Mike Sliwa believes people worry about the future and miss the present.
My wife and I don’t have jobs. This makes people nervous. We obviously don’t have a steady income. This makes people really nervous. We spend money. This flips people out. We’re headed for what the privileged call “voluntary poverty.”
On many levels our lives appear to be “normal.” We don’t have a car but we rent cars. We don’t have a home but we live and sleep in homes. We don’t have cell phones but we have computers. We don’t have insurance but we still go to the doctor. People still worry.
People worry about retirement. They worry about insurance. About income. About bills. People worry about houses, cars and sending their kids to college. They worry constantly. We don’t. People sure worry about us though.
My wife and I are former high school teachers. Today we are unemployed and currently nomadic. We live on the road so to speak. When we’re not living and working on homesteads for room and board, we’re living with family and friends while trying to pay our way. Most of the time people try to pay for us. We try to pay and often do, but many times people insist and pay for a meal, drink, or whatever makes them feel comfortable. Sometimes it’s unconditional and sometimes it isn’t. Often we house sit, pet sit or run small errands to help out. Sometimes people want help and other times they don’t. Sometimes they mean what they say and other times they speak in code. In the end we generally figure out what works and if it doesn’t we move on.
Often I tell people about potential income opportunities but it’s really just to put them at ease. I have writing gigs, speaking gigs and other opportunities that sound like paying jobs but they’re often not. I’m okay with that. Many are not. My wife and I are moving towards the exit of the monetary system and towards a gift economy. Most people we know are not.
“In the end we hope people see our stress-free existence and happiness and let go of their fears and worries about us.”
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It really comes down to our basic needs. My friend Guy McPherson says our basic needs are food, water, maintaining core body temperature (shelter), a decent human community, and decent non-human community. The rest are just wants. Our wants have decreased. This make people nervous. Needs cost money so we’ve been investing in durable goods. We bought a Mongolian Yurt and some things to support our existence in it. People think it’s cool but could never live in it.
Currently we are looking for a decent human community. We’ve been on the road for over two years so we’re ready to find a place to set up shop. We still want to be mobile so the yurt was a good fit. Our second home is in our backpacks. This makes people nervous but at least they smile.
In the end we hope people see our stress-free existence and happiness and let go of their fears and worries about us. We’re not setting an example or teaching a lesson. People think we are. They like to show us their gardens, recycling strategies or the green initiatives in their communities. I think we make people feel guilty. That’s not our intent. We’re doing it because it’s a better life than our old one. Maybe we will get jobs again someday…sorry, I just said that to ease your mind.
–Photo: photoloni/Flickr
Mike, more power to you my brother. The idea that anyone has a moral imperative to “work” to be allowed to live or that money is a measure of worthiness is just a psychological warfare campaign that the 1%, whose greed has harmed human rights and the environment far more than a billion people like you ever could, has paid marketers and other capitalist propagandists to brainwash us with. They keep us in fear for our lives so we will keep toiling our lives away to further enrich them. Fuck the system. We need more people like you to stop… Read more »
I can relate to this – we lived like this for a few months – with two small kids. It was scary, but better than the alternative. We didn’t create the 2008 financial crisis, and we didn’t overpay for our house or take out an unreasonable loan. But stuff happens.
I’m glad to be working again – but I can relate.
Since I left the Air Force, I’ve been a freelance writer and photographer, tour guide, courier for a coach company and mystery guest for a holiday tour operator … and, even at the age of 60+, still get asked when I’m going to get a ‘proper’ job!
Great article. Thank you. I applaud you for what you doing and don’t pay attention to morons on this thread who talk nonsense. They are just burning inside that they are not having the life that you do.
Keep on doing it. Screw them those pathetic, low lives stuck in rate race.
