Do you suck at talking about yourself? Yeah, me too…anyway, here’s the definition of «homeless»
homeless
plural noun: homeless people; adjective: homeless
Not having a permanent home and living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.
Preamble: Hello, read below
I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail with NOBO this year, and here are my reasons. Let’s start with a brief introduction to me.
I consider tents/shelters/hotels to count as temporary accommodation, and I don’t think I’ve ever been excited about homelessness before, but here we are. The Trek is an entire community built around embracing homelessness for a set period of time to achieve a goal, and that’s beautiful. Anyway, here is my life story in a two minute read and my reason for choosing this life.
Chapter 1: Years of training
I come from a small town and a broken family, in the middle of New York City, called Brooklyn. I doubt you’ve ever heard of him; Anyway, I grew up with a love for the outdoors, but surrounded by a concrete jungle. My generation was the last to love the outdoors while also having abundant access to the Internet. I grew up in a not-so-big area of the city, I mean a small town, and as soon as I became a teenager I looked for any way out and I found it…
Chapter 2: Indentured Servitude
I joined the Navy. “No regrets.” Honestly, I don’t regret anything and it taught me a lot. I would recommend joining the military to anyone who also lacked a good foundation growing up. I come from a broken home, with a family full of addicts. Being semi-normal, not doing drugs, not drinking, not being a party animal, I was the black sheep and had no discipline in life. However, joining the Navy taught me how to survive on my own, it gave me the skills necessary to not only survive, but to thrive. He taught me a lot, including a whole second language. I was a translator and I enjoyed half of every minute I spent doing that job. The other 30 seconds were miserable, but I held on.
Chapter 3: Life after love, yes, I think, Cher
I got out of the Navy in December 2020 and began a career in automotive sales. The natural progression of veterans. No, honestly, there are a surprising number of veteran car salesmen. Am I passionate about cars? Yes. Am I passionate about sales? No. So let me break down a timeline for you. 1994 – 2013 = Survival/Coming of Age / 2013 – 2020 = Military Service / 2020 – 2026 = Auto Sales/Survival
I have spent the last 13 years doing things out of basic survival needs, without being able to follow my dreams or find my passions.
Chapter 4: Enlightenment 2026 (maybe)
Now, I’m not going to assume that I’m going to «find myself» or «find enlightenment» on my trek to Katahdin… However, since my earliest memories, I’ve been in survival mode. I haven’t had a chance to step back, breathe, and evaluate what I want out of life. I’ve had ideas about climbing the AT since childhood, but those ideas turned into very rough plans in 2014/15 when I saw Darwin’s videos of him actually climbing the AT… Unfortunately, when I separated from the military, I reverted to pseudo-survival mode for the next few years, paying for the mistakes of my 20s. I literally racked up a ton of debt, no one teaches you financial literacy. Teach yourself now, yes, you are reading this. Find out about it… Moving on. I am now at a point in my life where I feel comfortable enough financially that I can take 6 months off work and embrace homelessness in the pursuit of my passion and possibly myself. My whole life has been about just surviving and I know I’m very privileged to be in the position I’m in now, but it took a LOT of work to get here and it’s going to take a lot of work to get to Katahdin. That being said, I know it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
Chapter 5: Final comments
I hope I’ve done a pretty decent job of explaining my reasoning for hiking the trail so I can inspire at least one other person to put one foot in front of the other next year and do the same. I have no idea what I’ll learn about myself along the way, but one thing I know for sure. I will not be the same person at the end of this journey that I am as I sit here writing this post. I hope to take you all on this journey with me and hope to create lasting memories and friendships along the way. Furthermore, this is not to glorify the homeless or disparage those who are victims of circumstance. I just think that a lot of people who choose to hike have to give up everything, and that includes a house. It’s incredibly brave and inspiring.
Happy walking everyone, find your reason,
–Brandon
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