Last week, the L.A. Weekly published an article I wrote outlining my experiment in home-free living. As one might expect, the article inspired a wide range of reactions. From disbelief to awe, from curiosity to outrage, readers made their reactions known through public comments and private messages.

It’s a common phenomenon by now. Small public fora pop up after nearly every posted article, news post, or YouTube video, and many of which devolve into heated debates on the disputed citizenship of our president or the promiscuity of Playa_187’s mom. It’s a given: Death, taxes, and unstructured, almost feral reactionary comments.

So when my article was set for release, I prepared for the onslaught.

I’ve had many chances over the last 300 or so days to study people’s reactions to my lifestyle. It is no surprise to me when someone disagrees with my choices, but it never ceases to arouse my curiosity. What about my decision provokes such strong reactions? Is it the silhouette of discomfort or shame, projected by the perception of the cynic? Is it the shock of my openness, my willingness to share said degradation? Or is it simply because it’s different? An unusual lifestyle choice that people aren’t accustomed to witnessing…

I’ll withhold addressing most of the comments I received. But there are a few I feel compelled to address, mostly because the resultant message will be informative for those interested in what I’m doing and I’ll have fun doing it.

Shall we?:

The Good

Most of the feedback I’ve received has been positive. People are interested in the project and want to learn more. It’s truly motivating to interact with readers who are curious about the ins and outs of my lifestyle.

Today I received a message from a young man in L.A. that made my day.* Through the course of your day, your emotions rise and fall with your energy, your environment. This message came after a long, mid-afternoon meeting with a colleague over some mundane topic. I was feeling the desire to nod off, to escape to some distant dream world when I checked my email and found the aforementioned message. It spoke about the concept of home, the embrace of an ideal rather than an expectation. It was the kind of message that boosted my spirit on an otherwise dull afternoon.

That is the beauty of the public forum. People can voluntarily share their sentiments, spreading encouragement in a way that years ago may not have been quite so easy.

The Bad

People can also be pretty critical.

One public comment I would like to address comes from the Weekly article page, from a woman who, for all she knows, might be an old friend of mine. It’s in the realm of possibility, isn’t it? Her comment is below:

It’s called stealing…stealing the company’s electricity, water. Don’t they have cameras?

I post this comment here because it questions a point of ethics, something I discuss a lot in my writing. Her assumption is that my use of company utilities raises costs someone other than myself has to cover. It seems like a fair assumption, if there ever was one. But the facts belie the perception. Here’s why:

Let’s say my office is 2,000 square feet (for the sake of argument), controlled by a central thermostat, and has a pair of unisex bathrooms (no showers). And let’s say that my office is kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, with a full show of ceiling lights and a single refrigerator that’s always running (yet still no shin splints!**). Now let’s say that, prior to my office living experiment, my coworkers routinely kept lights on and the a/c running. Nights and weekends.

True. Story.

The thing is, I don’t want the lights on all night. Or at all, really. So I turn them off. And because I prefer my living spaces warm and toasty, I run the a/c at higher temperatures. Alsom since there’s no shower, my water usage is negligible. So where my lodging in my office might appear to raise costs, it actually lowers them. So instead of being a thief, I’m actually a conservationist. I should probably get a raise for my efforts.

I’m kidding about the raise.***

The point is that, like most of this experiment, appearances don’t always hold true. What seems like a careless oversight–or worse, egregious banditry–just so happens to be a carefully considered positive consequence of the thing. Who knew?

The Impulsive

One reader called me a hero. Another called me a loser. Yet another drunk-messaged me to accuse me of being a fraud and a cheat.

None of these things are accurate. But each of them tells us something about ourselves. As humans, we are capable of an array of emotions in any given moment. If we chose to give in to those emotional reactions, regardless of the origin of the stimuli, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the weakness of impulse. That weakness being that we may not fully consider what we’re saying, we may report something inaccurately or disguise our curiosity with misunderstanding.

Conversely, we may reveal something worth studying. We may, like the reader who accused me of being a thief, inspire conversation on a matter of ethical importance. It may encourage us to consider something in a different way, even if that consideration is uncomfortable. Or, like the reader who messaged me this afternoon, we may share an impulse that spreads a smile that spans the afternoon.

It’s hard to place judgement on what I myself am fully capable of doing. What I can do is appreciate the opportunity to use what has been said as an informal qualitative analysis of people’s reactions to this kind of lifestyle. And for that, I am thankful. Because regardless of whether that feedback is positive or critical, the chance to learn from it is invaluable.

So thank you for your comments… and keep them coming!

– TOH

* “Young man”! I refuse to edit this because it shows how old I feel like I’m getting…
** Sorry…
*** I mean, I wouldn’t turn it down…