When the Plan Meets Reality

The beginning of vanlife looked nothing like I planned. Neither did becoming a mother. Both turned out pretty swell.

I’m writing this from a campsite in West Virginia, along the New River. My solar panels are out. My Starlink dish (which I “affectionately” call my SkyNet dish) is up. I can hear the water moving. The breeze is going through the trees and there are a plethora of these beautiful blue butterflies flitting about. The sun is finally out after a day and a half of heat and rain and zero cellular reception even with two carriers and a signal booster.

This is my second day truly living out of Mystique (my trusty, increasingly tricked-out Toyota Sienna). The first…week…was not what I expected.

Let me back up.

I drove away from Indianapolis on June 30. That was the plan. Yay, plan! Two years of building toward this exact moment and it finally arrived! Louisville was my first stop, to celebrate my eldest kid’s 25th birthday. The plan was to spend a few days there and then head into the West Virginia mountains and chill for a bit before eventually heading toward Newfoundland.

I’d really been looking forward to driving off into the mountains. I did not drive off into the mountains. I drove to Louisville and stayed there for six days.

And so the first week of my grand adventure into vanlife was not, in fact, vanlife. It was caregiving in Louisville, sleeping in a comfy indoor bed at my mom’s house. Managing her dogs and her post-op needs. I got to celebrate my eldest child’s birthday with them, and meet their new partner. And I got to say “See ya in December” to my ex-spouse, who, even post-divorce, I’ve never gone six months without seeing since I was 18.

It wasn’t the plan, but it still turned out pretty swell. Those six days let me do things I couldn’t have done on the road. A sort of “soft start” if you will. I installed a spare tire hitch — and ended up needing help from my favorite local garage in Louisville. I worked out kinks in how I was storing things in Mystique, which required actually living out of the van long enough to notice what wasn’t working. I realized I had ordered the wrong kind of cord to connect my Ecoflow battery system to my solar panel and let me tell you it was much better to figure that out somewhere with a delivery address! I had UV/IR blocking film put on the windshield and front windows, which in this heat has already justified itself several times over. I even spent an afternoon at a pull-a-part car graveyard looking for a specific part I didn’t find. I still enjoyed myself. Car graveyards are strangely delightful.

None of that was on my plan. And even with the good things, it was hard. I was frustrated. I had a plan!

And then I learned that my plan to go into Newfoundland wouldn’t happen this year. It turns out that one needs to make vehicle ferry reservations months in advance, not weeks in advance. And so I had to revise my route somewhat. While I’m sad about Newfoundland, I’m excited to get to go to Nova Scotia (which, thankfully, doesn’t require a ferry). But it just felt like one more thing not going accordingly to plan.

What is that phrase about making plans and god laughing?

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During this whole week, I’ve been thinking about that birth thing I did 25 years ago. About how we took Bradley classes. We wrote a birth plan. I had strong ideas about how it would go.

None of that happened.

I ended up on pitocin with a walking epidural. I pushed for two hours with no movement, sobbing and asking my then-husband and every nurse on the unit “Am I in transition yet? Is she almost here?” and getting increasingly clear answers that no, she was not almost here, she was not coming out that way at all. I ended up with a C-section. My eldest arrived by a route I had not chosen and had, in fact, actively planned against.

That baby is now 25.

I’m not saying every plan that goes sideways ends well. Some don’t. But I am saying that the specific human tendency to think of “the plan going wrong” as failure, rather than as reality asserting itself, is a habit worth examining. And by “specific human tendency”, I mean my own proclivity for treating my plans as scripture that shall not be veered from.

I planned the birth. My body had other information. I planned my vanlife launch. Life said “Ehh, not quite yet.” I planned mountains. I got Louisville and a car graveyard and a UV film and a hitch install and my mom and her dogs and my kid and her partner and my ex and…

Yesterday, finally, I actually left Louisville and arrived here at a campsite on the New River. And it was miserable! Heat and humidity and rain and zero cell reception even with all my careful redundancies. I was cranky and overwhelmed and questioning everything. I did not write this post yesterday because yesterday I could not have written this post. Yesterday I was in the pushing-with-no-movement part and what you would have heard is me questioning my sanity, wondering if it would ever get easier. Note to self: Of course your first few days are going to be rough. Maybe calibrate your expectations to the fact that there is a steep learning curve here?

But now — now, on day two of actual vanlife — I’m sitting in the shade with the river running and the solar panels out, and I am realizing that the transition worked. Not because everything went to plan, but because I kept going even when it didn’t.

The six days in Louisville were not a delay of vanlife. They were the beginning of vanlife, in a form I hadn’t anticipated.

It turns out I am re-learning, again, at 55, what I learned at 15 and 18 and 30 and anytime that I’ve had a big life transition: the beginning doesn’t have to look like the plan, and even a rough beginning can bring about a beautiful new life.

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My book Hard Hits & Other Life Lessons from Roller Derby comes out this fall. It is, among other things, about what happens when the plan you had for yourself turns out not to be the plan for you. More details soon.