The True Meaning of Vanlife
When Frankie and I entered into the wonderful world of VanLife we did it for personal, perhaps selfish reasons. We didn’t want to be part of the 9-5 hustle anymore. We were both tired of spending 40 plus hours a week working to build someone else’s dream. We were ready for adventure no matter the cost.
Now that we’ve been on the road for over six months, our entire perspective has changed. Yes it’s amazing to visit beautiful places and explore our world. It’s also amazing to live in our tiny home and realize that we don’t really need as much as we thought we did. It’s fabulous to know we can live on very little money but have the most amazing life, even more amazing then when we were making big bucks living in New York City.
The true meaning of vanlife for us, has been the amazing community built around this dream. It’s been our experience that everyone living vanlife, is kind and generous. Something about stepping into this life, and shedding the confines of structured living, opens us up to the beauty of the world.
We’ve met many vanlifers and the one constant is that we all love our planet. We’re all minimally minded in terms of material goods. We all love and respect each other no matter our differences or backgrounds. And we all want to foster a kinder gentler world. We’re all also very entrepreneurial minded, each of us with our own podcasts, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts and the like. Many of us start small businesses to be able to continue to travel and explore the world on our own terms.
The best part of this is that there doesn’t seem to be any competition. You having a successful blog doesn’t mean I can’t have a successful blog. It’s better to share each other’s stories so that we can all grow together.
Frankie and I both believe that the more you give the more you receive. Perhaps that’s why all the folks we’ve met have been wonderful. We’re looking for and fostering relationships with people who give as much of the love we do right back at us. It’s a beautiful exchange and one that we hope continues for years to come.
If you’re on the fence about vanlife know this, it doesn’t matter what you drive or how fancy your build is. If your mindset isn’t right, the experience won’t be nearly as enjoyable. It took us a month or so to really feel like we were living vanlife, to shed the idea that we were just on vacation and returning to work soon. Once we ditched the go go go mentality that plagued our first spurt of travel (we were trying to hit 71 mountains for snowboarding in one season – I don’t recommend it) we truly melted into vanlife living and I don’t know if we can ever go back.
If you’re looking for help transitioning to this lifestyle, give us a shout we’re happy to chat.