Second Guessing Van Life? I Was Too, Until I Crested a Hill.

Second guessing your decision to live van life is normal. It happens to nearly everyone at one time or another, sometimes more than once, and it isn't a verdict on the choice you made. Most of it passes, and the hard part is not deciding anything permanent while you're still inside it.

I've doubted this life hard enough to cry about it. More than once.

I am Catina, a Federally Credentialed Enrolled Agent (EA), a federally licensed tax professional. I'd been living nomadically for years before I moved into a van full time in September 2023. I'm going to tell you about one particular afternoon, because it's the clearest example I have of how fast the ground can move.

If you haven't left yet, this isn't your post. Am I Brave Enough for Van Life is, or Nervous About Starting Van Life if your date is already set. This one's for after you've gone.

Is Second Guessing Van Life Normal?

Yes, and it arrives on a schedule most people don't expect.

It rarely shows up during the hard moments. When the alternator dies or the weather turns or you're lost, you're too busy to doubt anything. You handle it.

The doubt comes on ordinary days. Nothing's wrong. You're driving a pleasant road on a decent afternoon, and out of nowhere your brain opens a file labeled what am I doing with my life.

That timing confuses people, and the confusion makes it worse. You assume doubt arriving on a good day must mean something deeper is broken. Usually it means the opposite. Your nervous system finally has enough quiet to run the audit.

The Afternoon It Got Me

I was driving. I couldn't tell you the state and I couldn't find the road again on a map.

My thoughts were spiraling and they were relentless. What am I doing with my life. Has it really come to this, a woman my age living in a minivan, wandering around the country with no particular destination. No purpose. No direction. Just drifting.

Then I crested a hill. The timing was uncanny. It was like my mind was jabbering on in its negative loop, paused to take a breath, and got instantly distracted by the view.

The land opened up in front of me and it was green, lush green, rolling out for miles with a mountain sitting in the background. Quiet. No traffic at all on that road. Nothing but the view, and it was perfect.

I slowed way down. I almost stopped in the middle of the road.

And I thought, this. This is why I live this life.

Who else gets to see this? Who else gets to cross this country at whatever pace she chooses, stopping when something is beautiful, staying when she wants to stay? Who else wakes up and decides what the day is going to be, or decides the day will be nothing at all? So many people would trade almost anything to live the life I was sitting inside of while telling myself it was worthless.

The spiral had been real. The hill was also real. Both were true within about ninety seconds of each other, and that's the thing I want you to hold onto, because it's the most useful piece of information I have about doubt.

Here's what I've learned since. Most of what feels like doubt has something plainer underneath it. Exhaustion from moving every night for two weeks. A budget that was always fantasy. Four days without talking to another human. Weather that hasn't broken in a week. Every so often it really is information, and the pace or the setup does need to change. But almost never on the first pass, and almost never at sixty miles an hour.

Van Lifestylist Tip: Don't make a permanent decision during a temporary low, and don't make any decision at all while driving. Give yourself a rule with a number in it. Nothing gets decided until you've slept well two nights in a row and eaten something that isn't from a gas station. Most doubt doesn't survive two good nights of sleep. The doubt that does survive is the doubt worth listening to.

The Thing That Made the Doubt Quieter

What made my doubt quieter wasn't a better attitude. It was having fewer things underneath me that could wobble.

Money that behaves predictably. A domicile that's settled rather than improvised. Health coverage that actually works in another state. Documents someone could find in an emergency. The stuff that quietly generates dread when it's unresolved.

That's what the Van Life Foundations Manual is. Not motivation. The actual architecture underneath a life that moves, put together by someone who does this work professionally and lives in the result.

And if the doubt is about the whole life rather than one hard afternoon, This Lifestyle Isn't for Everyone is the post for that.

The hill is coming. Keep driving.