Rough Living

by Vago Damitio

  I shower two or three times a day. Mostly at the park.

  There are showers available at the YMCA. Churches and missions will let you shower. There are showers at ports. There are showers in colleges and in many parks. Keep yourself clean. Wash your crotch, your pits, your face, your ass, your arms, legs, hands, and feet. (Not necessarily in that order, I like to start with my face.)

  The importance of Hygiene to Leisure and Life

  Hygiene not only keeps you feeling good about yourself, it keeps you healthy. On top of that, it gives you greater access. Rememberthe three A’s? A clean and healthy looking person can go just about anywhere but a foul smelling bum will get stopped going in the mall, wandering around the campus, and walking in the store.

  Laundry. Washing your clothes should cost you about $3 to wash and dry a load at the laundromat. You will feel better and smell better. It’s also a nice place to stay warm when it’s cold out or dry when it’s raining.

  Clothing. You can buy good clothes at thrift stores. Pay attention to what is currently fashionable for someone your age. Try to blend in and you will have more access to a better life. I know it’s hard to get rid of your Iron Maiden concert shirt, but for goodness sake man, you’re forty five!

  Brushing and Shaving. I brush my teeth twice a day. When I wake up and when I go to sleep. I don’t care where I am. I usually have a water bottle and I will spit the toothpaste in the bushes or on the street if I have to. If someone doesn’t like it I will ask them to please smell my breath.

  I use an old fashioned shaving brush to lather up my face. I put some soap in it, put some water in it, lather it up, and then use a cheap razor to shave off my stubble.

  Being a bum vs. Being a regular person

  Just because you live this way doesn’t mean you have to be a wretched bum. If you want to be that, go ahead. You can live in a car, live in the bushes, or live on the street without looking like you are “homeless”. People are always surprised when they find out I don’t live indoors.

  I am a regular person. I just don’t have a house or a real job.

  You can have a party in a van, in a camp or in a park!

  TRAVEL AND TRANSPORT

  There are plenty of ways to get where you need to go. If you have a car, there’s probably no need to explain how to drive somewhere. The important thing is that you need to get somewhere. What are your options?

  Hitchhiking

  Hitchhiking is risky. You should know that before you even consider it. Personally, I think it is a lot less risky than most people think, but there are plenty of horror stories about what happens to hitchhikers, particularly women by themselves. I don’t recommend hitchhiking to anyone, but I’ve had some great experiences thumbing it in twenty states and a dozen or more countries. There are a few things that can minimize your risk if you choose to stick out your thumb.

  Trust your instincts… ask where someone is going when they stop, before you get in their car. If anything (like crushed beer cans on the floor, a smell, the way they talk, or just a feeling) makes you nervous about the person then come up with a reason to tell them why you don’t want the ride. Don’t get in the car if anything tells you not to. Run away screaming down the road if you have to.

  If at all possible keep your bag where you are riding until you trust the person.

  Tell the person that you are expected someplace up the road and that you have recently talked to someone from where they picked you up (even if you haven’t.)

  If during the course of the ride you begin to feel nervous, ask to be let off. Insist on being let off.

  (I rarely accept invitations to stay at someone’s house, shower, or have a meal unless I feel positive that the person has no ulterior motive. Why put yourself in a wolf’s den unnecessarily? All I want is a ride.

  I don’t know how much good it would do in any circumstance, as I’ve never had to use it, but I like to have my knife accessible and close by.

  Get to know the person, ask questions, and talk to them about them rather than about you. Even psychos feel more kindly about someone who takes an interest in them and doesn’t tell them that they are wrong. A ride is not the time to get on your soapbox, so even if you disagree with a person, don’t tell them they are wrong about anything. If you disagree so much about something that you can’t contain yourself, ask them to pull over and get out of the car.

  I like hitchhiking, but it’s not for everyone. There are a few things that can increase your chances of getting a ride.

  1) Dress nice and look clean. Nobody wants to pick up someone who smells bad or looks like they don’t take care of themselves.

  2) Pick the spot you hitch from with care. Make sure there is an area that drivers can pull safely off the road past you.

  3) If you have a choice, hitch where there are more poor people on the road. People from all walks of life have picked me up, but by and large poor people understand what it means to need a ride better than the rich do. Poor people are also much less suspicious that you are going to try to rob them or take their car. After all, who would want to steal a 1977 Pinto?

  4) Flying a piece of cardboard with a well known destination shows motorists that you are a legitimate traveler trying to get to a legitimate destination, even if you are not.

  Swimming. I’m not a good enough swimmer to get anywhere but from the beach to about 100 yards out and back. I hear that some people can swim miles though. It’s not very practical unless you want to swim across the Rio Grande.

  Biking. My good friend George Hush rode his bike from Los Angeles to Seattle. I have other friends that have rode to Alaska. If you want to bike long distance be sure you have a decent bike, that you know how to fix it, and that you can carry the gear you will need.

