I have been living out of my backpack since October 2013, usually staying in Hostels, I tried Couchsurfing and it is great for visiting a city but not good for living with someone, and sometimes I slept in odd places like outside, the airport, or an United Kingdom “detention center” (jail) for the “crime” of applying for asylum.
For over a year, I have considered taking things a step further and living in a tent. I cannot sustain the cost of living in a hostel, and my symptoms are still too severe for me to work. I spent US$107.56 total for a two-person tent, a multipurpose tool, and a small compass. On Sunday, I spent $27.97 total for a 100 lumen headlamp (typical headlamps are 30 lumens) and a two-liter “canteen” with a hose and bite valve to make it easy to drink.
Emotionally, buying the tent was the most difficult step. It took me four days of conscious effort to get to the store and buy it. Luckily for me, a guy staying in my dorm room camped in South America for five months, so he gave me tons of advice and helped me assemble the tent the first time. Now that it assembled and sitting in front of me, this idea feels more like a plan.
I will not have regular access to electricity or the internet, so my lifestyle will radically change. I believe this is a good thing. My major expense now will be food. Some people still send me some money each week, so I should be able to eat without a problem as long as I buy food at markets. A second part of the plan is to learn to fish so that I can spend even less money on food.
If I can learn to fish (and possibly hunt) well and spend very little money on food, then I should be able to afford venlafaxine and diazepam. The modafinil costs MXN$1150 for 28 days, so I might buy another month’s supply, but on my current budget, I could not possible afford to buy it regularly.
With less stress about money, food, and medicine, I believe it will reduce some of the stress on my mental health. I plan to journal and read since I will not be able to be on the computer or the internet. I think writing and reading and not being on the internet will all help me heal some. Camping and hiking requires regular and rigorous exercise, and that will certainly help my health in many ways.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.)
This is not a brilliant plan. This is not my first choice. This plan requires me to learn many new skills, and I will certainly make amateur mistakes. Nevertheless, given my resources and health conditions, this seems like the best alternative.
If you wish to help, you can help me purchase the equipment I need, you can share my webpages through your social networks, and you can get your friends to follow me on social networks like Facebook. Ironically, it seems that yesterday the software company fixed the problem I have had with advertisements, so I might make a little money from my photographs. I will not make as much as I could, however, because I did not post all of my photos or finish making the section reach its full potential. It was a waste of time while the ads were not working properly. And now, I will be living in a tent, so I will not have the chance to finish it. Nevertheless, the more traffic my website gets, the more likely I can earn some money from ads, so sharing my pages does help me.
