We bought a van, and we’re converting it into a micro-camper van.
In a recent post, I noted that the only thing I really miss about my “old life,” before my divorce, is my family’s epic summer road trips. My wife was a school teacher, I was a homemaker, and every summer we took to the road in a Volkswagon Vanagon we inherited from my ex’s aunt. I think we broke down every single time we took it on the road, and joked that we shared custody of it with the local VW mechanic. But we were committed. We loved that van. It took us all over, to beautiful places far away from the hot, gritty, city summers.
My ex-wife got the van in the divorce, and also the fabulous summers. I pretty much haven’t left the city in the summer since.
It turns out, I *hate* summers in the city.
In general, I’m not a fan of summer, period. The days are so long and there is so damn much light. The brief few weeks that it is tolerable to leave the windows open, more noise than fresh air rushes in (especially when the world is on fire)—emergency vehicles, roaring ATV’s, road work and construction, fireworks, gunshots, my neighbor who listens to the radio outside … all night long (literally All. Night. Long.) When the heat and humidity force the windows shut, it only muffles the noise a tiny bit, but also traps me inside far more than the cold of winter (especially now that winters aren’t even very cold).
Last summer I experienced a pretty serious burnout (though in retrospect that might have been mostly due to the heart failure I would be diagnosed with a few months later). I swore I would not spend another summer in the city, come hell or high water.
Unfortunately, both hell and high water seem to have come in the form of my pacemaker surgery in May; and, right on the heels of my recovery (which lasted far longer than I expected), we have Joel’s much more serious back surgery next week. He will be in a neck brace for over a month, taking us right into the end of August. Not only that, but he gets a grand total of 15 days of paid time off, which includes everything: vacation, sick time, personal time. So basically his recovery is our vacation… unless!
Unless we can figure out a way to take his job on the road.
Queue the micro-camper van.
A little background: I’ve been watching several #vanlife channels on YouTube since the beginning of the pandemic, van lifers had to abandon their tiny-homes-on-wheels in far-flung places. Back at home, many of them embarked on new van builds, which I found fascinating and extremely satisfying to watch. I immediately had little-van-of-my-own fantasies, but that reality was so far from anything possible at the time that I just resigned myself to practice compersion and live vicariously through them.
But when it recently became clear that A) our car was quickly becoming a money pit and needed to be replaced, and B) we needed a relatively cheap and reliable way of escaping the city more often if I was not going to sink into a pit of despair, we decided to do a little experiment to see if we could imagine spending significant time camping in a van. So we rented a minivan and set out on a trip to several state parks in New York’s finger lakes region. Even though it was quite cramped, and we took way too much stuff, and we were quite ill-prepared in terms of equipment, still, we loved it! OMG we loved it.
Here was our cozy little set up:
And my view while reading a book with a mocktail in the rain:
We were outside for five days straight, with natural beauty all around all the time. We walked so much, spent time by water, and fire, and the big wide sky. The thought of being able to pick up and do that any weekend we wanted—and even during the week if we can figure out a “digital nomad” set-up for Joel—has filled us with such zest and joy.
Originally we thought we would buy a used minivan, until I fell in love with an ugly duckling of a Ford Transit Connect cargo van that was blue and adorable and oh my goodness I wanted to buy it!
Fortunately for me, my son is a mechanic, and generally wise and calm, and he finally prevailed upon me to wait.
“Mom, I know you love it, but I just don’t think it’s the one.”
I came dangerously close to actually buying it, until we took it for a test drive and I could *hear* that it was not just cosmetic issues we would have to deal with. It was going to be a money pit. We were already driving a money pit.
My son was right, and we walked away.
But by then I was convinced that a small cargo van was the way to go. They actually get better mileage than a minivan, they last longer, and we would have had to take all the seats out of a minivan anyway, just to create not even as much room.
Literally the next day, I found the beauty we ended up buying, and Joel and I took a road trip to Verona New Jersey to pick her up. We have named her Katherine of Verona, after the protagonist of Taming of the Shrew, and her nickname is Katie V.
My new goal for the summer is to fit out the van while Joel recovers from his back surgery so that just as soon as he is feeling up for it, we can high-tail it out of the city.
My other summer goal is to write all about that project1, as well as the other stuff that is teeming in my mind and literally keeping me awake at night.
Speaking of which (how’s that for a segue??), I’m making a few changes here on the old Substack.