  Walking and Running. Run Forest Run! Francis Tapon walked across America twice. Forest Gump ran for what seemed like years. This is a good way to get from one place to another. I try to walk at least a couple miles a day. It’s good for downtown, it’s good for the beach, and it’s good if you have a problem you need to think about and the time to think about it.

  Bus. Traveling by bus is relatively cheap. The drawbacks are that you never know who you are going to be on the bus with, who’s going to sit next to you, it takes forever, and the ride is generally uncomfortable. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. Greyhound stations are always in the seedy part of town.

  Trains. Traveling by train, on the other hand, is romantic. Someday I’d like to hop a freight train but I haven’t yet. For now, I’ll talk strictly about passenger trains. I’ve ridden trains on four continents. Trains are by far my favorite way to travel. You can move around. They are comfortable. You can consume alcohol. Trains can cost nearly as much as flying and take far longer, but the trip is always worth it.

  Planes. I’d have loved to live in the days when people dressed up to fly. Unfortunately, flying is not too much different from riding on a Greyhound in the sky. The exception to that is when you fly on the airlines of second or third world countries, there is still a feeling of luxury and excitement as when the passengers applaud the flight attendants in Taipei or when you are served a truly gourmet meal aboard a flight in Laos. Flying takes you from one place to another quickly and sometimes that results in culture shock.

  Boats. Traveling on the water is always fun. The worst time I’ve ever had on a boat was when my brother and I took a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Bahama on a cheap cruise ship. The ship was nice; it was the passengers that sucked. Fat, old, white tourists who were too cheap to pay for a decent cruise — just like us. Other than that I love to travel on boats. Sunset cruises in Hawaii, riding the ferry between Malaysia and Sumatra, riding the ferry to the San Juan Islands, catching a lift on a fishing boat in Juneau, Alaska. Boats are cool. The only problem with boats is the people you sometimes end up trapped with.

  By Hook or By Crook. The bottom line to all of this is that there are ways to get and do what you want even if you are a person
of limited means. Sure, you might have to bend the rules a little to make a situation more favorable. You might even do something illegal once in a while. But, by and large, I’ve found that if you don’t hurt anyone your life is generally better for it.

  A Note on Cops. The police can’t stop someone from committing a crime against you. They can’t stop the mugger, rapist, murderer, robber, or vandal. Sometimes they can catch them after the fact. Sometimes they can punish them. The police have never kept me from getting beat up, robbed, or shot at.

  In fact, all law enforcement has ever done for me is to make me paranoid and written me tickets. They’ve given local and state governments the ability to charge me large sums of money creating a class system based on the ability to pay for your crime. They’ve taken money I might have done something good with and put it toward more of the government I don’t want in the first place. I hate that.

  People are usually able to commit the crime first. Graffiti in public places with spray paint is a perfect example of that. The police are useless to stop people from committing crimes. Sure, they might catch me, but the deed would be done. The police exist to intimidate us into behaving and to catch criminals after the fact. That is their main function as far as I can tell. Personally, I think they should all be given brooms and made to actually go out and clean the communities they are responsible for.

  The police are constantly trying to catch you in the act of committing a crime. They are constantly trying to pin a crime on someone who may or may not have committed the crime. The police are an intimidation force. They exist to scare us into subservience. To scare us into following the rules. The truth is we are all criminals. We all break the law every day. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t speed, jaywalk, or commit some infraction of the law on a daily basis. Even Presidents like Lincoln (Honest Abe) lied under oath. Politicians commit crimes while they are in office. So does every prison warden, cop, politician, and businessperson. We are all criminals waiting to be caught. Some of us are just a little more realistic (and honest) about it than others.

  With that being said — if you are going to break the law, please make sure that it doesn’t harm anyone else and by all means, don’t get caught. There are enough harmless people in prison already. (This was written back in 2001, I have to admit that since that time I’ve learned something very valuable that I would like to pass on –

  If you aren’t breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about. If you are breaking the law, you are better off if the police are your friends. Why in the world would you ever antagonize someone with that much power to make your life miserable? Don’t do it. Cops are people. Some are good, some are bad. Make them your friends, either way.

  STOP BEING A WAGE SLAVE

  What Do You Love To Do?

  I’ve sat and watched the world for too long without speaking up. Someone has to let you know that you are living your lives like insane people. What exactly is it that you are all working so hard for? Do you even know? Many people think they are looking for freedom, but the biggest joke is that they have it if only they choose to take it. Really. Even you. Even if you are reading this from a prison cell. It really is that easy.

  The people of the world have allowed themselves to be told that life is about being the slave of societies, corporations, and other people. They’ve been told that their dreams are for too much, too quickly. They’ve been told that if they shut up and work hard they can then travel, change the world, and help others. I’m here to tell you that they’ve been lied to. We all have. The proof is in the suicide rates, mental illness, and sense of disillusionment that most of us feel or experience.

