Rewind – Gateway Drugs to a Simpler Life

On rewind days, I bring you a post that has previously appeared at my other now-defunct blog, Right to Bleed. If you’ve read it before, skip on by, or go ahead and enjoy the rewind.

This one is from February 10th, 2009 and is printed here in a slightly altered form. This post is after I was living with Joshua, and I had sold my van and decided to bicycle everywhere rather than drive.

Marijuana is sometimes called “the gateway drug”. The idea is that once you try marijuana, soon you’ll be trying harder drugs, too, so if you never try marijuana, you’ll never end up further along the drug spectrum. Maybe you can’t imagine yourself doing crack but the myth says that if you try marijuana, two years down the road you’ll be a crack-head.

s-t-r-a-n-g-e / CC BY 2.0

A friend of mine said the other day that she could never see herself giving up her car for a bike. I realized that two years ago, I couldn’t either. If someone had suggested the idea, I would have claimed that I was too lazy, too out of shape, I liked my car too much, it was so much more convenient, and I just generally wouldn’t have been able to picture myself trying it. I realized that there was a small string of decisions that led me to do it, and it all started with my natural gas being shut off.

Here’s what happened:

I am really bad at managing money and paperwork. I hate paying bills, with an irrational passion. Anytime I could, when renting a home, I would get my utilities rolled into the rent, so I just had one bill to pay. Heck, when I’ve rented out rooms in my home, I roll the utilities into the rent, so I just have one payment to receive. I forget to pay my car insurance. I forget to re-new my registration. I lose my driver’s license. All those little money-and-paperwork things that have to be organized and tracked, I suck at that.

One day, a couple of years ago, my natural gas service got turned off for non-payment. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford it; I easily could. I was on my way down to the office, with the completed necessary form and a money order already filled out, and I was talking to Joshua on the phone. I was bitching about bills and how much I hated paying them and how much of a hassle it was to turn this one back on and how it was just going to be late again later…. One of us asked the question, “What if I just didn’t turn it back on?” Hmm. Indeed. If I hate this system so much, why don’t I just opt out? I didn’t go to the office that day to get my gas turned back on.

My natural gas provided hot water and heat. It was the summer, so I didn’t need heat yet. Hot water I decided I could just do without. The idea was perfect for me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. The idea started to grow on me. Within the month, I also shut off my electricity. I couldn’t turn off my water, but that didn’t concern me since it wasn’t a bill I had to pay. In an effort to embrace a lack of utilities, though, I got several large water containers and used the water out of those instead, to moderate my usage.

I purchased a propane camping shower, because I decided I did want to have hot showers available. I got a propane stove for cooking. I used a cooler for cold foods and purchased ice to cool it. I got battery powered lights. I bought a hand-powered counter top washing machine. For the winter, I bought two propane space heaters. Buying propane or batteries is completely different to me than paying bills. It’s not something you have to keep track of. If you’re out of propane or batteries, you just go buy some more. And overall, it was much, much cheaper. For my laptop and cell phone, I charged them off of my car driving to and from work or occasionally ran them off an inverter in my car. I was in no-bill heaven.

While batteries and propane gas are probably a less efficient use of energy, I’ll bet this was all still better for the environment overall. Even though I used many replacement technologies, my lifestyle also changed. I used very little water. I rarely lit up the house, preferring to alter my sleep schedule in time with the sunlight. I didn’t cook very often, preferring mostly bread and fresh produce that didn’t need cooking or cooling. Financially, it was perfect. Even in the winter, when I ran my two space heaters like crazy, my propane “bill” never came anywhere near a regular gas bill.

I lived without utilities for about 3 seasons. Eventually, Joshua started spending more time at my house, and we had the utilities turned back on for his comfort and so he could do his job from my house. I never plugged my big appliances back in, though. I kept using the cooler and the little stove. I got a counter top spin dryer (82 watts) to go with my little washer.

This was a gateway drug, a gateway experience for me. It was a very stark look at the trade-offs I make between annoyance and convenience. I was able to question a given – you have to pay bills – and decide if it was really all worth it for me. For utilities, if I am the one in charge of the bills, it is definitely not worth it. Living with no utilities turned out to be quite enjoyable.

It was a gateway, because it made other things possible. A few months after my lack-of-utilities experiment came to an end, I bought a van, just to have for camping and hauling couches and stuff. Somewhere the idea came to me that I could just live in the van. I even already had some of the helpful toys – a camp shower, camp stove, battery lights, an inverter, etc. I could live without utilities AND without the rest of the house, too! That trade-off made sense to me, too. If I’d never lived without utilities, I probably never would have considered moving into the van. As it was, living in the van was a natural next step.

I now live in a house with utilities, but I’m not in charge of the bills that go along with that, so it doesn’t stress me out. It’s not that I don’t like those things, I just don’t like keeping up with them. I do still have a vehicle to keep up with. Gasoline. Insurance. Registration. Speed limits. Over the summer, I also wrecked Joshua’s car, which led somewhat indirectly to the injury of a friend of mine. I don’t like it. I’m not sure if the value of having a car balances out with the annoyance and the possible tragedy. Not to mention the financial burden.

So I decided to stop. I’m now a full-time bicycle rider. Honestly, at this point, it seems like an easy decision. Two years ago, I would never have imagined myself as a bike-rider. There’s an independence factor there that I wouldn’t have seen myself possessing. But after sleeping in parking lots, I feel more capable of making the odd choice. There’s the weather factor. But I spent the winter in a home where it never got over 48 degrees inside. There’s the time factor, the loss of convenience. But that doesn’t even register as an issue to me now.

If I’d never decided to go without utilities, I probably would not have moved into a van. If I’d never lived in my van, I probably wouldn’t have traded my van for a bicycle. Who knows where I’ll be two years from now? I joked with my friend that I’ll probably end up hitchhiking around the country with just a backpack. Who knows?

The “gateway” concept with drugs never perfect sense to me. It’s been 13 years since I first tried marijuana and I still haven’t tried crack. On the other hand, some people probably think NOT owning a car is right up there with crack-usage, so maybe they’re on to something after all!

Tags: Drugs, House, Money, Van Dwelling