Rough Living

by Vago Damitio

Starting Your Life Anew

  Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but you don’t have an excuse to continue being miserable anymore. You have the knowledge. You have the resources. You have what it takes. The possibilities are endless and all you have to do is discover them. There are more ways to make money from what you love than there are ways to rise in your current career. Get ready to change your life.

  Will you take Bus #1 and freelance with your passion?

  Will you take Bus #2 and start a small business against my advice?

  Will you take Bus #3 and start creating your future passive income?

  It’s up to you. I’ve given you the system map. Now all you need to do is figure out which bus will get you there. Or maybe, you’ll do all three or combine all three bus routes into one as I have done. As much as I hope you eventually will quit your job, you don’t have to do it right away. In fact, it might be better if you don’t quit for a while so that you can start to see the potentials without the worry. Choose your bus, step on board, and see where it takes you.

  Maybe it will take you all over the world like it has me. Maybe it will lead you to the love of your life, just like it did for me. Maybe you will find exactly what you never knew you wanted just as I have. I hope so.

  The thing is, it’s nice to wake up and do what I want. You can have this too. Don’t forget to give importance to the things that you love. Your passions are the reason you are here. I’m sure of it. When you give your energy to your passions you will feel more alive, more vibrant, and better able to deal with all the challenges that life is certain to throw at you.

  How To Stop Working For Someone Else

  The way to stop working for someone else is as simple as finding out that you really only need to work for you. If you get it, I won’t be surprised to hear that you quit very soon. Maybe you need to give notice, or maybe you don’t. Either way, I’m sure if you get it, you are going to quit it.

  I met an Australian man in Hawaii who was working in construction. He asked me what he should do and I said he should quit. Later, I saw him looking happier than I’d ever seen him and he told me he had quit. That night his boss came and pounded on my door. I opened it and the guy punched me in the nose.

  A bloody nose was a small price to pay for liberating someone who thought he was trapped. My friend told me how he was considering suicide and instead, I convinced him to suicide his career. He did and I can tell you that the results were good, despite my bloody nose.

  Like him, you can quit. You can start your own business, take up freelancing, or start to set up your passive income streams. Just don’t tell your boss where I live when he asks why you quit. ;)

  I think though, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Start saving up some money to support yourself with before you turn in your notice. Make a plan for how you will free yourself and start thinking of yourself as already liberated. You will immediately feel the difference.

  Choosing The Day To Start

  You aren’t really a prisoner to your job at all. You can leave any time you want. You don’t have to stay there. In fact, you can call up the boss and quit right this instant. Don’t ever forget that.

  When I talk about choosing the day to start, what it really means is picking the day to quit. When you quit working for someone else, you are starting to work for yourself. Don’t make a big scene, the best thing to do is to explain to your employer that you are heading out on your own, tell them that you enjoyed your time with them, but you no longer have to have the job. Never burn your bridges because you never know, you might actually change your mind, but I hope not.

  Do it sooner rather than later. I would suggest that you wait no longer than six months. That should be plenty of time to get your plan straight. In fact, if you do it in half the time you originally plan for, you will find that you actually get everything done in half the time too. Long deadlines make us all lazy.

  How To Start Really Living

  The hardest thing for most people to do is to start saving their money instead of spending it. In fact, money is a lazy way of keeping ourselves occupied. Start cooking at home, stop wasting your money on things that aren’t important. You’ll find that taking a run outside is far more satisfying than using the treadmill in the gym.

  You’re saving to start your independent life. Isn’t that worth it? If you have a family, explain to them why it is important to start living a simpler life. If you have debts, find a way to put them off or pay them off. Saving money is easy, just spend less than you earn.

  How To Earn More

  If you want to earn more money, put more work in. Instead of writing five articles a day, write fifteen. Instead of waiting to start your logo business, have the cards made and start handing them out. You’ll be surprised how a little effort can yield big results.

  Take at least a couple of hours a week to focus on your freedom. Make it happen now in however small a way. The longer you wait, the less likely it is to happen. Maybe it means spending less time at the gym or not reading that novel you were planning on, but we’re not talking about fun times alone, we’re talking about building your passion income! Isn’t it worth it to miss the big game on television so that you can have your freedom sooner rather than later?

  How To Spend Less

  Spending less is the hard part for lots of people. Americans in particular are very wasteful spenders. Don’t be offended. I’m American and it took me a long time to get my spending under control too.

  The way I did it was to create a book in which I wrote down every cent I spent for three months. At the end of each week I would add up what I spent my money on. I was amazed to find that rent was not my biggest expense. Instead it was totally non-essential items that cost between $1 and $15 but in a month added up to nearly twice my rent. Coffee from Starbucks, a Sunday Matinee, a bag of chips, candy, and tons of other little things. I was really amazed. I was also ashamed. I started to watch where I spent my money so I wouldn’t have to write it down in the book. I was tempted to even lie to myself about it and not write things down.

  Don’t do that. Be honest about your extra meals, gadgets, and extravagances. Don’t buy on whims. Do you really need that new coffee mug? Write everything down. You will probably be as surprised and ashamed as I was. It adds up to way more money than you think.

