Kaylee about to emulate a Wood Duckling :)

[Kaylee]

First, my apologies for failing to update y'all, particularly after all the kind & helpful support!

After my feasibility experiment, I concluded that "living" in my stationwagon is "possible", and I do have a viable bare minimum to stop working immediately, however it would make a ton more sense to buy a van and have a much bigger financial reserve than I have.
The big tipping point was five (yes 5!) unexpected (albeit relatively minor-ish) equipment failures, all occurring during a one month period.
Soooo, I made the decision to prioritize doing at least one more contract. :\

For more than two months now, I've been in wait mode on a potentially awesome cybersecurity gig, doing work that I enjoy and yet is not stressful (mostly data analysis). Usually, contracts don't take so long (1 to 3 weeks max), so I had figured I'd post as soon as I got word.

Things are still up in the air.
So, I'm still plonked down on a branch, contemplating the rest of the drop.
I've been spending almost all of my time working on some anti-spam programming (one of my volunteer projects), and getting a lot done (found a motel that's genuinely quiet for much of the day - yippee!).

A couple of days ago, I did see a different contract job that I'm well qualified for, but would be stressful (pure programming), however the manager has released some non-trivial open source code, which is promising, and would be a first for me (a lot of IT managers are bottom feeders).

I'm going to give it one more full week, and if nothing promising comes up, I'm going to "hop" off my little safe-ish branch (a remarkably quiet indie motel in Wisconsin), and head West, while still continuing to look for a contract.

It was a lot easier making this decision, knowing that vehicledwelling is possible, and that there's a great & supportive community out here!


P.S. One of the failures was a tire puncture, which was the fourth on that particular tire, so they had to replace it. I view that as a Badge Of Boondockingness - birders, we know how to flatten tires!