How would you like to travel the world rent-free, side by side with your bae, while freely exploring life on your own terms? More than likely, I'm sure you screamed, "Hell yes, pick me!"; but what if that option consisted of living in a van?
Yes sis, a van.
While the #vanlife idea may sound crazy to some, it's a thing. People all over the world are opting into the minimalist, free-living, on the go lifestyle that van lifers have, and have found unique ways to make their van life one of their most memorable experiences ever.
Recently, I caught up with Jessica Malone, a former classmate from my HBCU, and she shared how she and her fiance are getting ready to become members of the #vanlife squad. Jessica and her bae have recently purchased their van and will be getting on the road soon for 12 months to live their best (van) lives.
Here's how Jessica became inspired to become a vanlifer and how she plans on executing it.
Photo Courtesy of Jessica Malone
What Sparked Her Desire For Van Life Living:
"For a very long time while working in corporate in sales and now as a corporate trainer, I had dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. However, I hadn't made the leap because I didn't really know what that would look like. During that time, I developed my brand Nacho Average Fro which focuses on helping people live their best life by simplifying their time, money, and also their attention so that they can gain clarity, find their purpose, and then build a life around their purpose and what they love.
"After having my brand for a while and saving up money from living with my dad, I felt more prepared to plan to make the leap into entrepreneurship. I was financially prepared, I had something that I was interested in and was passionate about working on, and I knew what direction I was headed in. However, even though I had saved up a lot of money, the reality was that my new brand wasn't producing enough revenue for me to put food on the table, or to put a roof over my head. That's when I started wondering what would life as an entrepreneur look like. Where would I live, how would I sustain myself?
"Around the same time, my fiance was also thinking about leaving his corporate job and focusing on some of his passions, so we were having conversations together about what that would look like together as a couple. Simultaneously, I started a podcast that I no longer do with someone I met on Instagram and she started doing this van build-out thing, and it was very interesting to me. From there, I started following #VanLife on Instagram and started watching this TV show on Netflix about minimal living. All of that is really what got my mind going, and is what increased my interest in being a van-lifer.
"One day, this past summer, I called my fiance and I said, 'I think we should get an RV.' To my surprise, he was on board, which completely blew me away."
Photo Courtesy of Jessica Malone
How She Found Her Van:
"Now that my fiance was on board, we started looking for RVs, went to different trade shows, and did a ton of research. At a trade show, we ended up finding an RV that we loved, applied for it, but didn't get it. We found out that we didn't get it because we didn't have enough credit history, and we didn't realize that buying something like an RV is just like buying a house. You have to have a credit history.
"That experience and rejection really bummed me out and it had me thinking that maybe this new life idea was terrible. But then, I kept on seeing more van-life posts on social media, and thought to myself that maybe having a van instead of an RV was the way to go. With a van, I knew that we could pay for it with cash, [it] would eliminate having to pay rent, and [we] would avoid getting denied because of not having enough credit history.
"We ended up buying the van just after Thanksgiving from Facebook Marketplace, which was a totally new experience for me. I had no idea that people bought cars on Facebook. I joined this Facebook group and saw this guy from Utah post that he was selling his van for around $13K. He and his girlfriend had actually recently gone through his own van-life journey and decided they didn't enjoy it so they were selling their van. The van had solar panels and a fan in it, they were giving away a heater, the transmission had just been fixed, and it was just outside of the 10-year mark that we had set aside in regards to how old we wanted our van. The van is a 2008 Dodge Sprinter van, and we ended up getting it cheaper for around $11,300 for it since we were able to meet the guy to pick it up.
"For us, this is an opportunity to build our business, focus on our passions, travel, and spend time with each other, our friends, and family."
Photo Courtesy of Jessica Malone
What The Van Looks Like:
"To give you an idea of our van, it's like the Amazon delivery van, so basically it's like a cargo van. It's two seats in the front, and then it's completely empty in the back. I think our van is like 144 inches long so it's definitely a lot smaller than anything that we've ever lived in.
"As far as planning out the design of our van, we decided we wanted to make it kind of like a tiny home. We decided that we'll have a bedroom space, kitchen space with a counter top, and then work our way up from there and add more as we can. I've seen people add an oven in their van, and that's also something I want to eventually have. We will for sure have some kind of stove, whether that's built into the van or portable. Next, we will have a bed that we can bring down at night, and then up when we're not sleeping so we can use that space to put a table out for work.
"We will not have a shower or a toilet, and I know it sounds crazy, but I don't think it'll be an issue. Based on my research, I found that a lot of vanlifers don't have a toilet or shower, and added going to the gym a part of their daily routine so that they can use the shower there. Ultimately, I've told myself that at the end of this journey, no matter what happens, I'm sure I'll be very fit."
Photo Courtesy of Jessica Malone
How They WIll Sustain Themselves:
"Money is a major thing that we've been thinking about, but we have a plan. For me, I'll be focusing on making money from digital products, and my fiance is working on his own things. Ultimately, we decided that our goal is to live on $2,000 a month. Based on what we've seen from other RVers and vanlifers, that seems reasonable."
Jessica and her fiance will start on the interior design of their van in early 2020, and plan on hitting the road soon after. To keep up with Jessica and her #vanlife journey, follow her on IG @NachoAverageFro.
Featured image courtesy of Jessica Malone
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Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
____
I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
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