  So once you are doing that, you can decide what not to spend money on and what to spend money on. It gives you the chance to choose, if you have never done this, you aren’t choosing with knowledge, you are like Gollum groping for his precious ring in the dark.

  Do you want to liberate yourself? Or would you rather have a latte?

  Making It Happen

  I was lucky. I found my first freelancing gigs within hours of deciding to do this. My passive income streams took months to yield any results. As to small business, I guess you know how I feel about that but eventually, I set one up.

  The point is that you shouldn’t expect things to happen for you right away. Maybe you will get lucky like I did, but from what I have seen on the internet and heard other folks say, it often takes people months to find their first clients.

  Be patient. If you still have your full time gig, just work steadily and don’t give up. I know you can do it. Take the time to make it happen. Tell your family and friends what you are doing. If they don’t support you, consider getting rid of them. Really. If the people you love don’t support you following your passion then they don’t really love you. Uh-oh, first I told you to get rid of your job, now it’s your friends and family!

  Wake up early, go to bed late, skip the golf course on weekends, and work during your lunch hour. You are doing this for yourself and if you aren’t worth it to you, then chances are you won’t succeed. One of the greatest things you can do in this life is work hard to achieve your dreams.

  It will be hard. I’m certain. There will be times you just want to quit and take that horrid old job back again, but don’t do it. Focus Danial-San! W
ax On, Wax Off. That ultimate goal of walking out of the office forever is waiting for you. All you need to do is keep going.

  If that won’t do it then you need to pull out the big guns. Start reading blogs, books, or websites about people who have succeeded. People like Dave Navarro, Seth Godin, Steve Pavlina, Leo Babauta, Tim Ferris, Darren Rouse, John Chow, and Naomi Dunford. Or you can just go visit my website at Vagobond.com and see what a great time I’m having. Seriously, when you look into the things I’ve gone through to get here, you’ll understand that you aren’t alone in dealing with things.

  Living The Dream

  You can live the dream. There are tens of thousands of people who have given up being miserable and started doing what makes them happy. The only reason there aren’t billions yet is because the governments of the world don’t want people to realize they can do it. Governments get money from big corporations and big corporations survive from wage slaves. They need you, you don’t need them.

  You have earned the right to make your dreams come true. .

  Pick a bus, get on it, and head to the destination of your choice. You won’t regret it. Finding your passion income means finding the ways to make your dreams come true. Don’t just dream the dream. Live the dream. You want it, now you know how to get it too.

  Stop spending, start saving, quit your job, follow your passion, and do what you love. As they say, the rest will surely follow. All there is to it, is to do it.

  This is a picture of me and the Ole Reptile on our way to the North American Anarchist Conference in 2000. He’s the one who told me that I shouldn’t just learn not to be a wage slave, but should write a book about it. Thanks Ole’ Reptile!

  ROUGH LIVING TO SMOOTH LIVING

  The following is the introduction to Smooth Living: Beyond the Life of a Vagabond. I published the original Rough Living back in 2003. Now, in 2013, I’ve written a followup because I’ve completely changed my life. I want to share a little bit from the beginning of Smooth Living. Once you’ve learned the lessons of Rough Living, you’ll be ready for the Smooth Life. In fact, you’ll deserve it.

  There are two types of people in the world. Feelers and doers. Feelers do what they feel like doing (and don’t do what they don’t feel like doing). Doers do what needs to be done. In giving in to the road, I was a classic feeler. It wasn’t that I felt like being on the road so much as I didn’t feel like doing the work I would have needed to do if I had resisted that call to the road.

  I don’t regret my choices. I regret my submissive attitude of powerlessness. I made a negative choice (based on what I didn’t want to do) rather than a positive choice (based on what I did want or need to do.) I chose rough living. Finding a way to live that didn’t require me to do anything because I didn’t need anything. You have to work hard to live that way. That’s the joke. You put a lot of energy in and you get enough out to survive. It’s inefficient.

  I’m not saying working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 20 years is a better solution. I’m not sure that solution would have worked for me had I tried it. You need a direction to go in. Let’s face it, your odds of getting anywhere are zero if you can’t choose a direction to step off in.

  Smooth living requires you to understand what it is you want out of life. The desire to remain alive isn’t enough, you must have something to head towards. Otherwise, you’re trusting your entire life to blind luck. It might work out beautifully for you, but it might end in disaster.

  I look back at the list of essentials I wrote about in Rough Living — essentials like sturdy boots, a knife, and a lighter — and the only possession I still consider to be essential is proper ID. Everything else is optional (of course you can’t walk around nude, so it is good to have some clothing.)

  There are two essentials you need for smooth living. First of all, a desire for something beyond mere existence. Second (and this is funny to me) you have to have proper identification. This is our world. The rest is optional.

  I’ll say this again later, but it’s fair to tell you now. I can’t teach you how to do exactly what I do because I can’t teach you to be me. I’m a writer, I created an online magazine about travel. I’ve used contacts I’ve made through writing and publishing to gain extraordinary experiences. There are other people who have done more with less and plenty of people who have done less with more.

