I'm always on vacation; I'm never on vacation

Reflections on living, working, and relaxing in a converted van and our recent holiday in the Florida keys

Sean and I are 27. You could say we live a bit like we’re retired—we travel full time, we’re (usually) in charge of our own schedules, and you’re just as likely to find us hiking on a Tuesday morning as sitting through a lengthy work call.

#vanlife can seem like we’re always on vacation. In ways, we are: often in a new place, never tied to a single office or even a stationary apartment building, rarely restricted to living the life we want on evenings and weekends.

We’re also sort of never on vacation. We don’t work 9-5 each business day, but we do log billable hours (writing, designing, pitching new freelance pieces, reviewing engineering diagrams, leading presentations, coordinating vendors, etc) pretty much every day. Spreading our tasks throughout the week frees up some of those Tuesday mornings for hiking and Thursday afternoons for swimming but also means I might wake up on Sunday with a multi-step to-do list and no room to push things around. Once a confused vendor asked Sean if he worked second or third shift because they kept receiving his emails time stamped around midnight. (After this he started scheduling messages for the next morning.) It’s not uncommon for us to have a “vacation” day followed by a “work very hard” evening.

It’s a privilege to structure our careers like this. We have done little to earn it: The low-budgetness of our lifestyle means it’s sustainable to work only part time; Sean got lucky with his employer like I did with my clients (not to mention our family foundations before that); and in a sense all we’ve accomplished is staying on top of obligations so we’re able to keep clocking in and out as we please.

I have adjusted to—fully embraced—this lack of clear distinction between “work” and “personal” time. Commuting to a windowless building five days a week seems incomprehensible… but so does treating Saturday and Sunday like an inherent break.

Then there is the other work we do day in and day out. Our van’s systems require regular upkeep to function: We must keep tabs on the toilet jug and gray tank, monitor our electricity usage, and be prepared to fix problems (blown fuses, plugged water pumps) ourselves on a whim. Our travel demands more real-time decision making: We need to navigate parking restrictions, respect different cultural norms in the places we stop, and save up energy for the inevitable nights we feel displaced. Because the line between “how we make income” and “how we enjoy spending our creative/intellectual time anyway” is thin (another thing I hope to never take for granted) it’s often these van chores that make adventures feel least like a vacation. Physical security in my home is not a given. We’re always moving. Always tracking. Always checking.

I love living in a van. We are so lucky to be able to live in a van. I don’t mean the above realities as complaints but simply as trade offs, the way every lifestyle has tradeoffs.

But breaking out of those patterns—on occasion feeling like we can have our cake and eat it too—is thrilling. That’s what made this last week so special.

Almost a year ago we booked four nights at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys, in a campsite directly overlooking the ocean. I planned ahead so I wouldn’t have to check a single email or submit a single assignments from campground check in to check out.

And it was glorious.

I read (so much!) and wrote (with no pressure) and floated in turquoise water. I made a key lime pie (really a no-bake cheesecake) and kept my phone on airplane mode but took lots of pictures. We stocked our fridge with special things—way more fresh fruit and kombucha than usual—and lingered over breakfast as the sun’s heat grew each morning. We had an electric hookup and water spigot just feet from the van. Sean wasn’t able to push off a few meetings, but aside from those brief interruptions our time blurred into full leisure: I asked him, after a sunrise run, what day is was and was delighted to realize I truly didn’t know the answer.

Even though our fridge door handle broke the night before we arrived (it is now rigged with a piece of unsightly twine) and an off-leash dog charged into our campsite right after we checked in (belonging to the campground host, actually; they redeemed themselves with a sincere apology) and our water pump’s pressure gauge malfunctioned the first evening (Sean spent hours diagnosing the problem) it was one of the loveliest vacations I’ve had. The best of both worlds—van life flexibility and stationary-life security—with just enough reminders that a situation doesn’t have to be seamless to be relaxing. The ability to wind down even amidst chaos is one of the greatest things living on the road has taught me, and while it’s easier in perfectly arranged environments—listening to the waves and watching the constellations trace the sky through the open bed doors at night—external calm isn’t actually required for me to find that sense within myself.

So I guess if I had to pick, I’d agree: I am sort of always on vacation.

I’m trying to keep that mindset, anyway.