I've been on the road for a few years now, camping, couchsurfing, living in a van, at punk houses, and for a few months in a shack I built myself from scrap lumber in a vacant overgrown lot in Nola. I've seen much of the country, far more than most people ever will. During this time my expenses have been relatively low--I got my food from begging or dumpster diving. It's gotten easier as I've gone along, I've learned better ways to do things, what places and situations to avoid, and I've done it by fucking up a lot and feeding a lot of physical, spiritual, and emotional addictions.
I'm better for it in some ways. I've learned to be brave, to do with less, how to save money. I find talking to strangers to be a little easier. I still battle with insane social anxiety, but I continue to throw myself at social situations because I know sooner or later I'll get better at them.
I have regrets. I regret wasting all the money I made during my job years on stupid garbage I didn't need, like alcohol and rent. I regret wasting time and emotional energy on vampiric relationships which left me with scars I'm still working through.
Nevertheless, I find myself in a glade in the woods, and for once I have the ability to look around me, assess the situation I find myself in, and plot a better course. I see the influence of the stars, and can guide myself by them. There are still monsters in the woods, but I know their names, and their patterns, and have developed better tactics for dealing with them. Which ones do I kill, and which ones do I tame, and which ones can I learn to co-exist with?
When I first decided to leave my home town and become a hobo, I did it with the idea that I was cutting chains. I believed that I was freeing myself from things that trapped me in misery. I hoped that in my travels I would discover a place I could get land, grow my own food, build my own house, and invite others to join me. I thought that dropping out was the ultimate tool for war against an insane world that wanted me and everybody else dead. Once I didn't have to worry about food, water, shelter I could use my time to help others get out.
That dream has started to look less and less appealing as time goes on. I don't know that I want to live in a secluded place, completely outside of civilization. First of all, I don't think it's possible to drop out completely. Second, it may not even be the best way to help people. It appears that people who try the drop out thing still end up driving, buying stuff, and working to make money. Building a community of committed individuals that share your vision is next to impossible--humans aren't puppets and I'm certainly not charismatic enough to draw them in. Most of the communes I've seen are plagued by the same flaws I'm trying to flee from.
In fact, being on the road is too! I have a van which provides shelter, electricity, and transportation, and it costs money! Not nearly as much as rent, but with the added difficulty of it being mentally hard to get a job when you live in a van. Without income, I'm forced to beg. Begging never nets you a surplus, only subsistence. I ended up spending lots of time working for survival anyway, just in a way that's repugnant to most. The generosity of others is never consistent, plus you have the added danger of cops fucking with you at every turn. It turns out living on the road puts you even closer to the furnace. Your time is unstructured, but your needs still exist, and the rules are still made by somebody else.
Needs can be met two ways--by having money, or by having a community, and for most people it requires both. On the road I've had very little of either. When you're traveling you don't tend to build meaningful relationships with the friends you make, because within a few days/weeks/months you're moving somewhere else. I guess you could keep in contact with them on the internet, but social media is boring and painful to me, and it's much harder for your friends to help you when you aren't with them. That's what I mean by community--a tightknit group which functions to support the whole.
Money, on the other hand, comes from jobs. I've always viewed paid work with contempt. Employment means doing a bunch of bullshit for someone else, and getting paid only a minuscule fraction of the money you make for them. In this way I've tried to keep jobs which demanded as little of me as possible.
The longest job I've kept was in the electronics/toys department of a super store. I was mostly left to my own devices and could hide in the aisles and play on my phone when I was bored. The pay, however, was shit, and got eaten up totally by expensive rent supporting a girlfriend I hated and who hated me. What little money I had left over I used to but alcohol and cigarettes so I didn't have to feel anything. But I still felt things! Incredible defeat, loneliness, frustration, and self-hatred. The booze just made it easier to sleep. It was also a weapon I used to hurt myself as punishment for being such a flawed piece of shit. I still do this and sometimes drink until I black out and piss myself. You get good at something by practicing, and I've been practicing self mutilation for twenty years.