First, I am, as they say, “rebranding” by renaming the newsletter The Spiral Lab. There are three reasons I’ve decided to do this:
Divergent Design Studios (DDS), the online community I founded for neurodivergent creatives, is in the process of becoming a member owned and operated cooperative, and the divergent_design_studios Instagram account will largely stay associated with the DDS cooperative community. Having Divergent Design as the title of my personal newsletter, which will remain mine, just feels kind of confusing. Even to me.
And while everything I want to write about ultimately connects back to art and design, at least in my mind, the connection might not be so obvious to everyone. My YouTube channel is called The Spiral Lab precisely to leave room for exploring just about anything. Even though I’ve been focusing lately on interior design, I reserve the right not to niche! The same is true here—I want to give myself permission to explore all the random things teeming in my mind, here in writing as well as in video format over on YouTube. And those things are connected, in theory at least—I really do have an as-yet-unrealized vision of essays becoming scripts becoming videos (it happened … once, it can happen again, dammit!) So it makes sense to consolidate The Spiral Lab “brand” (or at least it makes sense in my mind 🤷🏼♀️?)
Finally, to the extent that I ever hope to be paid for any of my work as a content creator (which is not my primary motivation, but … it might be nice?), I feel like I need to consolidate that effort in once place. Right now I have a few die-hard but long-neglected Patrons who continue to support The Spiral Lab YouTube Patreon2 … and I feel bad that I never do anything for them …. but realistically, writing some things here and making some videos on YouTube is all I’ve got these days.3
And that brings me to the second change happening with the newsletter, in addition to the name change.
Apparently Substack prompts readers to “pledge” a paid subscription to free newsletters in the event the writer decides to turn on that option. And some of you have done just that! I can’t tell you how heartwarming it has been for me to have people *proactively* tell me they want to pay me for my work! Zoinks!
I’m just the worst at asking for money. I believe so strongly that the vast majority of my work should be free and accessible to everyone. But at the same time, it seems ungracious not to accept these generous gifts.
Also at the same time, as I cast about for a sign that maybe I really should write a book, it occurs to me that there are some things I would like to share with a smaller, paywalled audience. More personal stuff. Stuff in-progress that’s not quite ready for primetime. If I do decide I have a book in me, then eventually that work will all become available to everyone. If I don’t, then it wasn’t meant to be in the big wide world anyway.
So, I have turned on the option to pay for subscriptions to The Spiral Lab newsletter, and I will be so chuffed if a few of you find yourself at the happy intersection of both valuing my work and having the means to support me financially.
If you don’t live in the overlap of that Venn diagram, never fear: the vast majority of what I write will continue to be free. And if you do find yourself hanging out at that crossroads, fair warning: I’m not promising volumes or consistency in what I offer for paid subscribers. I hope you will want to support me for the sake of supporting me, and not just for exclusive stuff. There will be some things, sometimes … but no promises.
I will, however, send paid subscribers a handmade postcard with a handwritten note! You will get a confirmation/thank you email when you subscribe, in which there will be a Google form where you can give me your snail mail address, which OF COURSE I will never use for anything else without your permission, and which I will never ever share with anyone. Promise.
So, there you have it! Subscribe if you can, continue to enjoy for free if you can’t. Expect a bit of hyperfocus on all things #vanlife, along with continued divergent design content4 and occasional other deep thoughts that keep me up at night. Hopefully about once a week, but no promises. Hopefully including some videos, but no promises.
It’s the summer of no promises.
Finally, let me just say that while it would be lovely to get paid for my work, it really is such a joy to have such a kind, lovely, thoughtful audience to write for. I adore getting comments and emails from you (even though I’m not always so good about responding in anything like a timely way). Thank you so much for reading my words, watching my videos, and for just being your wonderful selves.
And maybe make videos, but no promises. I’m just so slow these days.
Those lovely people literally keep the channel going, paying almost all of our expenses so we don’t lose money while making videos for free!
I’m not going to shut down the Patreon just yet, but I would encourage anyone who wants to continue to finance The Spiral Lab newsletter and YouTube channel to move their support over to a Substack subscription.
I doubt anyone is waiting with bated breath to for progress on The Blue Room, but I do plan to update you on that soon, if for nothing else than my own edification because I’m actually getting shit done in there!
I am deeply enamored with the Van Life subreddit and have watched my fair share of videos about the approach, too. I'm excited to follow along as you continue to write about your work on the van! Pursuing such a course seems overwhelming to me, but it's something I'd like to be able to contemplate for the long term future, so following along on your progress will be super informative and help me envision things. The first step for me is getting a driver's license, which is one of my goals for the fall. Congrats on finding the right vehicle for you!
i love it, i love it, i love it! i hope our trails pass as you drive your new portable home around... i will meet u with my tent at Cape Henlopen or someplace Wild!