  People of the world! It’s time to stop working for the masters and start living like free men and women. No matter what your beliefs, I can tell you that the only life you have right now is the one you hold. Sure, there is probably more and faith can help you to carry on in the darkest nights of this life, but in fact, this life has been given to you for a reason and that isn’t so you can earn profits for someone else or spend your life as a wage slave. If you can be certain of anything, you can be certain of that.

  It might make you feel comfortable to know you aren’t the only one who has been living this way. In the year 2013 the world is filled with people who don’t like their jobs. When you look at the number of people who aren’t satisfied with their work who are fifty years old or less, what you find is that more than half wish they did something else. And yet, they don’t. Why is that?

  When you stop for a moment to think about why the world is like it is, it is puzzling. How can it be that so many of us hate our jobs or at the very least do them without a bit of passion. Why is it that we spend so little time doing what we really love to do?

  Are you one of those sad people that slaves away more than forty hours each week only to spend a few hours on the weekend doing what it is that you really love? Why is that? Why do you think you continue to do it? Why do you sit around on Sunday so completely bummed that you have to work the next day?

  I say it’s not time to stop working. It’s time to start working on those things that bring you joy, happiness, and satisfaction. Don’t stop working, start living!

  The Typical Wage-Slave Mentality

  If you were to chart the mental maps of most people you would find they are filled with desire but constrained by hard-core industrial brain-washing. It doesn’t look so good, does it.

  Our mentalities are reflective of the societies we live in. Things have become totally awful and one of the reasons why is because people have allowed themselves to become completely dependent on the wage they take home each week.

  There is good news though. The dawn of the internet has made it possible for people to break the chains that bind them to the work they hate and to begin to become less dependent on bosses, wages, and jobs they loathe. People are discovering they can survive just as well or better by doing what they love. I’m one of them, you can be too. You can start to find what I call your ‘Passion Income’. Your passion income is what comes from doing what you love. All there is to it, is to do it.

  A part of the reason this book is important is because it will give you the chance to become one of the pioneers of this revolution. By no means is this book intended as a comprehensive index of those who have changed their mentality and found their passion income. Every day more and more people are becoming independent of their employers, their geography, and their countries. In this chapter, I will introduce some of the better known people who have done this, and hopefully inspire you to become one of them.

  Like you, most of them were once miserable too. They were chained to desks and filing TPX reports in triplicate or dealing with unhappy customers with a fake smile. Each of them decided they’d had enough. Just like I did. Just like I hope you will do too.

  Passion Incomers are doing what they love and letting the money follow. It’s not just a feel good phrase. It’s true, the key is to be steady. You have to keep going. You can’t just give up at the first or the second or the third obstacles.

  You can do it. I’m going to show you the ways that others have done it. You won’t be able to do it exactly the same way since you are not exactly the same person, but it is my true hope and desire that you can discover the path to your own freedom and happiness.

  Don’t stop working, start living. Find your passion income. Start living the dream.

  The Hardest Thing

  Are you excited to start? Good! Now comes the really hard part.

  How are you going to quit that job you hate so much? I can hear you saying “I can’t” “I need it” “I’ll keep it until I figure this out” but the truth is, you may have to quit. It’s sucking the life from you. It’s stealing your soul. You hate it and as long as you are focused on that hate, you can’t really do what you love.

  I know. It’s crazy to even think about. What is the hardest part about it? Why are you saying it’s impossible?

  Is it that you have finan
cial responsibilities?

  Is it that you are ‘loyal to the brand’? Why? Is it loyal to you?

  Is it that your job makes you happy and energized? I doubt it or you wouldn’t have read this far or even picked up this book.

  Is it that you want the income and status? Even though it makes you miserable?

  Is it that you want people to respect and admire you? But can you really respect and admire yourself if you don’t quit?

  In fact, it isn’t any of that. You want to quit so you can work on your own life. You want your life to be your greatest achievement.

  I’m fairly certain of that just by the fact you are reading my words, then you need to stop what you are doing and focus on something that will fulfill your soul.

  Your work should be fun, creative, valuable, fulfilling, and contributing something but it’s not. Is it?

  And the real problem is that you don’t really believe that all you have to do to change things is quit. It can’t possibly be that easy. All the things you’ve learned about jobs can’t be totally and completely wrong. Can they? Isn’t your job the key to your success?

  I used to think so and guess what? I was wrong and so are you.

  You are going to be stuck being miserable and unhappy until you realize the truth of this. Once you start to be honest about what a bunch of balderdash the whole job myth is, you won’t be able to find real joy in this life. Paradise is here, but only if you choose to accept it.

  In fact, all the things you want are waiting for you but you won’t find them until you figure this out. Let yourself. Just for a second give yourself permission to think that this is the truth. Only a second and see how it feels. Does it feel like you are lying? Now go back to thinking it’s a lie. Can you?