So, I’ve been biking by this new housing development that the city is doing, making it affordable by basing the rent on the person’s income. As I’ve blogged before, I bike by their spreading of gravel, propping up of transplanted trees and pouring of sidewalk cement. I’ve been loosely entertaining the possibility, but landed on a ‘pass’ for the sole reason of it being permanent.

But then something happened. I had an epiphany. My previous preclusions parted and through their veil I saw something. My first camper I had for four years. It was an “I think I’ll travel the country for a year in a camper and blog about it” experiment that led to more years and less states and less blogging than I had anticipated. It seems the ‘there’s the trip you plan and there’s the trip you take’ streak continues.

So, now I’ve bought a bigger and better camper with the same kind of idea. I’m reenlisting for another four years–like a presidential term (and that’s a happy coincidence) and I’m almost one year into it. If I look down the road a little, say three years, what do I want that to look like? I ask myself.

Well, I’m not taking this thirty-footer out west or into the hills of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’d already decided that my next set up would have me driving my home–a nice Class C with opposing slides to really widen it out–and towing a small, economical car. Firstly, it’s way easier to hook up a car than a camper and secondly, whenever I want to go exploring, I’m driving a big truck with a big engine that gets only slightly less awful gas mileage when I’m not towing. Give me a little Fiat!

This train of thought collided with another train of thought: that I’m going to be 53 soon and I’m starting to skirt around the edges of retirement–from the land of semi-retirement where I currently reside–and at 55 getting disability gets easier, which brings in the idea of getting coverage because of my Crohn’s disease. Then I hear another whistle blow: the substitute teacher train comes chugging along, out of the garage where I’ve been storing the thought for years.

These tracks start to weave a pattern as I simply watch and listen to the whistles blow. I could put my name on the list, it would probably be a few years before I came up anyway, and what if about the time it did, I was ready to sell this camper. And what if I became a substitute teacher–getting my working with kids fix and summers and holiday vacations off to jump in a camper van and go travel then. And then, when I do fully retire and pull my Social Security benefit and tap into my 401K and investments my rent is protected.

What if standing still still gave me the moving about the country option? What if permanent meant I’d have plenty of time that was flexible and temporary? Could this be both things for me?

I started to get pretty excited. Not just on the option of it all coming together to give me everything I desire, but in the way it is crystalizing. I trust that. I trust it because it’s the same way this entire lifestyle of mine first crystalized and every move I’ve made since. I trust what I let happen versus what I try to make happen.

PS in this week’s Throwback Thursday blog I write about how the idea of this lifestyle came to me and crystalized.