The Grand Adventure

When people hear what I’m doing, this look of horrified shock melts onto their faces and then simultaneously I see them go for restraint lest their emotions show. The restraint never works. It amuses me a little.

I sleep in my car now. Driven to almost nothing financially by five bad rentals in seven years (gullible is my middle name), and determined to get a significant body of work to market, I channeled my inner Grandad Richards and did what he did when he was building the family business. I looked at what was absolutely essential to get ‘er done, and where I could trim the sails. I needed an office, and I didn’t need to pay to sleep. Finding the exact right circumstances to have routine, focus, safety and fun, I set out on The Grand Adventure. There’s a significant spiritual component to it, but here is not the place to delineate that. Let’s just say the story of Abraham dragging Isaac up the mountain supposedly because God wanted him to sacrifice his first born and then God providing an animal for the sacrifice at the last moment, was the vision I held in my head and heart.

It’s been a ridiculously wonderful benefit right down to long wonderful luxurious sleep that a person with an L4-5 disc injury usually doesn’t have. Moving forward, within months the financial advantages ought to start to build. The work? Well, the work I’ve been trying to complete for seven years, goes to print at the beginning of February. Done and done. Mission being accomplished. Thank you God from whom all blessings flow.

Now, I live, and have for the last twenty years, lived on a little Island rural community where people can make up great and grand stories about you as if they were your best friend and actually have never met you. So, the rumors I was homeless abounded.

Homeless? Let me tell you about homeless. I was invited to volunteer as a chaperone at a women’s shelter site last weekend. Although, when I was invited I could say yes because, well...my bedding was right outside in my car along with everything else I needed, I didn’t share my circumstances with the women. Because compared to them I am living the life of Reilly.

I have an office filled with everything I need to do my work, chatchki, mementos that bring me cheer, pictures of my entire lifespan and the people I love, houseplants and my favorite mugs. In the lower right hand draw I have my twenty three year old espresso machine that makes one lovely cup o’ latte if I choose. I have access to a full kitchen where I have food that is fresh stored for me to eat with room for leftovers if I prepare too much.

They wander the streets all day moving from one general warm place open to the public to another to pass the time or perhaps help them look for work.

I have a car with a full wardrobe in it, and either friends who let me do laundry at their house or a roll of quarters and the freedom and means to go to the lovely laundromat in Ballard where I can get fresh clothing in about an hour and half.

They can go only where their feet and public transportation takes them. Everything they own is in one backpack.
At night I pull into my very secure, safe parking spot, wrap myself in four lovely fleece blankets and a gigantic down comforter that sometimes wakes me because I get too warm. I have put on my warm jammies and sleep socks. I maybe watch an episode of “Wings” or “Chopped” on my $7 a month indulgence of Netflix and then set the alarm for work and spend the next eight hours sleeping like a baby.

They go to the shelter distribution site at 6PM and register their names, return at 8PM to find out if they are sleeping inside or outside that night. If they get a spot in a shelter, they will sleep on a plastic mattress with a sheet and a blanket, in a room that has no individual sleeping privacy, rise at 6 whether they want to or not, wash themselves in the sink, eat a provided breakfast and go back out on the streets.

The list goes on and on.

Me? Well, I’m just following God’s lead doing an end run around evil that had me a bit trapped. I’ll be fine. I am fine. In a year or two or whenever, I’ll have stockpiled enough funds to join the four walls in one place again, hopefully. If not I have a luxurious holding pattern. And everyone has already asked me in I’m going to write a book about my ‘portable’ lifestyle. Well, of course I am.

Them? They need your help. I have boots and bootstraps. They lack both. Give them your money, offer them jobs, believe in them. If you live on credit I guarantee you are two paychecks away from where they live. One good illness and it could happen to you.

We have abundant housing here on the Island. Lots of million dollar homes and lots more that are less money but just as ample. Somebody doing what I’m doing seems appalling and bottom of the barrelish.

But please, do not let privilege distort your view of what true homelessness is and how very much you are needed to keep giving all year round, beyond the holidays.

They are not on a Grand Adventure. They are experiencing life deflating, humiliating, and sorrowful obstacles that require and enormous amount of support and resources to turn around.

I am not homeless, but I do know some people who are and could use your help.

Love,
Deborah