Hello Steemians,

This is a bit of a philosophical post with a touch of the practical.

WHY?

I have a good paying high-tech job, as a developer. We had a nice rental in the 78704 zip code of Austin... the last vestiges of the Keep Austin Weird movement, now flooded with outsider influx, and forced out.

We were going to buy a house, near McKinney Falls Park, which would've been nice, except for traffic getting to the I35 in the mornings. I tried it a couple of times at the time I'd be leaving for work, on 2 different routes, and avoiding the I35 made a big difference.

The development was 5 or 6 builders, so it didn't look like every house was a clone of each other, and they have some nice plans for a pool, mall (OK, that's not so great), yoga, dog park, etc.

The reason we decided to bail, was because the builder had promised us a bunch of things, like a pergola in the back yard, and a poured patio, and wider windows, and another cabinet near the kitchen (for which they were asking a premium, of course) but when the time came to sign on the dotted line, they went back on all of it. They said their hands were tied, and the city wouldn't let them do it because they'd already submitted the plans.

So, my friend Bobby, who knows someone who used to work for the city, got me in touch with the people in the city, and they told me it was not true. They didn't care about any of those things, and that builders sometimes will do that.

And so, I told my wife, if this is the kind of energy they're putting out, I don't really want to work with them. Why don't we get an RV instead and go full-timing around the country, which is a dream I'd had since before meeting my beautiful and talented photographer wife, who also loved the idea.

And so it went, over the course of many months, we bought the RV after getting our credit fixed up, then spent a few months fixing the RV up (painting, redoing floors, hanging curtains, putting up wallpaper and a backsplash) and replacing light-bulbs for LEDs, adding a wifi booster antenna, adding more batteries, replacing the battery charge, re-sealing the roof, and buying all the things you need for an RV which we didn't have.

Compressing our Life

Obviously, you can't fit a house inside of an RV, and, frankly, you don't really want it. Our RV is pretty long at 38ft (we wanted no longer than 35ft, but that was all we could qualify for, since we hadn't ever purchased something that expensive) but it is still only 200sqft or so. It's got 3 slides, so I can't quite measure.

At any rate, we had already shrunk down from a 3 bedroom house, to a 1 bedroom duplex, but still, there was a bunch of stuff that wouldn't fit. We had a storage unit, and we cut that in half too.

How?

Keep only the things that you love!

If we haven't used it in 1 year or more, chances are we're not going to use it again. Unless it was family heirloom, or something sentimental... it was out the window.

We had several people come and buy stuff, like our couch, my desk. A newfound friend was moving to Austin temporarily. and she needed furniture, so we gave her a bunch of stuff which would've gone to Goodwill or Craigslist. Things simply lined themselves up.

We packed our climate controlled storage unit to the brim, and finally, we hit the road.

For the first month, we kept close to home, just in case, so we stayed in San Marcos at the Pecan Park RV Park, which was lovely.

 And now we're in New Mexico. Next stop Arizona.

Living the Life

After a couple of months, what do things look like?

The space hasn't been too much of an issue. We joke that it's actually been an upgrade in some respects: we have an electric fireplace, 3 TVs and a king size bed. We also have more windows, and our backyard is often amazing.

And it's so quiet!

One of my biggest pet peeves with living in a big city, is the road noise. I hear it constantly. The cars rolling on the asphalt, police sirens, trains. It's a never-ending cacophony.

But in RV Parks, other than on the weekends, it's very quiet. Calm. Peaceful.

And we're surrounded by nature.

We love our life, and we're grateful I can work remote. We hope to be able to pay off our debts much quicker, since we're trying to keep our "rental" fees at or below what we were paying monthly.

And we get to see all these wonderful things we wouldn't have been able to on 2 or 3 weeks of vacation a year!

There are wonderful people everywhere, and there are wonderful things to see around this great country. It's eye-opening. Even in a small town like Alamogordo, there is more to see than just White Sands.

(Like Cloudcroft, some 4000 ft up the mountain)

It's quite something.

And I haven't found that I'm missing anything, other than tools. I've had to go an buy some tools, and RV maintenance stuff, replacement parts. But for the most part, we're quite content! It's a fun lifestyle.