Like all good stories I have about 17 different places to start and I really should first sit down and settle on a path before beginning. Since I am me, I will not be doing that.
The year was two thousand and twenty one and the world was weary. My depression was getting harder to keep at bay, the sad reality is we all were probably closer to being commonly united, just in exhaustion.
That is a different story though, focus. I had been retired from the military for about 5 years at this point, and was still attempting to be a productive member of society. I divorced after 17 years of marriage, all of which overlapped with my service which is to say, a decent portion of my military retirement is awarded to my ex-wife, and walking in the woods for nearly 7 months costs more than you would think. In short, I needed to earn a few more dollars if I was to keep enjoying the lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to.
As you get close to retirement, people start asking, what are you going to do after you retire. Problem was that I had no clue, I spent each year crossing off things I would not do.
In the end, settled on and began my career as a home inspector. Made sense, work independently, your values for your knowledge, providing a real service, I like building stuff, what could go wrong.
A lot, if I were to keep doing it, but it didn’t take me long to see that it wasn’t a great choice. I was as shocked as you are, it had all the hallmarks of something great, but it just wasn’t a great fit for me. For one, it was a lot of screen time, a bunch, and To be a great inspector you have to get into the weeds, devote yourself to the craft and really pay attention each and every single day, and This is precisely where they lost me. There was no way that I worked all those years in the Army, just to grind more.
I knew that I wanted and needed a change, there was no way that I was going to spend one more day doing something I didn’t care for.
I came up with a few plans, most of which solved the money for lifestyle problem by changing the life I was willing to live, to include selling damn near everything that I really loved collecting, including my favorite. Sigh.
I came up with this fancy and artistic design for a camper that was supposed to look like a stealth fighter jet
and built a little temporary camper to get started. The me good enough to get going. Once I get the urge to move, it is hard to satiate without the miles. I left NC in January. I figured I would need maybe 3-4 months.
It wasn’t all bad,
I was able to make some progress before stalling out. I simply could not see the next steps on how to merge artistic with my level of craftsmanship. What could go wrong did go wrong. Weather started taking its toll on the unfinished portions of the project. The temporary home was tiny and not meant to support the three of us beyond 3 months. Now past 12.
Nerves were wearing thin and I once again found myself needing to do something drastic. I scrapped it all and started over.
I knew that I needed to do this build in stages. First stage, get a shell built and get out of that temporary thing.
Check.
Everything else could be figured out from here as it was just about time to hit the road again.
The goal was to use as much free repurposed or salvaged material as I could to not only keep cost down, but to also add that rustic motif I like.
Never staying in one spot too long before getting back out on the road. Little by little adding to the build as I traveled.
An amazing thing happened while out there, it was born of a lot of misery but it finally got me over my hurdle with starting my VA claim. I wanted to do it with just what I felt like I earned, my retirement. I stood on a loosely held soapbox about it being a bloated abused system. It may be to some, to others it is not enough. It was faulty reasoning to justify inaction, and l no amount of my friends could persuade otherwise. What I know now is that when I needed help, and had nowhere else to turn, they were like, this is what we are here for, you are taken care of.
And I am
Carver's Corner 
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