virtually unchanged.

Everything Else

How do you prevent the doors from being locked while you are inside the truck?

I don't. If someone really wanted, they could come up and tie or otherwise lock the hitch down to the frame of the truck, and I'd be pretty screwed. I'm sure if I called one of my friends (I get fine cell reception), they'd come over with a knife or scissors or the Jaws of Life or something and save my life. Honestly, I couldn't even be mad because I've been wildly negligent in preventing it from happening, despite knowing the risk. I'd find it pretty funny (and learn my lesson), just because of how ridiculous the whole situation would be. It's pretty rare that someone gets locked in their home. It'd be worth it for the story, if nothing else.

Do you play video games?

Nope. I own a non-gaming laptop and a phone, neither of which are conducive to gaming. The last game I got really into was LittleBigPlanet, and I haven't played that in four or five years.

Would you consider installing a Tesla Powerwall in the truck?

Is that you Elon? In the past, I've talked about potentially getting some sort of electricity source, like a Duracell Powerpack. The idea is that I'd charge it up with a (roof-mounted?) solar panel, and then I could use it to power…something? I really don't have anything that would benefit from a constant AC power supply, everything electronic I own is battery-powered, by design. So if I don't need that, I definitely don't need a Tesla Powerwall, which, doing some quick math, stores ~40x energy and takes up ~8x the space.* Plus I think I'd also need an actual earth ground, like, a wire from the Powerwall that just leads straight into the ground, though I'm not entirely certain about this. In a home, that's not really an issue (1. Dig hole. 2. Insert wire.), but it sounds like a weird and potentially dangerous thing to try with the truck.

_{*And that's not including the inverter I'd undoubtedly have to install too.}

Have you read Thoreau's Walden? What about The Martian?

I'm in the process of reading both. Okay fine, you caught me, I'm actually listening to an audiobook for The Martian. Thanks to everyone who suggested I read them, Walden in particular is giving me a lot to mull over, so expect a future post on all of the ways that Walden is timeless and relevant to a truck guy.