I’ve been planning a different kind of retirement. Not the golf course kind. Not the RV park with concrete pads and annual leases and neighbors who want to talk about their grandkids.
Something else. I’m still figuring out what to call it.
So here’s the plan, more or less. A Tesla. A coworking membership that includes gym access (showers, this matters). Public land. And a rotation between being in civilization and being… adjacent to it.
It’s not vanlife. I’m too old for that, and honestly too practical. The Instagram version of this, with the fairy lights and the perfectly framed sunset shots, that’s not what I’m after. I’ve started calling it edge-adjacent tourism, which is a term I think I made up, but who knows.
There’s a version of this that’s actually on the edge. Like, a cabin in Alaska you can only reach by bush plane. No utilities. Wood stove. You eat what you hunt or what you stored last summer. That’s real. That’s commitment.
That’s also a great way to die of appendicitis two hundred miles from a surgeon.
I’m not doing that.
I’m doing the version where I sleep in my car in the desert, but the car has climate control and I’m twenty minutes from a hospital. Where I have to think about when I’ll shower and where I’ll charge, but the answers are “coworking gym” and “free Supercharger network.” My choices feel like they matter. But if I choose wrong, I’m inconvenienced. Not dead.
I’m simulating scarcity. Inside abundance.
And I know how that sounds. Like cheating, kind of. But I think that’s actually the point.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about my current life.
Nothing is scarce. Water runs until I turn it off. The lights are always on. If I don’t have food, I can get some delivered in thirty minutes. Laundry can wait. Everything can wait. Nothing I decide today matters in any tangible way.
And this is supposed to be the reward, right? Decades of work, building something, accumulating enough that you don’t have to worry. Frictionless existence. The goal.
It feels like nothing.
Because when nothing is at stake, nothing matters. You’re just floating. Comfortable, sure. But floating.
I spent a week in the desert a few years ago. Camping, sort of. And I felt more alive in that week than I had in months. Every decision had weight. How much water do I have left. Where do I fill up. When do I charge. Where am I sleeping tonight, and is that spot going to work or not.
The feedback was immediate. Choices connected to consequences. I wasn’t managing some abstract future, I was just… present. Because the present required it.
That’s not deprivation. That’s the opposite of deprivation.
I keep coming back to this analogy. Intermittent fasting, but for your soul.
With fasting, you’re not starving. You have food. You’re choosing a window of scarcity so that eating means something again. Hunger becomes a signal instead of noise. The meal at the end has texture.
This is the same thing. But for existing.
You’re not in danger. You’ve got money, a working vehicle, a phone that can call for help. You’re choosing constraints. Where do I sleep. How do I manage this. What actually matters today. And because you’re choosing them, living starts to mean something again. Your choices have weight. You can feel the edges of your own life instead of drifting through the middle.
You’re not starving. You’re remembering what hunger feels like.
I should be clear about what this isn’t.
It’s not the Instagram thing. Content creation disguised as freedom. That’s performance.
And it’s not the desperate version, people living in cars because they have no other option. I’m not romanticizing that. Those folks aren’t on a journey of self-discovery, they’re in survival mode, and conflating the two would be gross.
This is something else. A deliberate choice to step back from frictionless comfort. Not because I have to. Because I figured out, maybe later than I should have, that the friction was never the problem. The friction was where the meaning lived. You optimize it all away and you’re left with… what? Comfort. And nothing else.
I don’t know how long I’ll do this. One winter. Maybe a year. Maybe I’ll hate it by week six and come home.
That’s fine. That’s actually the point. I can stop whenever I want. If I burn out, I get an apartment. If I miss having a kitchen, I rent one. The edge is there when I want it. Safety is there when I need it.
That’s not a backup plan for failure. That’s the design.
I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m not trying to be hardcore. I’m trying to feel alive. For as long as that works, in whatever form it takes.
The frictionless life isn’t going anywhere. I can have it back whenever I want.
I just don’t think I’m going to want it.