My wife and I are retired teachers from alaska. although we have a couple of small pensions, we do not work either. I love it although it does create a slight “wall” between us and our neighbors/friends who do.
i did this exact thing for a very long time. i’ve been on my own since i was 17 and it happened so abruptly i’d never been given any sort of direction on how to start a life, so i wandered. i held a few short-term, drug-afflicted jobs during ages 18-20; i stripped for a few months, worked the register at a vintage clothing store for a few months; moved to california and removed greenscreen pixels from video footage being given special effects and became a hobbyist hip hop producer, and from there i hitched and hopped trains and wrote… Read more »
Word!
Mike, your choices make sense to me, and i know others who live similarly. While i personally enjoy putting down roots in one place and having more stability than you currently feel the need for, i appreciate the impulses of the many modern nomads i encounter. I’ve compiled some links on gift economy that include a few people’s personal journeys, which you & others might enjoy checking out via http://treegroup.info/services/D5-gifting.html. Cheers!
Thank you for the comment and the links! Love it:)
I’ve got to agree with those here who think that this article makes Mike and his wife sound like sponges (and, possibly, trolls). There’s beauty to achieving balance between simplicity, self-sufficiency, and community, but this is completely skewed. “When we’re not living and working on homesteads for room and board, we’re living with family and friends while trying to pay our way. Most of the time people try to pay for us. We try to pay and often do, but many times people insist and pay for a meal, drink, or whatever makes them feel comfortable.” Working for room and… Read more »
The mythology many of us live under is fascinating. If you feel some sort of guilt, obligation or even generosity that goes against what’s in your heart then that’s something you might want to address and open up about. Believe me, the people that worry or are nervous by our choices are worried and nervous about other things that consume their lives. Stressing out about me is a symptom of something much larger. People make choices and continue to pay the price for those choices. If we feel they can’t handle the arrangement they’ve agreed to (an exchange of labor… Read more »
I agree that people worry too much and usually need to chill the fuck out. I, too, hate the rat race, and all that comes with the mindless consumption idolized by our society. But I pity those whose mythology and sense of generosity leads them to house you. I can’t help thinking that these people want to give you a leg up, instead of just being one in a series of cheap or free boarding houses in which you and your wife only do the minimum asked of you. Yes, we’re all adults, and we need to own our choices… Read more »
The amount of assumptions you’ve made from one general essay is astonishing. You’ve based an entire storyline about our lives from fewer than 800 words…remarkable. I would have asked more questions instead of creating an imaginary world…but hey whatever floats your boat.
I think you made a bit of a mistake writing so generally about this sort of topic. Unless you plan on doing an entire series about it. By writing so generally you inadvertently open yourself and your story to a lot of assumptions that you haven’t put much detail into. Can you really blame people for their response? Another thought I’ve had running around in my head since I first read this is that if you really wanted to put everyone’s worry to rest, then you might consider treating this lifestyle as people treat a business arrangement. People do this… Read more »
I wrote the article to demonstrate how fear drives people’s lives. It’s not my “job” to set them at ease with some sort of plan to demonstrate how everything will work out. Maybe my “job” is to reflect back to them the utter despair in their own lives…although they seem to be doing just fine without my assistance.
Society just gave trillions to bankers and nobody asked them to pay anything in return. What are you talking about?
I was interested to find this as I have been following this idea for several years. There is a book called “The Moneyless Manifesto” by Mark Boyle in England that you can read online. It’s very interesting. I’ve thought a lot about the system and what we have created through it. We are the only creatures on Earth that have somehow lost the right to create a home regardless of our circumstances. We extend that to our pets and euthanize them if they can’t find a home. The truth is clear that things can’t continue as they are. I’m not… Read more »
As a liberal, I feel obligated to tell you that you have succeeded in doing something that no one has been able to do in years: Make me see things from the side of a conservative. But I want to be clear that you are NOT the kind of person that I work so hard to make sure that our society cares for. You have no real sense of community, only narcissm and what I can only call sociopathy. You are part of a greater system, whether you like it or not. Your transience means that you do not vote… Read more »
Thank you for reinforcing my choice to do everything in my power not to live within the insanity of such an arrangement.
