# The Bus Was Both

> both what? Read on....

**Published by:** [Indignified Worlds. CD's Projects - Tech, AI, Books, Worlds, Houses, Art](https://paragraph.com/@indignified/)
**Published on:** 2026-04-02
**Categories:** vanlife, rough, living, homelessness, home
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@indignified/the-bus-was-both

## Content

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

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