On the road I learned that there's nothing inherently wrong with me, that I was making toxic choices and tying my self worth up in others, that I can restructure not just my situation, but how I approach that situation. I've learned to control my emotions, and to put up boundaries with others. The value of saying NO that I wielded against power-structures is also important for defining yourself with others.
This is the next part of my growth journey--learning to say no. It's next to impossible for me when I fear that saying no will reduce someone else's love for me. I have such a difficult time making meaningful friendships that when they start to like me I do things that aren't true to me to try and appease them. Just like a stressful full-time job, burn out and resentment comes quick.
As a child I quickly realized the scam of working for money. You're forced into it, and the threat of loss of subsistence keeps you making money for others in a giant pyramid scheme. There's healthier alternatives to this type of relationship that we could try.
Same thing with love. If love is based on the fear of taking it away, it too is an abusive relationship.
If love is given freely, like I believe food and shelter should, then it becomes a sharing act. This means that everybody involved has total ability to say no about what they do. If I can say no to taking shitty stressful jobs that demand too much of my sanity, I should be able to say no to shitty relationships that do the same.
Building walls, keeping people out, and then when you finally let them in being afraid to let them back out.
I can only seem to maintain one meaningful relationship at a time. Some people have loads of friends, and it's easy for them to pick up where they left off. I never learned how to do that. It was walls behind walls from the start.
The stars cast their light, and I've created a network of pathways in my head. I've felt danger, hunger, cold, and real bodily fear. Instead of wandering in the woods I've learned enough of its layout that I can do something else instead.
For one thing I can see that I've tried to force relationships instead of letting them simply happen. It seems to make sense to take the path of lesser resistance. Not in a giving up way, but in a maximizing happiness way, in a way that grows your sense of fulfillment and self-worth, instead of consuming your capacity for it. These relationships, and the lack in quantity or quality of them, drives many negative feelings within myself, both inward and outward.
The the past I've attacked myself mentally for not being cool or interesting or charismatic or inventive enough. How do I even measure that? By how many friends I have? How much sex I have? Whether or not I have a collective of anarchists forming around me due to my wondrous axioms and inspiring personality? I feel a push to be exceptional in some way, and always far more exceptional than I am right now. Since I'm perpetually in a state of not being any of the collection of insane fantasy mes, I'm not worthy of love, because only that exceptional version of me is worth love.
What's with the preoccupation with needing to be worthy of love?
I sit in a room with the friend of a friend and I'm sitting there with the panic of not having anything to say to make them think I'm interesting/funny/smart. Why do I give a shit? I don't need to get points with people, I just need to be myself. If they don't like what I'm doing for me, then fuck it, why do you need their love?
But then there's anger, which signals more dwelling. You can't lean blame against people because they are not immediately enraptured by your presence.
And what does this come down to?
Psycho-cybernetic fragmentation fields?
Esoteric surgery?
I've lost the energy for politics between panic and apathy.
I've lost a lot of feelings, hope, drive.
This is good. Transformation isn't painless.
What I'm left with is my bare self, without the the dressing, and armor of ideologies and lies.
An infant self, malnourished, confused?
The karma of a previous incarnation?
What if like is like a giant, super-convincing roguelike, and each time you die the character is erased, and a new one is generated which carries on a meta-knowledge that helps the 'player' act with better understanding next time?
What if each and every moment is like that?
Everything around you is an additional organ of you--just as much as your fingers and toes you're inseparable from it. These organs act as surfaces for your experiential organs to orient themselves. Information is related between the different halves (there is no outside)
From the Tao Te Ching:
The saint inspires the vitality of all lives, without holding back.
He nurtures all beings with no wish to take possession of.
He devotes all his energy but has no intention to hold on to the merit.
When success is achieved, he seeks no recognition.
Because he does not claim for the credit, hence shall not lose it.
