WHY I SOLD EVERYTHING I OWN AND MOVED INTO AN RV… AND WHY, MAYBE, YOU SHOULD TOO…

(read time 9 minutes)

Brief Summary: COVID-19 represents a massive threat: chronic stress with no clear end in sight. Yet, this same pandemic represents a massive opportunity to make change. In the face of so much uncertainty, our instincts often lead us to retreat and hunker down (flight, freeze), but perhaps this is the time for us to adventure, to double down on possibility, to make a seismic change...

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The writing on the wall:

The sun was setting, and we were on the rooftop deck of the recently re-opened Chicago SOHO house (socially distanced with plexiglass dividers and large spaces between guests.) It was mid-July of 2020 and, as always, our conversation turned to COVID-19. My girlfriend, Jordan, a flight attendant, had stopped flying in mid-March as a personal safety measure. As for myself, as a public speaker who is paid to stand in front of large groups of people shoulder-to-shoulder in tightly enclosed spaces, I had had no new contracts in 4 months and all of my 25+ previously contracted engagements around the world had been pushed to a TBD future date in 2021.

I reopened an older conversation about the future. Here we were, both of us essentially unemployed and both unable to do the one thing we loved most – travel the world to have adventures with new and old friends. We had been stuck at home for nearly four months. With each passing day, the four walls closed in further. Our old way of life seemed farther away than ever: both behind us and in the future. The anxiety hung heavy in the air as we again talked about the numbers. As the former head of research and analytics for a Fortune 500 company, for me, the writing was on the wall regarding the CO-19 statistics. I made this observation, “This thing is not over, it will likely get worse, and it is not going away anytime soon…” “So,” I concluded, “our lives, as we know them, are essentially over…”

Vertigo – teetering on the tiny ledge of the present:

Like the “Dolly Zoom” or “Vertigo Effect” in film-making both our past and our future were receding away at an accelerating rate and all that was left was the tiny ledge of the present: the routine day-to-day activities inside a pair of condos (city house and country house), the daily news and statistics, and yet another bottle of wine opened well before 5 pm. I remember thinking, “We have to do something different… but… we have no options.” This false dichotomy triggered the designer’s mindset within me, and I then coached myself with my own advice… “whenever you feel like you have no options, it means you only have major changes left – that a significant shift is necessary.”

We talked and talked some more and at first, our instincts were to recede even further, “let’s get rid of our two places and move into one small apartment and frugally wait out the storm – we won’t be eating out or traveling, so we’ll save money that way.” But the idea of getting rid of both “country house” (my condo) and “city house” (her River North apartment) and then to have only one place to quarantine stirred something within me. “There has to be something else? Some other options?”. My mind drifted to a catchphrase from one of my talks regarding Design Thinking, “In the infinite possibilities of the universe, there MUST be a way.”

I had an intuition. I was seeking a way to re-frame the seemingly impossible – instead of: if I do this (good thing), then this (bad thing) will happen, (see “the sucker’s choice from Crucial Conversations”) and instead reframe it in the positive: “We can’t travel, and we have no way to earn an income” was the base case. Then the reframe: “what I want is to travel and what I also want is a way to earn an income while doing so.” But… how?

Reframing false limitations:

In his book, “What Happy People Know,” Dr. Daniel Baker shares the story of an un-named “rock-star” who came to his celebrity rehab center Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona in the late 1980s. This particular musician arrived strung out from drugs and alcohol and was a mess. Dr. Baker interviewed him a few days after his arrival and asked him some of the basic questions. What is going on? Why are you here? Why are you so unhappy?

The rock-star proceeded to explain how terrible his life was – that he had no life at all and instead his existence had become a series of “have-tos” and that he had no control at all. He had to do dozens of big arena shows across the globe according to his contract, he had to do a dozen more albums over the next 10 years according to his agent, and it had to be a certain style of music that he had outgrown. Thus, he had to be on a bus 200 days a year doing setup, rehearsal, soundcheck, and tear down AND the remaining days he had to be in the studio to record the new music. He was miserable and only survived through the regular doses of drugs and alcohol to prop himself up.

Dr. Baker interrupted at some point, “hmm. OK… but… how much money do you have?” The celebrity tried to dodge suggesting he couldn’t trust his accountants, and the record companies were not paying him his due, but Dr. Baker kept pressing and eventually he answered, “maybe 50, 60 million dollars…?”

