I held it together until twenty minutes after five. My last day in the office was rife with commemoration. It began at the workplace of a client, who had prepared for me a flattering going-away presentation. This was followed by a brief off-site (IHOP again, this is a nasty trend of ours) meeting with my boss, filled with an embarrassing level of adulation, almost to the point where I thought she was going to ask me back. She didn't. After lunch and thoughtful gifts from coworkers, it was nearly the end of the day. Pretty soon it was only Carmen, the most senior staff person under my boss, and I left in the office. "I should probably take your keys now," she said. Fuck that, I thought, I'm never giving...
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My boss and I took our seats at the booth of the International House of Pancakes and exchanged pleasantries. It's a strange place to sit down for a serious conversation, surrounded by an array of syrup selections with The Isley Brothers playing in the background. I pretended to be comfortable, fiddling with the paper band around my dining utensils. "You look casual today," she said, noting my shorts and monochromatic long sleeve t-shirt. My boss doesn't work in my office building, so often her comments expose the fact that she has little knowledge of what's going on. I dress this way more often than not. While her ignorance plays to my lifestyle advantage, the reminder that she has no idea how productive I am...
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Over the past few months, I have been converting the back of my truck into a living area. In foreseeing the need to eventually move out of the office, this seemed like a natural progression for my lifestyle desires. After all, office living does not last forever. Having spent many wilderness vacations living out of the back of my open-air pickup bed, I had a decent sense for what I was looking for. There were two initial things that topped the list: 1) A simple, secure sleeping space and, 2) Something covert that would allow me to park anywhere and not be noticed. Since I'd been sleeping under the stars--or beneath giant tarp--the first order of business would be to create a more permanent shelter back there....
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There's tumult in the office. Word of a severe budget crisis is circulating, and employees are having trouble focusing on their daily tasks. I lean back in my chair, prop my feet up on the guitar amp beneath my desk, and take a sip from my Bigelow tea as I study the behavior of my fellow staff members. One of my coworkers, having recently returned from maternity leave, leans over another coworker's desk to converse in a whisper. The second coworker just sent two kids off to college and is feeling the burn of high tuition costs. When do you think...? Who might they...? Eyes dart around. The Sparklett's delivery man walks in to drop-off two new water jugs, but our financial officer waves him off. Not this month....
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This week should have been a celebration. Monday marked my 365th consecutive day of home-free living, a grand total of 407 days during The Office Hobo experiment. As luck would have it, a newly ordered memory foam mattress was delivered to the office door that afternoon, as if to signal that it was time to rest easy. I walked through the office with the oversized package without a look from my coworkers, and set it unceremoniously behind my desk. Despite the well-timed delivery, there was no celebration on Monday. I had no real reason for this to be the case. This day hadn't marked the end of my experiment, so there was no fanfare about leaving the office. There was no revelatory event or office-related...
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It has been a while since my last update. I owe my audience so much in the way of stories, it's nearly overwhelming. Many things have happened over the last month and a half. Things I will struggle to summarize here on this page. I continue to find myself discouraged for not being able to tell this story openly, but I'll do my best and give some highlights here. Thank you for checking back to see how my experiment is going! Today marks a milestone. 400 days of home-free living. Not only that, but in one week I will have lived this way for an entire year, uninterrupted. Well... perhaps I should say "continuously" instead. On January 28, 2013, I moved out of my place permanently and moved back into my office after...
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Monday, November 18 will mark my 340th day of home-free living. And while living this way has become simpler--routine, even--writing about it has become more of a challenge. I've found that there is a sizable gap between my old posts and present-day. Plenty has materialized that I haven't had a chance to report. At least not in the way that I'd prefer to present it. I am, after all, a perfectionist. Go perfect or go home(-free). A lot has transpired in the life of the hobo over the past 2-3 months. From largely unreported romantic developments to unrelenting demands for creative projects and a rise in home-free awareness thanks to a surge in entertainment industry interest in my experiment. Each has demanded...
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No one wants to shower in a stall smeared in another man's shit. When I walked into the 24 Hour Fitness at 9:00pm on a Friday, my goal was to get in and out quickly. The gym is sparsely attended at this hour, with most members opting to be elsewhere, likely engaging in some activity counterproductive to their health. I saw this as a great time to get in and out easily, unlike my normal pre- or post-workday rush hours when the locker rooms are packed with 9-5'ers. And in a way, I got what I expected. The locker room was a veritable ghost town. I was accompanied only by two other men, a white-haired toothpick of a man whom I've seen on multiple occasions fall asleep on the core strengthening room mats, and...
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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...
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I think someone else is sleeping in my building. A few months ago I started to notice a van parked in front of the building at odd hours. I'd only see it in the evenings, and it was always parked in front of the same business. (For the sake of anonymity, I'll call it a watch repair shop. Trust me when I say it's just as benign.) This gray van began to show up every night. I'd pretend to go home after work and it'd be there, vacant, predictable. Meanwhile, the watch repair shop would always be open well past dark, its door wide open to accommodate wandering eyes. It's as plain as the nose on your face. The expression was always big in my family. My uncle might use it to describe a seemingly obvious attempt...
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