Lynn- you hit the nail on the head. Mike- If you’re utilizing services that my tax dollars pay for as a “lifestyle” than there is a problem here. You say you dont have insurance yet you go to the doctor…. Well, due to the individual mandate of the ACA you will soon have insurance and it sounds like you and your family will be heavily subsidized (by people like me) due to your lifestyle choices. For me, its one thing to support others in honest need but supporting someone who remains chronically under (or un) employed by choice just kind… Read more »
Lynn, you are INSANE.
I’ve only had a little bit of experience watching people living the nomadic lifestyle. A mother and son, both on their own different courses and generally don’t join forces so to speak. It’s probably not typical but both are into using recreational drugs to get more zen. The son goes back and forth between temporary employment all over the west coast, this included pot farms a lot of times, and sometimes community farms. He has a lot of emotional issues but does his best to surround himself with love and light. The mother basically goes between friends and family and… Read more »
I also wanted to mention that ALL THREE of them are on food stamps. So if I wanted to be really harsh I could describe them all as hippies on drugs who are on welfare. I hope that food stamps and hand-outs aren’t the type of ” gift economy” you’re going for. I can support a system where you trade goods and services but I can’t support people that expect handouts or think that friends and family owe them or should take care of them. Along the lines of money I think it as the equivalent of saying, making an… Read more »
I think “semi-nomadic” would be the most precise term. If a group of people are dependent on house-sitting or otherwise regularly dependent on sedentary communities, they are not really nomads. Herding livestock and trading with agricultural or industrial peoples, for example, is what nomads do. Living and working in agricultural and industrial communities is not nomadism. This is semi-nomadism that’s only possible because other people HAVE bought into the system, but this is not an escape from the system. This is just living as Americans without a fixed address, hardly a revolutuionary act.
Agreed
‘Semi-nomadic’ – fair enough, I used the word in a very broad sense. I think a lot of why people use the word to describe a situation or themselves is that it has a romantic connotation to it, but they are obviously not herding livestock all over the country, just herding themselves and their belongings. The people in my story basically go wherever there is someone or some temporary form of money making that seems the most ideal to them and then once that becomes less than perfect they move on to the next thing or person. And it’s probably… Read more »
I don’t have a problem with them using food stamps, as long as they are paying all the taxes (Social Security withholding, etc.) that they are legally obligated to pay. I’m just going to assume that no one mentioned in this article, whether employer or employee, is defrauding the government or breaking any tax laws related to wages or other income…..
The problem I have with them using food stamps is that I view food stamps and the sort as a safety net for those that at least are trying to get on their feet and get to a point where they can support themselves in some sort of sustainable fashion. These people are not trying very hard, at least not the mother in my example. As far as taxes for the people in my example, it’s hard to tell, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they only did so when forced since it’s easier to just ignore it than to… Read more »
It doesn’t sound like a lazy life to me, it sounds incredibly exhausting and uncertain.
How do you live off the grid and still have access to the internet?
3G
Let me get this straight – with regards to people you stay with: “Sometimes they mean what they say and other times they speak in code. In the end we generally figure out what works and if it doesn’t we move on.” So basically you sponge off other working people until it gets uncomfortable and then you move to the next victims. SOMETIMES you help out? Shouldn’t you insist on helping out? You think you’re being radical and alternative but really you are profiting not only on other people’s adherence to the status quo, but the sense of altruism and… Read more »
I wonder if the Kalahari, the Amazon people or the New Guinean Highlanders have our “civilized” version of work? Oh I get it…you think work and employment are the same! We “work” we’re just not employed so rest easy…we’re not sponging off the “working” aka employed people of the world.
I’m sorry, but I agree with gsprendergast . It sounds like you want to reap the reward of everyone’s stress and hard work but have none of the real responsibility on yourself. I also love the idea of being off the grid and living a free life. But that isn’t reality. Nothing is free in life. Someone HAS to work for those things. People take you in, not because they actually want someone interrupting their schedule for months at a time but because they are too kind to see you sleep on the street. How fair is that to them?… Read more »
I’m curious if your wife gets a lot of flak or a lot of probing questions. I imagine she gets a lot of other women saying, “how do you put up with that?” My first reaction to the story is “man, my wife would never go for that.” Maybe I’m just projecting my own sexism, but being nomadic sounds like something that would be easier to convince a man to do than a woman.