  Ultimately, you have to be willing to look at what you have and figure out how to make the most of it. Simple as that. You still think you want an adventure?

  To find out more about Smooth Living, you’ll have to buy the book. For now, let’s move on to the tales of a Rough Living vagabond. You’ll find more tips and resources in the appendix at the back of this book or at my website at http://www.vagodamitio.com. Enjoy the tales!

  VAGABOND TALES

  No Baba, No Bobo

  My mom was working as a waitress and my dad was painting houses, playing music. I was almost two and my brother was about seven. One evening Dad was watching us because Mom was working and he had no gig that evening. Mom and the baby sitter followed a similar routine in making me a bottle (ba-ba), ensuring that I had a pacifier (bo-bo), and then tucking me in my crib (night-night) before helping my brother with his homework. Dad threw all of that out the window and propped me on the couch watching TV while he helped my brother with his homework at the kitchen table.

  It was at this point that I first heard the haunting melody of what might lie beyond. Obviously, I recognized that something lay outside better than what the talking heads on the magic box were babbling about. Dad’s first clue was a whoosh of cold winter air blowing my brothers papers from the table.

  He looked up and realized that I was gone as the screen door slammed in the wind. He ran outside and was terrified to see that I was running down the road next to two busy lanes of nighttime traffic. He sprinted after me and though I ran as fast as my tiny legs would carry me he caught me as I attempted to dart between fast moving cars.

  He picked me up and shook me asking, "Chris, what are you doing?"

  It was only then that I spoke my first sentence as I tried to explain it to him. "No ba-ba, no bo-bo, no night-night, bye-bye." If I had been a bit more articulate I might have explained the call of the road like this "I’m pretty sure there’s a better life out there for me somewhere because sitting around watching TV sucks."

  $100 Volkswagen Bus

  The bus I live in as I write this, was broken down on the side of the road in Seattle with a ‘For Sale’ sign listing $400 as the price. As I was wistfully looking at her, her owner came running out of his house explaining that he would give her to me for $100 right that instant.

  I was in my friend Kevin’s car and between the two of us we were able to come up with exactly $100 when we found some change under the back seat. We towed her to the house I was going to be moving out of a week later.

  The bus wouldn’t start. A next door neighbor who was a VW enthusiast came over to have a look and within ten minutes had diagnosed and fixed the problem. All he did was tweak a few wires. I named her Turtle, since she would be my home and didn’t move too fast.

  The next day, I paid $30 to get a temporary registration for the bus. That left me nearly broke. I was unemployed and a week from homeless, but I was starting to live smarter by far. I had a home.

  I needed to drive to South Center (about a 60 mile round trip) to get her inspected by the State Patrol to make sure she wasn’t stolen before I could get her registered and licensed. She drove like a charm on the way there. I’d already fixed the stereo, so I was pretty happy about the trip down. I was nervous that the bus would be stolen because I’d only paid $100 for it and it had no title, but she passed the State Patrol’s inspection with flying colors.

  I was driving on a three-day trip permit, which allows unlicensed cars to be driven for three consecutive days. I was jubilant on the way back and that’s when Turtle broke down. First she stopped in a busy intersection and finally restarted only to die alongsid
e Highway 99, I coasted to the small shoulder wedged between the highway and the railroad tracks just South of Seattle.

  A busy shipping yard was on the other side of the tracks. Shipping containers stacked four high. I tried to get her started for fifteen or twenty minutes and then knew that I would have to call a tow truck.

  I hopped over the tracks. I ran through the yard and looked for an exit, a payphone, or an office.

  Finally three rednecks in a company pickup pulled up next to me, I asked politely, but they said I couldn’t use their phone. A crane driver pulled up and yelled at me “This is private property, you’ve gotta leave.” He seemed to have a little more of an idea of what was going on than the boys in the pickup who had begun muttering things like ‘stupid fucking hippie.’

  “My car broke down on Highway 99 and I need to find a phone to call a tow truck.”

  “Take him to the office and let him use the phone” he bellowed at the pickup boys and then sped away in his crane.

  The ladies in the office were nice if not comforting.

  “Sure, use the phone, you’re not the first to break down out there. It happens all the time. Most of the time the cars get hit by other cars while they sit on that road.”

  I used my mom’s AAA card to call a tow truck ( Thanks Mom! By the way, other people’s AAA cards are great because AAA never seems to check and never charges for limited distance towing.)

  Now I had to get back to the car, they wouldn’t let me go through the yard again. I tried walking to an on ramp, but there wasn’t one. I walked north hoping for an off ramp…no luck. In an alley an old man was wiping bird shit off of his Honda Civic with a dirty handkerchief. I said hello as I ran past, then I stopped.

  “Hey could you do a stranger a huge favor?” I asked German accent as he wiped at his windshield then ran to a puddle to dip his handkerchief in. “Vhat do you vant?” He eyed me suspiciously.