Total Rejection of "The System"

Prologue Part 1: The Decision

The “correct” formula for life was drilled into me at a very young age. Be kind, be respectful, work hard in school, go to college, get a white collar job, a house, a husband, a few kids, live below your means and retire comfortably. I never questioned the system, to the point where when a classmate told me they weren’t going to college it legitimately confused me. A part of me hadn't realized college was optional!

My first clue that this formula wasn’t going to work for me came after I secured my first job out of university. I had worked hard, gotten a socially respectable degree in accounting, and was hired by a small business who sold refurbished electronics as an accounting assistant. Within a few short months I concluded that many of my classes had been completely useless. The software did all the back end work, everything else was largely data entry and industry specific tasks that they would never have taught us in a classroom setting. Why had I worked so hard, spent so much money, and suffered so much stress when I was only using maybe 5% of the information I had learned. What was higher education for if it didn’t teach me the real skills I needed?? I couldn't deny that the piece of paper had gotten me the white collar job but any thoughts of a masters or higher went straight out the window.

The second, bigger, clue came shortly after my Dad passed away from esophageal cancer. I was only 24, still only a year or so out of college, I worked hard at my job but I felt no joy from it. When Dad was going through chemotherapy he talked all the time about the things he was going to do when he got better. The places he would go, the hobbies he had been neglecting. When he died, it hit me hard that he would never even have the opportunity to do those things! He was only 59, never made it to retirement, worked his whole life for what? I vowed there that I wouldn’t wait until “someday” to do the things I wanted to do. Still afraid to leave the system, I kept my day job but started taking night classes at a local culinary school and planned summer road trips with friends.

It was a few years later during one of these road trips that we found ourselves in Los Angeles. One of our group had an aunt who lived right in the city and was kind enough to let us crash at her place. Ben got the spare bedroom, one was on the couch, one was on a blowup mattress, and then out in the driveway was a parked truck camper where Ryan and I got to sleep. After two nights, I was enthralled. It was tiny, just big enough for a bed, a little table, and a sink, but we slept really well, it was adorable, and it fit on the back of a truck!!! You could take it anywhere and sleep in a real bed!! I said to Ryan, if we ever move we need to take a year off and travel the country in a truck camper! He laughed and said yeah that sounds awesome, but in that, 'yeah I’d love to win the powerball but it’s never going to happen', tone of voice. (he also was very indoctrinated into “the system”) I said, no I’m serious! He shrugged and said sure if we ever get the opportunity.

The following year I started doing minimal research into trucks and truck campers. Keep in mind I have never cared two spits about cars. I need something to get me from point A to point B and after that I could care less about the brand and style and whatever, and trucks were complicated! All these industry terms for weight and power and towing, then is it a short bed, long bed, single or dual cab, engine size, four wheel drive or two? I got overwhelmed very quickly, but I knew I needed to educate myself if I wanted this new dream to happen. However, Ryan and I happened to be wandering around a Ford dealership one day and he came out as completely opposed to owning a pickup truck. They were big, ugly, and represented the worst part of American culture. I gave up that plan quick after that.

But I instantly switched over to a new plan. If Ryan didn’t want a truck camper we could get a tiny little towable trailer. My new research yielded tiny little A top campers and tear drop campers. They basically provided a bed, some storage and some even had a tiny little fridge and stove burner included! They were light enough to be towed by a basic SUV and small enough to go anywhere and fit anywhere. Ryan admitted they were adorable and I was excited to take the next step. There was an A-liner dealer up in Elk River, about an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities. We went to check them out, and indeed they were small and cute as a button, but our jaws dropped at the sticker prices. Brand new these things were $20-$30k! I had incorrectly assumed that smaller would equal cheaper. Even used I couldn’t find one for less than 10k.

Well bugger that, if we have to spend that much on a travel trailer let’s at least get something that we can stand up in. The more traditional travel trailers were in much higher supply and you could easily find a good one for around the 10k or less range. With a suitable range of trailers I switched my focus back to looking for trucks I could tow things with. I learned all about the world of SUVs and we even went to look at a couple for sale.

A few weeks later Ryan started to express anxiety over having to tow a big box behind a vehicle. The visibility, trying to turn corners, how the heck to even back it into a space, what if we get stuck and have to try and turn around on a narrow road? His concerns were valid, and being he was the one who was going to end up doing most of the driving, I switched gears, once again, and dove into the world of true RVs. It was easy to rule out the big class As, so I focused my search on the small class B and Cs.

Class B’s are basically remodeled minivans, which look cool, but just like the small A-top campers, there is such low supply of them that even a used one will cost upwards of $20k. Class Cs are the in-between style. You could find a small one about 20-25 feet that had all the comforts of home but were common enough that a used one wasn’t going to break the bank. However, a quick trip to a local RV dealer had both Ryan and I shrugging. Even the smallest one they had (22 feet) was too big for Ryan’s taste, and if that was the route we were going to go, I still wanted to tow my Honda civic with us so we could visit the cities and leave the camper parked, so we still would have had to deal with the towing problem.

At this point we were both pretty down about the situation. Was there anything out there that we could agree on and was reasonably priced? Not ready to give up on the dream, we packed up our laptops and headed to Caribou for a full on focused brain storming session. Not far into my vanilla latte Ryan brought up the topic of truck campers. He loved the small size, maneuverability, and it has all the creature comforts of home. I said of course I’d love a truck camper but you vetoed it ages ago saying you didn’t want to own a pickup truck. Ryan responded that he didn’t think I was actually serious at that time, but if we really were going to take the plunge and live in a moveable vehicle this seemed like the best option.

This whole discovery process took course over about a year. After test driving a pickup and checking out some truck campers at the local dealer we were both solid on the idea.

The final turning point in my complete abandonment of “the system” came in the middle of 2016. On Easter weekend that year we learned my Mom had stage four melanoma cancer. I spent the summer being her caretaker. I think anyone who has ever had to care for the terminally ill can tell you that it changes your view on life. She passed away in September. Before the age of 30 I had lost both of my parents to cancer, both in their 50s. That’s when I decided I was done. Screw the normal path of life, even if you’re lucky enough to make it to retirement who says you’ll be healthy enough to enjoy it. I would rather travel now while I’m young and live my life to the fullest, I’d rather work in a bakery for minimum wage than sit at a soul sucking desk.

Emotional escapism? Most definitely. Irrational? Possibly, if you continue to believe that the only true way of life is the one where you sell your soul to a corporation to scrape by. Irresponsible? Nope, my only responsibility is to be true to myself, and for the first time in my life I am going embrace all that I am without holding back.

Ryan admitted later, he still didn’t think I was actually going to abandon the system until I texted him one day in November that I had turned in my resignation at work.  He quickly followed suit and our new life began.