Pictured Above: A tableau of highlights from my non-road-trip domestic travels as a home-freefolk, from climbing Colorado peaks to meeting with home-freefolk in Austin to watching the sun set over Olympic National Park. (Faces blurred to protect identity.)

It’s been a haul.

A year-and-a-half ago, I wrote a brief report on the benefits of the home-free lifestyle. After 500 or so days, a lot has changed. I think it’s time for an update.

In that now-dated post, I mentioned that “stress evaporated slowly from my life, giving way to creative thought and–dare I say–renewed youthfulness.” Oh, how those days seem now so distant and fleeting!

Not that I’m complaining. Lately, yes, I have experienced a higher level of stress than back then. But the changing of tides has brought with it positive trends. Namely, progress. Progress in the career I was so desperately chasing when this whole experiment began.

These days, I welcome stress. It means there is demand for my creations and motivation to create more, with greater efficiency and higher quality. The kind of talk I used to hear from my superiors–but now that voice is my own.

I’ve traveled less since my last report on the benefits of home-free living. I’ve worked more and had to plan more carefully how I spend my leisure time. This summer, though my traditional-job workload is only 10 hours per week, I forced myself to sit down and create a by-the-hour schedule for myself to ensure I’m meeting all of my goals. For someone without a proper home or job, that may sound absurd. But it’s exactly how I like it.

In June of this year, I celebrated my 3 1/2 year anniversary of living home-free. I’ve come a long way. I’d like to share what I consider the top 5 benefits I’ve enjoyed along the way:

1. In 3.5 years of living rent-free, I saved over $50,000.
   – Not a bad sum. So why not put a down payment on a killer house? Or pay off the last of my student loans? Or splurge on a Bimmer? If you don’t know, you haven’t been following my story. Saving cash is great, but saving time is much more valuable to me. Time can be converted into productivity, and productivity can then be turned into life-altering career advancement. As a writer and filmmaker, that advancement is worth its weight in gold. Sure, I’ve used some of my time to travel and get a healthy night’s rest on a consistent basis. But the real benefit has been not having to work to earn that $50,000. Having the time to create has instead led me to some very compelling opportunities (discussed below). These are opportunities I’d have never enjoyed had I been spending 40 hours (or more) behind someone else’s desk.
2. My creations are now being seen.
   – When I moved into the office, I hadn’t published a single word. I wasn’t working in film and I had no prospects to start. That’s changed. I now have the time to work as a full-time freelance writer and producer. It’s yielding dividends. Last April I woke up with an idea for a television show; this month, it’s in the final stages of development. I’ve got an extremely successful production company backing the show, with a great lawyer and manager pushing it forward. The Creative Artists Agency is representing it. At this stage of development, I couldn’t ask for more. I’m working meticulously through a full-length screenplay while nearing completion (for real this time!) on my The Office Hobo book. Next week I begin shooting another film I wrote. I’ve published works in various publications and am speaking at the Tiny House Jamboree next month. I have a few more projects in the works, too. It’s an insane workload. But it’s exactly the workload I dreamed of having. And being afforded the time to take it all on is a direct result of my lifestyle.
3. I’m motivated to spend more time helping others.
   – At the end of last year, I gave my time to charity for the first time since leaving my job over a year earlier. I helped lead the effort to build a library in–irony alert!–a homeless center in downtown Los Angeles. It was a dramatically rewarding process, and one I’d like to continue moving forward. In fact, one of the aforementioned projects I have in the works involves the creation of affordable living spaces for both young professionals and the homeless locally. We’ve already held numerous meetings about this and have a bunch of really talented partners on board. I can’t wait to unveil the program soon.

Pictured Above: Highlights from my road trips over the last 3.5 years, from the cobalt blue waters of Crater Lake in Oregon to blackjack tables of Las Vegas to the wild snow drifts of East Texas in January–and beyond. (Faces blurred again now just to mess with you.)

• I still manage to find a way to travel.
  – Sometimes I just have to be a little creative. Since my two-year anniversary, I’ve had a handful of trips paid for by others. No, I don’t have a Sugar Momma! I’ve traveled to shoot footage, work with an editor, and screen a film. I travel to Colorado next month to give a speech. Some strategic airline mileage accumulation have paid for me to see family and is about to cover a good chunk of another personal trip to New York. More so than the money, though, is the time. With so much time devoted to the above projects, I can barely keep pace with the needs of this blog, much less find a way to get out of the city. But we all need balance, so I’ve made it a priority.
• Natural engagement in a “favor-trade” lifestyle.
  – Expect more details of this in an upcoming post, but living more freely has allowed me to pursue some lifestyle arrangements I’d have never otherwise considered. Like the “sharing economy” philosophy of crowd-sourcing sites and (profit-motive aside) Uber and eBay, pet-sitting is one way to provide a service in return for housing. I now do that regularly, as well as receiving housing in exchange for writing grants or helping with business ventures or hobbies. Selling someone’s unused items and sharing the proceeds for a night out. Even as simple as urban foraging a meal to share with a friend willing to cook. Eliminating the middlemen allows us to directly serve the needs of one another, free from the premium of an intermediary–or what I sometimes like to call “parasite”.

Never would I have imagined giving up my apartment would yield such benefits. Or maybe I did. Maybe abstractly I realized that giving up my hard-earned money and time to pay for an apartment instead of funding my ambitions didn’t make sense. Regardless, it’s a decision I’m glad I made.

Even if those benefits are causing me a little stress in the meanwhile.

-TOH