Today I’m Homeless (and I couldn’t be happier).

I’m coming from r/financialindependence where I posted this in an attempt to share a “victory” with people who’d appreciate the depth of the life changes we’d made, only to find that they were more focused on the job I’d lost and the future pension I’d sacrificed than the fact that I’m finally living the life I’d always wanted. That’s not to say that everyone was negative; there were many wonderful people there who wished us well, and profusely thanked me for my post. I just want to expand on my original post and explain how this journey has been for me, in the hopes that you’ll appreciate it. <br><br>My wife and I are sitting on a bus headed for Berlin, where we’ve bought a one-way ticket. We’re making a journey across Europe of indeterminate length, to be ended only when we feel it’s time to stop. I’m 27, she’s 30, and we both have these “vague” feelings we’ve been having since we were, well, kids, that this was the time of our lives when we could do this, that we’re running late to start, and that we’d better cherish it while it lasts. As we left the train station the heavens have opened, the rain is pouring down, we’re sitting on a bus, and this trip we’re embarking on could end in complete disaster, but we don’t care. We’re happy. We’re deliriously, blissfully happy. That’s why I love minimalism, because we sacrificed so much, left so much behind, but without all the crap we’d accumulated I never would have had this moment. <br><br>When I sat down to write this post, I felt an odd compulsion to justify why I felt I’d earned this. I had the sinking feeling that I had to prove to all of you that we’ve made sacrifices, done the right thing, and deserved to live this way. But I’ve come to realize, now that we’ve finally done this, that I don’t owe any of you an explanation. I’m not in debt, I’d saved enough money to keep us going for a year, we’re both healthy and we’re both fairly bright. We could go home if we wanted to. But we don’t want to, and it’s the most powerful feeling in the world. I feel, finally, that I’ve escaped, that I’ve made it to the other side of some sort of life-changing event, and I’d like to share it with you, in the hopes that you’ll cherish the moment when you reach it, and that you’ll appreciate it to the fullest. <br><br>Let me explain. As a young man, I was never really content with the idea of working until I was 60 or 70, saving, and then finally retiring. Don’t get me wrong, there are some success stories about people who have done this, but for me, I always felt like there was something more, something I had to do. It may sound crazy, but the first time I ever heard about minimalism, I felt like I’d found a part of me. Now, when I’d first heard about minimalism I felt like it was something insane, but it had gradually come to feel like an idea that was, at some point in my life, truly plausible. That was all it was- a romantic notion. I had a four-bedroom house, a mortgage, a full-time job that I commuted to every day, a bunch of friends who I met at a bar every Friday. I felt like the epitome of normalcy for my age. <br><br>When I met my wife, she’d enthusiastically jumped onboard. We sold our house, downsized to a two-bedroom flat, quit our jobs, and prepared to leave the country. We spent three months getting ready, packing up, and making the plans we needed to make to leave. Now that it’s behind me, I can see how difficult that really was. We’d both been rejected from countless jobs. There had been changes in the job market in the years between 2020 and 2022 that we’d been unprepared for. I didn’t want to change careers, but I was a teacher, and there was a shortage then- everyone wanted to be one. I’d found myself competing with people in their 40s with decades of experience for entry-level jobs, with no success. I’d applied for jobs in the private sector, only to be told that I didn’t have the right experience or qualifications. I’d been rejected from jobs I’d applied for in The McDonalds or Starbucks- jobs, in other words, that literally hired anyone, only for the manager to tell me, “Sorry, sir, but we’ve hired someone from the city, we can’t give a job to someone who’s only going to work here for six months.” <br><br>I’d never felt like such a failure in my life. I’d been rejected by over 300 jobs. I’d written a long post about it on linkedin (the most obnoxious social media platform ever conceived, but that’s my own, irrelevant, opinion), detailed my entire job history, spoke about how I was proud of this experience I’d accumulated, and yet still, no one would hire me. As I left the house I’d lived in for the last year for, I felt an overwhelming wave of sadness over leaving it all behind. But that’s all it was- an emotion. For the rest of my life, I will never forget the moment I left behind the old me and took the first steps to the new me. I’ll never forget the hopes I had, the tears my wife and I’d both cried. I’ll never forget the exquisite sadness that I felt as we’d left the old, familiar, life behind. <br><br>That was last year. It’s been four months since we left. We’ve been to 27 countries, stayed in 45 hostels, hitchhiked countless times, met hundreds of people, and learned so many things about who I am and about the world. The job I’d lost paid me minimum wage, we’d given up the pension we could have earned. But life is full of surprises- we’re both working now, remotely, for a salary higher than anything we’d ever earned. That’s not really the point though- the point is that we could go home now, we could settle back into the comfortable life we had. But we’ll never do that because we’ve both come to realize that this is life- this, RIGHT NOW, this moment, is life. <br><br>I know, this sounds like a bunch of hippie nonsense, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it. Life isn’t something that happens when we achieve success, or happiness, or love, or whatever else we’re searching for, it’s what we have RIGHT NOW. <br><br>So cherish it. The next time you sign a lease, and you’re stuck in a place you don’t like because you don’t have the money to leave, look back at this post and remember that life has no guarantees. I have no idea when or if I’ll settle, but for now I don’t care. I have this. I have this one, tiny moment, and I’m loving every second of it.