sunny traffic

 

I haven't been sleeping well. This morning I woke up and went straight to the gym. I live in my van so I first had to put on pants. Then I take down my window covers. I put on my shoes and open the door to the parking lot of a cracker barrel. This morning there weren’t so many people but most of the time nobody stared or anything. I put my hair up and walked into the restaurant to take my morning pee. After I go back to my van I get my gym bag together. I get behind the wheel and take the short drive down to Planet Fitness. Before going in I take out my solar panel and just lay it on top of my van. It charges my battery bank which in turn powers my twelve-volt refrigerator. At this point, I don’t really know why I bother with the fridge. I mostly eat out anyway. It’s just hard doing dishes in a busy parking lot. I also don’t really find all that much time to cook and clean. But it's not too hard keeping the fridge going. Once it's all set up and plugged in I head into the gym. I haven’t really been feeling well with the lack of sleep and the general disappointment of my summer of travel turning into having to pick up a job to buy a new van. But I do have to try. I just don’t really have the energy but I go through a circuit of legs, arms, and cardio. I spend about two or three hours working out. This is enough time to charge my battery pretty significantly. I take my shower and head back to my van. Before taking down my solar panel I remember that my friend is helping me get another job. I’m doing door-to-door sales right now and man I hate invading people's personal space to try and sell them something they don’t want. My friend is trying to set me up with another sales job but I would be in like a cosco trying to sell people instead of going to their homes and bothering them. Pulse this new job would be salary instead of only commission. So I called them and put in an application. My current sales job is walking door to door in the evenings but I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t have the heart. I tell my boss I'm sick and take the day off. It was a really nice day so I decided I wanted to go hiking but I'm still not feeling well. I struggle with depression. This is getting worse with my van not working and me not being able to travel right now. I started to spiral and focus on things like wasting my last two years saving up for this just to throw all my money away on this van that was never going to work anyway. Things like if I had know that this van was a bust I would have just gotten another van. I definitely had the money for it before I spent so much on repairs. I'm also upset that I went to five different mechanics and only the fifth one told me it wasn’t worth fixing. But I try to breathe and focus on good things. But good things are hard to come by when you live in a van with no job. I suck it up and decide I’ll feel better after a hike. I take down my solar panel and head to Walmart first. I'm considering getting a microwave for the van. It would be nice to be able to reheat leftovers. Especially since cooking single portions is kinda hard. But I decided not to buy one today. I just grabbed a salad and a couple of bananas. I don’t really feel like cooking today. In my van, I pull out some chicken I had in my fridge to add to the salad since the portion of chicken is too small. I set up my solar panel again while I eat. I also put on something to watch on my phone and set it on my steering wheel. After my show is over I look up local trails. Although I am close to the mountains any good trails are still too far away. And my van really shouldn’t be making long trips. But I choose a trail about a half hour away. I pack up my solar panel again and start heading that way. I use a trail app to find these trails but it's hard to see if they are any good. I mean there are trails that are pretty remote and actual dirt trails or there are glorified paved sidewalks along a residential area. This trail ended up being a paved sidewalk along a bunch of nice houses. I wanted to get away and this wasn’t away enough. So I drove to a nearby gas station and looked for another trail this time I cross-referenced the trail with Google Maps. I found one another half hour away and started heading. It started to look really promising. It was a long dirt trail with plenty of trees and maybe I would be able to hang a hammock for a while at the top of the hill. But as I was getting close there was a jam in the road. A semi-truck got stuck on one of the turns going up the hill. I really wanted to hike but I am very glad I decided to turn around rather than get trapped by cars pulling up behind me. I saw a small park with some trees on the way up so I decided to stop there until the road cleared. I pulled in. I set up the panel again and took my hammock into the park. I do love to hammock and I was fortunate enough to find a spot to hang in the shade. But where I was looking for a nice quiet hang in the woods I was surrounded by screaming kids and construction. This was a residential park and there were multiple families with toddlers and babies. And right next to the park was construction on a new business. I tried to tune it out but I wasn’t very successful. After an hour I decided to look at the road and see if it had cleared up. I was shocked to see the same line of cars and trucks trapped on the hill. I would hate to be one of those people having to wait for the semi to get unstuck. At least I was able to turn around but all those people were trapped on the hill in the hot sun. It was getting to be dinner time and I was feeling pizza. I decided to take down my hammock and get to my van again. I packed up the panel and started the forty-five-minute drive back to my cracker barrel. I was thinking about stopping at a mod pizza but decided to go straight to a Panera. I like to do some work on my laptop like finish my job application. I am also trying to get through a programming class but I'm just not motivated. Again I spiral sometimes. But that's pretty much my day. I came to the Panera. I ordered a sandwich and I started typing out my day. So thank you for reading and I hope you have a good night.