The After Times: Tales of an Unintentional Nomad: The Hotel Room

This hotel room…

Is my “temporary home,”

Is My “Sanctuary,”

My “safe place,”

My “Prison,”

My “PTSD Machine,”

My “Library,”

My “Experiment in Resiliency,”

My “Bathroom Kitchen,”

My “Recovery Room,”

My “bad habit tumbler,”

My “Leap pad,”

It has been so many things in the last year. I did NOT want to come back to it. I’ve tasted the nectar of spaces with more than two rooms, one of them not having a toilet in it. I’ve argued and pushed for lower temps using central air, and I’ve cooked an omelette or two. Made toast from a toaster I didn’t have to worry about catching Covid from.

I drank water without poison in it. I watched storms roll through daily on a screened porch and watched lizards fuck. I put food in a fridge with GASP!! A freezer of near equal size. And then walked 30 steps to ANOTHER fridge with a freezer, filled with enough food for a month.

My family had other preppers in it, they just didn’t realize they were preppers. But they did, and they told me stories of other generations who didn’t have enough, who figured out ways to slowly have more than enough. So much so that they fed others. My family has always done their best to share with others…I feel a new urge an duty to live up to that ancestral standard.

I’m in a hotel in a town I’ve though about exploring. I didn’t want to still be doing this. I want to find a place and then get or rent a place. I want to have a home I can call “HOME.” I evened opened up to the idea of a 6 month or 1 year lease. With other people occupying a grander space.

I never wanted to commit to such slavery and now, after a global pandemic, I want those paper cuffs embracing me. And yet all of the places i used to look at and blow off as “Not yet, not ready, not enough xyz…” are now out of my price range. My namesake is now too expensive to live in. On average a thousand dollars more per month than it should be. And the rich are not batting an eye at the numbers before signing the paperwork.

The romance of living on the road has even been tarnished more by the costs to buy a used RV. Cruise America now sells 25k used RVs for 45k. Same vehicle, same wear an tear sold to the lovely…