Dr. Baker paused and waited for that figure to sink in, but nothing happened, so then he asked him a question. What happens if you just quit – quit it all? What if you just did what YOU want to do?

We all have “agency,” the personal power to choose our alternate future – but too often we trade it away. Time and money are fungible: we trade time for money for ever-so-long, but sometimes it is essential to grab the reins and trade our money for time.

“Ultimately personal power is about doing; it consists of two active forces: taking responsibility and taking action.” (Dr. Daniel Baker)

What “things” or “expectations” or “have-to’s” are holding you back?

This is the same question I asked myself after the onslaught of CO-19 and the same one you should ask yourself now. We always have choices. What are your options? What is it that you always wanted to do that you were too afraid to do?

Sadly, the Dr. Baker’s leading questions and obvious logic failed to land on our rock-star, and he vented at length, “I’d lose tens – if not hundreds of millions of dollars, my contracts would be canceled, my agents would fire me, my fans would be angry – I’d be nothing!” 

Letting go:

What is holding you back? Three times in my life I have let what I “do” become who I “am”.

First, I once was an athlete… and then that ended abruptly and suddenly I was nothing and no-one. I was forced to quit everything and start over, but it was a decade until I finally got over it.

Second, I was a corporate athlete – a shining star rising in a Fortune 500 company and a senior leader in a consultancy… but I was miserable, a slave to the machine, living a life full of “have-to’s.” I was a manager, then a director, then a senior director, then a VP, then an SVP… Again, my work had defined who I was, and quitting seemed to be an embarrassing failure… but finally, I quit that too – the money, the stability, the status, and the esteem of co-workers.

Third, I became an entrepreneur - I went off on my own, building a public speaking business from zero, not paying rent in the early days and couch surfing for a brief period but eventually flourishing: last year I was paid to travel to speak in over 20 countries before COVID-19 hit… and then, it too, was over. It felt like my life was over, that there were no options…

But there are always options. In the infinite possibilities of the universe, there is always a way… But, back to our rock-star.

Many years after our rock-star visited Canyon Ranch, I was invited, along with my fellow short-track speedskating Olympic medalists to visit the singer and songwriter James Taylor in Martha’s Vineyard. We were able to attend his private rehearsals each evening and each day we were invited to go inline skating with James and his daughter, Sally. (He had befriended my teammate Eric Flaim at his inline store in Boston in the months prior and was obsessed with inline skating.) So, we all flew out and spent a lot of time with James.

I can tell you that even now, 20 years later, James Taylor during this period was one of the happiest people I have ever met. Each day he showed up with a sparkle in his eye, a new naughty limerick, and wore the exact same pair of brown jeans for 5 days in a row, showing up in his rusting Yugo (yes, a real Yugo). He lived modestly on the beach and rehearsed in a lovely old wooden barn with his band and we watched them every night. He shared, in pieces, that he had left the old materialistic world behind and lived very simply – beach, sun, stars, and music and that he refused to kowtow to the record bigwigs and arena gigs and instead had “quit it all” and insisted to only do shows with less than 3000 people to keep it intimate and that he would only record and play the music he cared about. I can still see that big toothy grin as he exited his Yugo with his inline skates greeting us with, “There once was a man from Nantucket…”

You too are a rock-star:

Was James the rock-star from Dr. Daniel Baker’s book? I don’t know for sure, but we, most of us, ARE James Taylor. If you are reading this, most likely you have a fan base of friends, family, colleagues, schools, and resumes. You have a trust-bank of your work-history, your intelligence, and your work ethic. You have 401K’s, IRA’s, and investments that, while not the size of the rock-stars millions, more than likely are substantial enough to hold you for an experimental year-or-two should you decide to change directions or checkout of the rat race for a bit. What tethers are keeping you from the next metamorphosis? What are the “have-to’s” that are keeping you from being the next iteration of you?

Personal power is taking action:

Back to July 2020 and the SOHO rooftop CO-19 conversation. After some moments of silence, I suddenly announced, “what we need to do is sell everything – our homes, cars, furniture, and most of our belongings, move into an RV, and travel around the country until this thing is over.”

This was not the first time I had broached the idea, but it was the first time I had broached it seriously. Just a few days prior, Jordan had been offered a 6 month partially paid leave-of-absence by her airline. She could get paid to stay safe, and I could use the proceeds from selling all my material possessions to purchase an RV. No rent, no property tax, just gas and food, and in many ways, we could resume the lifestyle we both loved – of travel, meeting new people and old friends, and having deep conversations about things that matter. I called, somewhat nervously, my business partner Monica and broached the idea. Her response was immediate, “why wouldn’t you?” The decision was made.

