Finding a healthy balance between stimulation and solitude.

Today, I drove

to a Walmart parking lot to make lunch for no other reason than to break up the monotony of days spent alone on a desolate campground. It’s an odd feeling — not wanting to be in the same place for months, weeks, or even days. It’s weird not to want to put roots down anywhere and create a more ‘stable’ life for myself and our family. If given the opportunity, I would spend every week of the year in a different location. It doesn’t matter if the days all look the same. The rush of excitement comes with the fact that I’ve parked my home in a completely different spot than the week before. The vast number of views you can get from one window is so inspiring.

As a creator — and generally creative person — being in one place for too long destroys my creative mind. I start to get irritated. After some time, that irritation turns into loneliness.
I despise that feeling. The feeling that I am not living a life worth sharing about. I see creators on social media who look like they’re always inspired to create new, exciting, and authentic content. I am not always inspired by life. Maybe they aren’t, either. I don’t know the ins and outs of their life, so I can’t speak for them. But sometimes, loneliness sounds so loud that I lose myself in the noise. It makes me feel unworthy — like I don’t have a story worth sharing.

“The one thing I know undoubtedly is I won’t be here long enough to feel a sense of ‘normalcy’ — to call this place home... The only constant in life is change.”

It’s wild

where your mind wanders when you’re all alone. And I’m not talking alone like you have 15 minutes before you have to pick up Johnny from school, and you have distractions like TV, social media, and a house full of things you can do. Most spots we camp don’t have cell service, my phone turns into an overpriced paperweight, and I am left alone with just my thoughts and the dogs to keep me company. The majority of the time, I enjoy being alone. Especially on nice days when the warmth of the sunshine hits my face and I’m sitting in my lawn chair with a book in my hand. But some days — some days are incredibly lonely.

I live a very privileged lifestyle, and you could say I am spoiled because of it. I grew up in a blue-collar home where my mother could stay at the house during the day to take care of us while my dad went to work to support the family. And now, as much as I would love kids to care for, I can't have them, yet my husband goes to work to support me. I shouldn’t want any more than I have. But on the days that I feel like the only person left in the world, I long for more. That probably makes me sound like a horrible person, but I guess the reality is that most of us are spoiled like this. America and the American Dream have spoiled us! In a time when we can practically have anything we want at the click of a button, it’s safe to say most of us are spoiled to a degree.
Although I am acutely aware of how privileged I am, I still, deep down, am in constant desperation to go out and find more — to see more, to learn more, to grow more. I have this feeling deep in my soul that I am here on purpose. I have a reason for being here more than just to be; we all do. But then there are days I have a laundry list of things to do, and I can’t bring myself to do anything. I feel like I’m just a waste of space on those days.
After almost thirty-five trips around the sun, I still haven’t figured out exactly what I am here for. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, but being alone so often has made me aware that I have not lived out my purpose yet. I can feel it deep down in my soul so much that I have shed many tears over the fact that I haven’t figured it all out. I believe God has put us all here for a reason. And with each season of life, we learn more about ourselves, where we are supposed to be, and who we’re supposed to become. And I firmly believe that change should and will come with each season. You will change, your beliefs and where you live might change, and your work might also change. Some people may accept you in this new season of your life, while others may weave out of your life onto a new path that’s better suited for them.

For a long time, I tried to live up to everyone else’s expectations of me. But growth is not linear. Sometimes, it takes weaving in and out of belief after belief to find out why we’re here and what our true purpose is. Living in a van, feeling lonely occasionally, is where I am supposed to be right now. Each day I live in my truths and beliefs, I am moving closer and closer to discovering my true purpose. I think we sometimes forget, with the way social media is always there for us, that it’s ok to be alone with our thoughts. It’s taken me years to conjure up the nerve to start writing again, and now I’m sharing my thoughts openly on the internet for the world to read. But as I said in my last post, I’ve felt called to share by blogging. And I hope to find out my purpose by sharing more than the 30-second reels on Instagram. Plus, having a place to express my feelings makes me feel less alone.

Miss Daisy (our van) parked on the coast of Oregon.

There is a reason I don’t enjoy being in the same place, why, at the age of thirty-four, I haven’t planted roots or been able to have children. I’ve learned that we’re not supposed to know exactly who we are. Not yet, at least. I’m not sure we’re even supposed to entirely understand where we’re going. Because if we did know, we would start there, and there wouldn’t be room to grow in our journey — which, in my opinion, is the best part of a trip. While finding yourself at the destination is satisfying, the journey is often way more exciting than where we’re going.

An image from our time in Oregon at Crater Lake, National Park.

I’m sure you have planned a trip before. The planning process takes focus, time, and a lot of energy — then there’s the journey. Why does it feel like it takes forever to get where we’re going when we’re on our way to our destination? The anticipation of everything you spent months, or maybe years, planning for is about to become a reality — that’s why. There is something so special in those moments throughout the journey. And yet, for some reason, these are the moments we overlook. We breeze by them and blow them off like they’re not as important as where we’re going. But I’ve found that the expectation of how the destination is supposed to make you feel is often a letdown, and years later, it becomes a big blurred memory.
I avidly believe that the journey is what we are supposed to live for, not the destination. When we first moved into a van, I couldn’t wait to get where we were going. But for some reason, it was never as fun as the process of getting there. Although the journey to our destination was often more stressful than fun, I always longed to go back in time to savor the trip a little more. We have never been good at planning, and I’ve learned not to make concrete plans anymore. When people ask what our plan is, I like to say we have ideas about how things should go but no plans. And if I do make plans, it’s never without knowing everything will go entirely sideways when the time comes to implement them.

