A number of wheels starting turning a year ago. Haltingly … maybe more like relay switches.

As we need Point A to be able to differentiate from Point B (Point Q is irrelevant to the discussion), I bought a domain for a website that never happened and just lapsed. I was a billing clerk for a small firm that treated me well but didn’t want to ever hear ideas about how to streamline operations. My prior role had been automation. For print newspapers. Not a lot of overlap, but if it can be defined in code, why the fuck am I doing this manually?

I’d been sober a year, having met the owner in detox.

And it was miserable. I was pretty sure rent would go up to the extent that I could no longer afford my cat. Cats, my mom would say, are my totem, so this is desperate times. It’s actually worse: also no food budget.

It’s about this time Reddit shits the bed and I discover Beehaw. After a few weeks, U.S. News is about to be created, and I’m in the right chat channel at the right time. After this weekend, I don’t think my introduction post is actually for anyone else, but me finally saying: This is what I want to do, and anything less is unacceptable.

I’d been sketching out 400-square-foot off-grid cabins for about seven years at the time, and I veered into researching vandwelling, as it would provide flexibility if, say, the climate went to shit and whatever land I’d chosen no longer has water.

Lots of research ensues, and I buy a tool van. Learn electricity, put up solar panels and start living off my own microgrid. I build it out at the local makerspace after a Reddit question, where I meet Eric (it is left as an exercise for the reader to determine if I’ve changed his name), without whom I would not have succeeded.

Work goes south; irreconcilable differences. I get to the point I’m wanting to drink and feel I need to get out, so the Friday before Thanksgiving, the accounting gig is done. Step 2: ???

I had enough saved up for a month and a half, which on this timeline is assuming I’ll magically get hired Jan. 2. (Narrator: It didn’t happen.) I was throwing darts with applications, finally purchasing the services of a couple of scam artists on LinkedIn.

Truck breaks down (serpentine belt), and I’m out $400 for an 8-mile tow (Class 4). Same day as the fraud becomes apparent … and things go poorly from there. By the end of the month, I’ve borrowed more money and basically drank it away, getting me into a ward.

Eric drives me to the ER and comes to understand that after doing so much of the build myself (solar was all me, and when he saw it, he was rather surprised), I’m not lacking motivation but rather resources. He’s a retied rich guy (this will be important later) who also knows vehicles, and so after he buys a new serpentine belt, he spends hours over days tracing the problem, which was a loose nut on the starter motor but presented as wild voltage droops from panels because an A/C line runs near it.

So, to start March, I’m mobile and back on the job prowl for random positions. So here, now while everything like meeting Eric had to happen, I had to be parked where I was because of where I take my morning constitutional for the rest of this to play out.

I’m leaving the washroom, and as I like to vape, I head out the patio door to run into my former assistant and his family. Small talk ensues, and he says, “Well, why don’t you send me your resume? Trade pub I work for is hiring freelancers.”

Briefly, my editor used to run papers I then ran design for, so absolute alignment on journalistic integrity. I took a writing test, and I guess I don’t suck. Part of why they’re expanding is they want beat reporters. Like as of me; as of exactly then. You start to see how this is all looking suspiciously like when the shrooms told me I want to be a green-energy reporter but were unhelpful as to how some months earlier, it was a waiting game

So, I say I want to cover green energy. Done. Right place, right time. Good pay.

Meanwhile, Eric’s purchased four tickets for Burning Flipside, a regional burn about an hour out of Austin.

And here, dear reader, yes, we finally get to the subject of the title.

The van was not the point. The job was not the point. I had to get all of that done so that when I got to Flipside, I wasn’t a whiny bitch but an actually interesting guy who apparently has some pretty awesome dance moves now that I’m old and don’t care.

To paraphrase my Reddit post, this weekend I learned that is is possible to experience genuine wonder halfway through my 40s, and the thing about wonder I’d never realized is it is a critical component for joy. Joy isn’t something you’re expecting. You can’t plan for joy. So you sure as fuck need wonder.

Confident in where I was at and unwilling to squander this opportunity, I quickly broke camp and just started looking around. Needless to say, as a former raver who sadly still views a kinky chick with short unnatural hair as the dream, I was not disappointed.

Most amazing weekend of the past 15 years. Walking in expecting nothing, came out with everything. Like, I’m not fucked, we all actually realize how toxic society is. The couple thousand of us, I guess.

I made friends; for the first time, I just danced without giving a fuck, which should have happened at my first party in 1997, but I was wee. I had fucking DJs making it a point to thank me for dancing! People came up to me like never before … I’m terribly introverted, so yeah … not where I expect to shine. And I don’t mean like two people; I had like four DJs and four new friends in two hours.

Either I didn’t care or they didn’t care. This is a burn, so assumptions about sobriety per substance are likely incorrect.

But oh, my god.

I recently had that feeling of “you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be” for the first time since 2009. This weekend was just beating the drum, basically saying: and here’s why.

I have the van. I have the remote job. I have the tribe. I am fucking done with your constructs, and cute ravers will cuddle with me for finally getting here. Seriously, what can you ask out of a holiday weekend that is reasonable and exceeds this?

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.