Carlife Adventures, Pt. 1
Dear Kari,
I miss exploring the United States, but I don't know if I can ever enjoy it again the way that I did when I was a noob.
It was the beginning of 2021. That's a difficult sentence to write, because I loved 2021 so much more than what we have now. And 2021 still had the COVID epidemic.
It's rough to have to negotiate value out of the middle of a Trump sandwich. And I feel a little guilty for saying this, but 2021 was euphoric for me. It felt like having another childhood.
Living with just a car was a move I made explicitly to create safety for myself. For example, an uninterrupted night of sleep was impossible to afford, even working overtime at my job of eight years, and having lawsuit money stacked on top of that.
Anyway, let's get to the good part I haven't written about yet. The hopefulness and the planning.
I love doing research, and carlife was this incredibly substantial but slept on corner of YouTube. So many carlife channels were making functional car modifications that could save your life if rent was no longer affordable.
But there was a single channel, a single person out of all of them that disregarded whatever anyone else was doing, and did things his way. And he was the one that made everything viable for me.
Here's the YouTube video that changed my life forever:
Stealth Sleep In a Prius Like a BOSS
He couldn't have advertised living in a car any better.
I feel sad that he doesn't make videos anymore, because he moved on to better things. I miss so many things about my life in 2021.
The most exciting thing about planning your life in a car is the promise of freedom. And thinking of my own ideas for how I was gonna do it, like the portable hot shower I made, and the bed, and water storage and how everything else could be stored.
I miss the way doing test runs of stealth sleeping in my car felt mischievous and dangerous. I do everything so easily now, if there was a honeymoon phase of carlife, I'd be long past it.
I was paranoid that someone would notice me pretending to be a regular empty parked car. I got revenge on the apartments I used to live in by returning to hide amid their free parking.
My car was effectively a globe of invisibility, and taking hot showers in the middle of busy parking lots was thrilling. Not for perverted reasons, but because there's a novelty or a sense of liberation when you don't have to pay $3,000 a month to have a hot shower. It was joyful defiance.
I miss feeling more alive. The reality of Trump versus Biden is that Biden's presidency gave us space. So much more space to experience ourselves!
All of that space is gone now. This administration constantly demands attention and worship, and I feel it even without watching the news. If this administration was my wife, I would fake my own death and move to another country under a new identity.
In 2021 as I ventured forth in my spaceship, listening to music was profound and era defining. I want music to feel that way again. Dragonball Durag was such a vibe. I don't know, I was so excited to be alive.
I'll have to make a playlist of the songs I listened to and discovered as I crossed through different states into places I'd never been before.
I wanted to write 2021 out in its entirety so I wouldn't ever forget. Maybe I'll do that here.
Going to get dinner.
Sincerely,
—Michael