The Office Hobo ™

The following were compiled at the beginning of this project, in the late summer of 2012 and have been edited for clarity.

1. Choose Personal Freedom Over Material Possession:
In the year preceding my decision to move into the office, I worked two jobs, averaging around 60 hours per week of work. This amounted to maintaining what I perceived to be a base-level lifestyle. A small studio apartment. A car. Decent meals. Ironically, my attempt to maintain my level of lifestyle ended up worsening it. During my two-job term, I experienced more stress, compromised health, dulling of creative interest, decreased job performance, strain on my relationship, and a lower overall level of happiness. A failure of applied logic.

No lifestyle justifies the sacrifice of your well-being.

Instead of using my free time on working more and smiling less, I plan on writing as much as possible and challenging myself with new opportunities. Instead of stressing about rent, I will enjoy guilt-free healthy eating and spend more time traveling. And instead of working so hard to preserve this facade of image at the expense of it all, I’ll sacrifice a measure of comfort now for a greater potential for improvement in the future.

2. Greater Financial Independence
While my urge to achieve rent-independence grew strong on its own, it was during a 3-week period in the summer of 2012 that the bubble burst. In that short time I experienced identity theft, unplanned medical costs, the indefinite delay of an expected salary increase, and the freeze of a performance bonus. All of this while weathering the usual challenges of student debt, car loan payments, and rising rent. It was a difficult period. The solution could be one of three things: flee the country, find a second job to increase my income, or get very creative about slashing my expenses. Obviously I chose the latter.

In order to achieve the goal of greater financial independence, I set the following objectives for myself:

a) Deposit 90% of my would-be rent into the bank. Promptly ignore it is there. Use the remaining 10% to bolster my vacation budget. (Hey, I’m human…)

b) Spend less than $20 on average per day on meals while eating healthy. Start a spreadsheet to track daily meals and their net cost. (But only kind of human…)

c) Emerge from the experiment with no medical bills, no car payments, and a greatly increased cache of savings to ensure my future lifestyle is a more sustainable one.

d) Learn to redefine my notion of comfort by living unconventionally.

e) Devise a plan upon the culmination of the experiment for a sustainable lifestyle–whether it be home ownership or a mobile lifestyle–beyond office move-out.

3. Conduct Qualitative Study of People’s Reactions to the Home-Free Lifestyle
There is a pretty universal stigma attached with being “homeless” in America. Selective or not, philosophical or not, this experiment is sure to inspire a wide range of reactions. I am curious how that will manifest itself. I’m curious how others will treat me. But I’m also curious about my own reactions to my environment. Will I act differently around others? Will I feel overwhelmingly self-conscious? Will I adjust and act comfortably? Am I sensing a lack of trust between myself and others? Maybe I will fear rejection, or maybe I will well up with a sense of rebellion and empowerment.  These thoughts are just the tip of the iceberg!

Beyond general social relations and personal psychology is the subject of romance. Can a man who lives in an office sustain any kind of love life? Are there women out there who are cool with home-free living? Could it be some strange, yet-undiscovered fetish? Or does the hypothesis hold true that all women in Los Angeles are just too superficial to be bothered hold true? Again, this is a fascinating subject and I am excited to learn more. Because this is the kind of shit I do in my free time.

4. Write About It
Start this blog and maintain it. Keep a diary of my experiences.

Note: Having amassed an overwhelming amount of material, I re-focused this goal to include a book after the culmination of the project.

5. Keep My Word
I was taught to believe that following through on your word is a matter of integrity.

The idea to pursue a lifestyle free from the obligation of rent surfaced well before the experiment began. Through the exploration of its potential talking with friends and family grew a plan. And after some time, its place in conversation with friends became so familiar that I began to see it as a promise to see the thing through. So it is an experiment that I will see through. It’s time to walk the talk.

– TOH