# The Bus Was Both

*both what? Read on....*

By [Indignified Worlds. CD's Projects - Tech, AI, Books, Worlds, Houses, Art](https://paragraph.com/@indignified) · 2026-04-02

vanlife, rough, living, homelessness, home

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In 2001 I bought a VW bus for $100 and moved in. Not for the aesthetic. Because I'd just walked out of a corporate job during the dot-com crash and the rent wasn't happening.

Here's what I found: freedom and homelessness are the same experience described from different emotional states. On a good day, you're free. On a bad day, you're homeless. The external circumstances are often identical.

I kept notes. How to find work without an address. How to eat on nothing. How to stay clean and sane when everything you own fits in a bag. Those notes became _Rough Living_ — a field guide I published in 2003 and just updated for 2026.

Some things got harder. The systems are less tolerant. The cheap things got expensive. What didn't change: most people are more capable than they've been led to believe. The system benefits from you thinking otherwise.

The knowledge that you _could_ survive outside the plan — even if you never have to — is its own kind of freedom. That's what the book is really about.

**Rough Living: Tips and Tales of Vagobond** → [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)

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*Originally published on [Indignified Worlds. CD's Projects - Tech, AI, Books, Worlds, Houses, Art](https://paragraph.com/@indignified/the-bus-was-both)*