Please welcome today’s guest writer, Ty Bleeker. Ty is a 2013 Calvin grad in biology and environmental studies. Since finishing his master’s in geography in 2015, Ty has lived in a car tramping in the Western US, picked fruit in Australia, guided canoe trips in Wisconsin, and is currently under sail in New York. Read more about his journey at inalldirectionsblog.wordpress.com

Catching up with friends or explaining my livelihood to strangers has become an exercise in quickly reciting a protracted storyline of the things that I’ve done in the year and a half since finishing grad school.

Often I get a response hinting of envy: “I wish I were doing what you are doing right now.”

And right now I’m in between jobs, formerly leading canoe trips in northern Wisconsin and soon to begin working on a sailboat on the Hudson River. In the downtime between these gigs, I just finished a three-week long bike trip just to get from place to place. It has been quite an interesting trajectory to say the least.

For those curious about living such a lifestyle, it really isn’t all too difficult. Mentally all it requires is an abandonment of the conventional notion of working a steady job with a reliable income, instead trading it for a mentality of scrapping out an economic existence by whatever means possible—seeking any type of employment, wherever in the world you can find it, and for however long you find it. My basic requirement for a job is that I must find the work stimulating and enjoyable, but that usually entails the pay being limited and non-steady at best. As for all the travelling I’ve done, it only comes naturally. Having secured only temporary employment since graduating and without having a permanent address to my name in all that time, travel and couchsurfing have become little more than a logical option of filling time between temporary jobs. Essentially, I am living a lifestyle of uncertainty and unpredictability, where I can’t foresee where the next best option in life will take me just a few months down the road. I guess that’s why some people call it an adventurous life.

But while I travel around working gigs and having experiences that many people feel they desire, something gnaws deep inside me. In adopting a widespread, far-flung search for meaningful employment (and resolving not to settle down until I’ve found my ideal place), I’ve entered into a prolonged stage of transiency. It’s a conflict between my desire for rootedness and a perfectionist ideal that I can always find something better. While I have given myself the freedom to explore many options and envision my life in many possible ways, it comes at the cost of realizing any of those dreams in full. Always on to a new place after a few months, never to return to something consistently to see it through in the long run. Though it might appear to always be a fresh start, a moving on to a new place with no ties to bind and hinder, it really just feels like I’m continually disconnecting from every place I grow accustomed to.

Wherever I find myself, though often from the start I know it to be only temporary, my personal nature wants me to get involved, to invest in my momentary community nonetheless. It’s an intrinsic impulse to put down roots anywhere I stay—I just can’t become detached. It’s not that I’ve grown tired of transiency—it’s that I feel I’m missing something greater and deeper by not staying in the same place for longer. Communities are an investment of time and energy by their citizens. It takes a group of dedicated people a long time to build relationships, see a place grow and change, and contribute to the public good. I just can’t make that contribution in this cut-and-run lifestyle.

My recent bike travels saw me meeting up with friends old and new along the way. With no place to call my own lately, I’ve become the eternal visitor: always the guest, never the host. In each place I stayed, my hosts showed me the local culture, the places that make their communities distinct and worthwhile to live in. Every community is different, and no community is perfect. Could any community I happen to find myself in actually be good enough to stay?

I meet people all the time who lead stable lives in the communities they call home. That type of life doesn’t sound glorious or adventurous at all. In fact, it sounds all too ordinary. But deep down, I’ve got a twinge of envy for that.

Sometimes maybe I wish I were doing what you were doing.

Ty Bleeker