A photo of Badlands, National Park from our time in South Dakota.

I try to look at life the same way. There is a beginning, middle, and end to our lives. We’re in the middle phase — the fun, messy, and often confusing phase. We’re living in the moments where we don’t have all the answers. It’s like driving towards a destination without knowing where it is. This confusing yet exciting journey will end at some point, hopefully, a lot further down the road. This wild adventure that we call life is part of a bigger plan that isn’t ours. And I want to be sure when it’s all said and done, in my last days, that I can say I lived my life for God and my true self. Not for the vision that everyone else has of me.

Maybe 15 years ago, I didn’t believe that the only constant in life was change — with all the routines, schedules, and plans I had for myself. I thought I could fully control what was happening in my life and that there would be no surprises. Never in my wildest dreams could I have known that one day I would be sitting in my bed in a Walmart parking lot, writing down my thoughts about how van life can be lonely sometimes. If you had told college Ally that this is how I would spend my life and who I would become, I would have probably laughed at you. Everyone knew I hated change and that I was afraid of it. But maybe, thinking back, they feared loneliness and change, too. I often wonder if they were pushing their fears on me. Perhaps if I hadn’t always tried to live up to other’s expectations of me, I would’ve discovered that embracing the loneliness that some change can bring is where I belonged all along — thriving in the confusion and chaos of inconsistency. In the lonely moments, I find out more about myself. What threshold I am able to push myself to, and how I thrive in time spent alone.

Zach and I have this saying,

“fuck nature, let’s go camping.” We say it as comically and ridiculously as we can. Most times, when we're at campgrounds (mainly RV parks), people are so comfortable in their mobile homes that they don’t need to go outside and be in nature to feel stimulated. They have everything they need in the comfort of their RV, and because of this, (most) campgrounds are always so quiet. That kind of silence is deadly sometimes. We try to avoid campgrounds as much as possible, but without the convenience of a shower in our tiny home, while Zach works at paper mills and power plants, we have to book campgrounds to stay clean.
I feel lonely when I can’t hear the happy children running and playing, the sound of dogs barking, or voices walking by. Stillness and solitude are one thing, don’t get me wrong. We love being in isolation up in a mountain somewhere, listening to nothing but the sounds of nature. But knowing others are just on the other side of those thin camper walls, and I can’t hear anything but stillness is deafening. I hate (most) campgrounds. I know hate is such a strong word to use, but that’s the one word that comes to mind when I think of a campground — hate. That’s probably very confusing if you don’t understand how we live such an odd lifestyle with no permanent place to park and call a van our home.

Sunset from last summer (2023) in the Grand Tetons, National Park.

The other day, I talked to my brother-in-law, and he was utterly baffled at the thought that we could park anywhere. He was so confused and excited to hear that it is legal to park overnight in a Cracker Barrel parking lot.
Before we moved into a van, I had no idea this full-time nomadic lifestyle was a thing. If you told me seven years ago that I would spend most of my time in parking lots — or that I would spend hours driving around aimlessly looking for somewhere to sleep without signs that say “no overnight parking,“ lol — I’d probably have scoffed at the thought.

But now, at thirty-four, I find myself sitting in a Walmart parking lot, eating my lunch, writing to you about how I don’t particularly appreciate spending more than a few weeks in the same location and how too long in one place can make me feel lonely. The everchanging views from my windows, the sounds of people walking by, the noise of cars driving, and lawns being mowed are all reminders that life is found outside these metal walls I call home. I think sometimes we forget that we’re not supposed to have our feet so firmly planted that we can’t move ourselves to weather a storm. The overstimulation from our cell phones and the ability to instantaneously have almost anything we want to be delivered to our doorsteps have destroyed our ability to sit in stillness and silence. It’s a learned behavior that I’m finding has taken more than six years to unlearn. And I still succumb to the ways of society by interacting and sharing on social media. Hence, I have days when I feel lonely, but there can be a healthy balance. Balance is good to have in all aspects of our lives, and more recently, I've been looking for a healthy balance of stimulation and solitude.

This lifestyle brings all sorts of uncertainty and can be over stimulating at times. Where I will be next, what smells I’ll smell, what new town I’ll stumble upon, what river I’ll cross, or the ocean I’ll dip my toes in keeps me going even in the loneliest and most unexciting days. For now, though, I sit in solitude waiting for Zach to leave work. I long for the next season of life to bring change, even though I am uncertain when it will happen or what kind of change it will be. The one thing I know undoubtedly is I won’t be here long enough to feel a sense of ‘normalcy’ — to call this place home. Yet, I feel so at home everywhere I go.

If I can give any advice, it’d be to live in your truths and tune out what the world says about you. Remember that change is coming soon, no matter how messy, confusing, or lonely life is right now.

Some days will bring loneliness and solitude; try to sit in silence. Other days will bring overstimulation and excitement; try to hold onto every one of those moments as tight as you can. Create necessary changes to make you happy and stimulate your mind. We are meant to thrive in change, not run away from it.

You don’t need to live an unconventional lifestyle to find peace in the unexciting days. Drive to the nearest convenience store parking lot to people-watch, watch a movie with a friend, eat at a new restaurant, treat yourself to a spa day, or call a loved one to converse. Change is on the horizon; take the leap and embrace the unknown. The rest will fall into place as we go.

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