The switch was not easy: even as I mourned the loss of my old life and the incredibly difficult venture to sell everything, I began to plot a new one – one without “things.” I had always prided myself that I valued “experiences not things” but the reality was that over the decades I had collected quite a number of “things” – 4 cars including a 1987 BMW convertible I had owned for 27 years (and was bought with the money from my Olympic medal), 15 bikes including some vintage rides I’d had since my teens. Furniture, trophies and medals and collectibles from all my travels – could I really part with it all? I agonized at first but eventually, the dam broke, and I couldn’t wait to get rid of things fast enough. Between eBay, OfferUp, Craigslist, and CarGurus I had several dozen items up for sale at any given point over the next 6 weeks and we were making regular drives to Goodwill. Eventually, I was able to clear a vast majority of 40 years of accumulation and we both got rid of all our furniture, our two condos, 9 bikes, 3 cars, a motorcycle, and 138 other items sold online. It was a full-time frenetic job. But… each sale was like a sandbag off my shoulders. And then we found it - the perfect RV… (see the PS: below for the origin story)

And now:

I am writing this from a perch right on the beach in Malibu, California. For the last 10 weeks, I have lavished in the freedom of purple mountains and amber waves, salt flats, and crystalline lakes. We have followed the temperate weather west and south with no set plans except for the occasional clear and urgent need for the internet to deliver some live and recorded virtual events for clients that have recently picked up. Mostly we have been on our own clock and CO-19 seems a distant memory except for our occasional visits to a grocery store or gas station (where we promptly forget our masks – every.single.time!)

It is a life of near-complete freedom. Our time is our own, we don’t make firm plans. We stay longer or leave earlier when a siren song calls us forward or intuition encourages another day. Sunrise and sunset determine our life rhythm. When we visit (quarantined) friends, they are often so stir-crazy for adult conversation that we stay up too late over too much wine. The whole adventure has been a living exploration of my research regarding time perception and time expansion – with elements of Risk, Uniqueness, Emotional Intensity, Physical Intensity, Beauty, and Flow a part of most days. In theory – and in reality - the vast exploration of the country, the new experiences, sights, and sounds, have created an incredibly rich palette of memories that, in retrospect, have slowed down and expanded time.

It worked: The Endless Summer continues:

It truly has been that most distant of dreams: An Endless Summer. We may have left 10 weeks ago but it may as well have been 10 years ago. SO MUCH has happened in the intervening weeks, so many memory Polaroids stacked, retrieved, and recalled. August seems like forever ago – and yesterday – the perfect hallmark of “really living” and expanding time.

In contrast is March through July where other than the onset of COVID and the protests, I remember essentially nothing from mid-March to mid-July – 4 months that disappeared into the fissures of four walls and routine of quarantine. I really can’t imagine having to have 4 more months of that monotony. 2020 would have been a blur of headlines with no real memories.

It can work for you too:

I think of all of the “James Taylors” in my life that still feel beholden to the “have-to’s” of their existence, all the while ignoring that instinct, that intuition that there must be something else – an alternate reality to this current world. I wish I could tell them, “you HAVE the ‘millions’: exponential numbers of friends, contacts, capabilities, and resources to choose your own adventure.”

I’m reminded of a quote, “Youth is wasted on the young,” and was reminded of it this morning when an elderly couple took over the space we were occupying at the beach in Malibu. Of course, I was in admiration that they were out adventuring at their age, but a part of me wondered… what were you doing in your 40’s or 50’s when you could have joined me to ride up that mountain and shuttle down at 50mph and then body-surf afterward…

Is it your time?

Is it your time to leave your current status quo and find a new normal? What chrysalis will be the vehicle for your transformation? Is it a change of location? Job? Environment? Friends? Relationship? A furlough? An extended vacation? Quitting? Painting? Writing? An RV?

Ours, for now, is a 38’ metal and fiberglass tube. I won’t pretend it has been easy. I won’t pretend that it has been smooth sailing. But… It has been memorable, unforgettable: a decade of “really living” in 10 weeks.

Ten weeks later I have emerged as yet another evolution of myself. My whole life I have rushed from one thing to another while trying to plan everything out. For now, I have given up this effort and we are living day to day, enjoying our COVID time as a gift rather than a threat. What opportunity has the pandemic created for you?