In all honesty my wife is the one who prefers to be nomadic. I dig it but she really digs it. My experience with my friends and people I’ve met is most people have trouble convincing their partner…whether it be man or woman. It’s rare to find another couple where both are on board with the lifestyle choice.
Mike, I’m glad you’re enjoying your life. I invite you to stop trying to make others comfortable. 🙂 My wife and I still work, but part time and trending less. My wife just remarked this morning that it’s Friday and she doesn’t feel the same way about the end of the work week (i.e., relieved) the way she used to. The days are all much more similar when you don’t just garden on the weekends, for example. My perspective on the future of the money system (and I’ve shared a bit of this with Guy) is that we need no… Read more »
First, I wanted to say that I think your lifestyle is extremely cool. I wish I could learn to let go of a lot of my worries, and a lot of them come from money and career. A big part of why I want to make good money and get a good career is not because I’m materialistic and greedy, but because I feel like I owe a lot. I owe tons of money for student loans. I owe my parents everything for supporting me and for everything they’ve given me, material and non-material. I feel like I owe it… Read more »
Dear name, I can’t speak for Mike, but I can speak from the perspective of someone who lived in Asia for several years, met many monks and struggled with that same question. I’m paraphrasing and synthesizing their responses here: “To simply live the modern, fast-paced way of life is to destroy things. Our goal isn’t to run around destroying and then to run around and try to counter our destruction with goodness. Our first rule is to do little or no harm. This often means living simple lives in the Sangha. After that, all the good we do, we hope,… Read more »
That is probably the most helpful and concise answer to that question I’ve heard.
Brilliant.
Living an actually simple (monastic, permacultural, indigenous, etc.) life is admitting to our reduced human capacity to foresee the consequences of our actions. So people who feel really strongly about reducing their impact simplify their lives to a point where they, as individuals, can assess their own simplicity and “non-harmness” with their own minds. Given that our large-scale societies have utterly failed to provide any feedback to individuals regarding whether they do in their “complex” lifestyles is actually doing good or harm.
Thanks for the comment and feedback. The concept of working to make the world a better place is an interesting one. Most people associate that concept with a job. We don’t. In fact my wife and I agree that careers seem a bit odd. In the scale of human history careers are a new concept. If we consider the first few million years of humanity a career isn’t a concept at all. Making a living was actually living. It required gathering food, securing water and building shelter. Today we depend on systems to provide those needs. Today we work and… Read more »
Thank you so much for your reply. I really do think your lifestyle is admirable, and I do my best to be minimalist myself. In the end, I think this world is an illusion and nothing we do in this life, good or bad, really “matters” in any permanent sense. However, I can’t help but imagine that your critics find your lifestyle lazy, unmotivated, and unproductive. They’d probably call you privileged, selfish freeloaders. Only someone living in the lap of luxury, oblivious to all the work that needs to be done in the world, would refuse to work and help… Read more »
name, I appreciate your forthrightness. I suspect that many people would nod in agreement, reading your comment. In reality the world exists almost entirely between your A and B. Highlighting the outliers isn’t the way to a sound analysis. There are always outliers, and worrying about them only reinforces Mike’s suggestion that people unnecessarily miss the present (i.e., reality) in favor of a future that doesn’t exist. Byron Katie notes that after we’ve stripped away our confusion, what’s left is love, and that staying out of others’ business doesn’t mean that we won’t still take action. In other words, it’s… Read more »
Dear Name: If you are truly interested in how and if monks are helping others, I recommend you read about monastic spirituality from the Masters. What they are doing and how they are helping others by living monastically will be difficult, if not impossible, to understand if one doesn’t believe in the God, prayer, redemptive suffering, etc.
Patti M. Zordich, Ph.D., Catholic Psychologist, http://www.trypsych.com, 919-380-1000