I’ll end with a favorite quote from my favorite author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

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PS: THE TRAVELING TIME MACHINE ORIGIN STORY

It was that same sultry summer evening in mid-July that we were sitting on the rooftop of the SOHO house when I broached the RV idea again.

“I think you should take the offer, and we should move into an RV for the six months.” (I was referencing an offer Jordan had received a few days prior from her employer - Southwest airlines - for six months of partially paid leave starting in September.) “If we both get rid of our condos then we won’t be paying rent at all, and if, at the end of it all, we can sell the RV for something close to what we paid for it, well then we’ll be living rent-free…”

“And in the meantime, we can – to some extent – resume our lifestyle – of travel, meeting old and new friends and having adventures… and I can finally finish the two books I am working on.”

This was not the first time I had thrown out the idea, but it was really the first time that I felt we both really understood the enormity of the CO-19 pandemic and its implications for both our futures. “Maybe I can even hold some outdoor talks in some of the cities we pass through and earn some additional income.”

Jordan reminded me that she had some scars from less-than-fun childhood experiences in an RV but then said, “you know, I’m warming to this idea though – I am SO sick of staying home all day… Tell you what – if you can find an RV with a bathtub, I’m 100% in!” She laughed to indicate she was joking – but she does love her baths. “OK!” I said. No joke, just then we both saw a shooting star to the west – it seemed the heavens were speaking to us.

Later that evening upon returning home I Googled “RV with a bathtub” as a lark. Obviously in the hundreds of RV’s I had already looked at no such thing existed – why would it make sense to have dozens of gallons of water sloshing about in a moving vehicle? Previous searches had been just in Illinois / Indiana / Michigan, but this time I opened it up nationwide. Sure enough, there really was an RV with a tub… and it was gorgeous inside.

Previous searches and visits to used RV’s had turned up a whole lot of ugly: it seemed the RV interior designers had never gotten out of the 70’s/80’s funk of dark woods and frilly patterns. They were designed for the elderly and their design aesthetic and they were nearly all god-awful. I don’t think we saw an RV interior we liked that was not new or near new and in excess of $500,000 – well beyond our budget.

But this one – whites and light grays throughout, real tile in the kitchen and bathroom, was just fantastic. It had been completely gutted and revamped just a few months prior and this chrysalis was sitting on a 2004 Freightliner chassis and Cummins diesel turbo – a motor expected to last to 1 million miles. It was still a bit above our budget, but I decided to call and ask a few questions. Turns out the owner was a carpenter and his wife an interior designer. He gave us a 45-minute FaceTime walkthrough and we fell in love with it. We hung up and I talked to Jordan, “I don’t think we will find anything like this again – I think we should move on it and do so immediately.” She agreed so I called him back (this is now 10 pm) and I said that I would like to come to see it… in South Jordan Utah, tomorrow morning. He said that would be fine, but would I make him an offer so that we were not wasting each other’s time. I offered about 12% below the asking price and after a quick check with his wife, he accepted.

The next morning, I took a 7:45 am flight to Salt Lake, and jumped in an Uber to South Jordan. After about a 90-minute walk-through of all the complex systems, I got behind the wheel and drove it to the bank to obtain the largest cashier’s check of my life. Meanwhile, all that morning Trevor’s phone (the owner) was blowing up. “That call was from Georgia… That was a guy from California… That guy was overseas but said he’d fly back to pick her up” He must have received a dozen calls during our walkthrough. I was nervous he might try to alter our deal given all the interest, but he followed through and was very patient. After the check and title transfer it was time and I pulled out of the driveway behind the wheel of a 38’ long, 13’ high, 26,000lb monstrosity and suddenly came to the realization – this is going to be my home for the next six months or more! I was giddy beyond belief. I called Jordan and told her about the morning and that we had a new home. She said, “Guess what? I looked at the listing: we called Trevor just 13 minutes after he posted the RV – no wonder he had so many calls today – we were the first!”

Three months later and no matter where we go people marvel at the inside, “It is like a hip New York studio apartment!” And, yes, Jordan has used the little tub on occasion. We christened her the “Traveling Time Machine” for obvious reasons.

Our route from here in Las Vegas will take us to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Alabama, Mississipi, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and then back to Illinois to collect our remaining things. If you are on the route and you’d like a visit (and for me to cook you something off the TTT (Traveling Time Machine) menu, just ask and we can probably make it happen. (See Menu below)