The Week I Started Working From The Forests Of Vermont

This Week:

My first 2 unbelievable camp sites in Vermont.
Working from my van in the middle of the forest.
A simple decision that sparked a lot of memories.

June 2024

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
26	27	28	29	30	31	6/1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	7/1	2	3	4	5	6

Where In The World Was I?

Acton, Massachusetts
🌲Vermont
Lake Placid, New York

Live Travel Map 🌎

Metrics From The Week

We are BACK 💪

Setting Sail

Last Sunday I packed up the van and hit the open road!

Surprisingly, everything (mostly) fit! I would end up doing some reorganizing and getting everything in its place later this week.

I stopped in Turner Falls, MA and basically pulled in to a park parking lot, put up the starlink, set up my table, and banged out last week’s blog post (The Week I Finally Finished My Van Renovation!, June 2nd, 2024). THAT was a cool experience.

Then I finished the evening in Brattleboro, Vermont for my first night and decided to check out the town in the morning.

Night #1 of the convertible bed/couch was a success.

Brattleboro, Vermont

Finding The First Campsite

I had found a handful of good-looking campsites from Google Earth in this area. What I didn’t realize was that the road to get there was… bumpy, tight, and a lot longer than I anticipated.

The casualties that leaped out of my cabinets on the way in:

Then I got to the site I had wanted to find that the clearing was blocked and the flies were REALLY bad.

Unreal drone shots though.

It was fun to get that stomach-sinking, heart racing feeling of “is this a good idea? can I make this? will I be able to get out of here?” again.

So I cut my losses and headed back. Then realized the road north to the other sites was closed, so cut even MORE of my losses and drove all the way around and further up Vermont.

And YES SIR was the spot I was hoping for free. Holy cow that was clutch.

Settling In

Starlinked worked great here and there was enough sunshine to (somewhat) recharge batteries in this spot which was amazing.

I got back into some morning work sessions, did some journaling, and restarted my software business work (more on that later). That feeling of heating up some coffee, sitting down at my new table/desk, doors wide open, birds chirping, sun shining, and just grinding out some work via Starlink that’s being powered by the sun. WOW.

In the afternoons I worked out with some runs and using my new workout bands that worked… well-enough. It’s not exactly weight training at a gym, but I think it’s good enough to at least maintain!

The shower worked a lot better than I remembered.

One of the items I picked up back in Acton was my old flash cards from high school, which I decided to burn in a campfire I made, which was very symbolic and cathartic.

And then the next night cooked a salmon over the campfire!

I ate dinner both nights out watching the campfire that I made. There was something distinctly nice about that feeling. No tech, no YouTube videos, just complete presence watching the fire.

The Next Campsite

But wait… it gets even better.

I drove a couple hours north further to this other area. And boy did it not disappoint.

Got more laptop work done, finished reorganizing all my stuff, broke my drawer, then subsequently fixed my drawer, and helped jump a group of national forest workers’ van.

I for-sure would have stayed longer at this spot, the solar was unbelievably good. But, it ended up raining and was cloudy more than I wanted and I needed to recharge my battery (and get closer to my next destination).

Lake Placid, New York

Vermont:

New York:

My first time (that I remember) in the Adirondack Mountains!

I was fully planning on making Lake Placid just a quick pit stop and heading further, but it was about 5pm and I had another 1hr drive to where I wanted to end the day.

Looking at iOverlander and thinking about where I wanted to end up Sunday morning, I saw some good camp spots close to Lake Placid and a nice coffee shop in town which sparked the idea.

So I said, “eh, let’s just stay here tonight, check out the coffee shop tomorrow morning, then continue on my way tomorrow.”

And that’s exactly what I did.

Went for a run around Mirror Lake.

And made another bangin’ salmon.

Stopping To Reflect

Many times I find it too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day: what I’m working on, where to camp, where to drive next, what to eat, etc.

But I wanted to highlight this moment, this exact decision that I made to stay in Lake Placid instead of continue.

It was 2 years ago, on March 29th, 2022, two days after I just got back from my 16-day Telluride/Utah road trip in my 4Runner that was only supposed to be 5 days to Telluride and back, skiing the holidays/weekends and working remotely from coffee shops and libraries during the weeks… (which may be one of the single most important events of the past 4 years for me)

… when I wrote this:

202203290833 The feelings of van life

#vanlife #freedom 

Side-note: I don't know what to call this lifestyle besides "van life," even if I'm camping out of my 4Runner.

- The feeling of being free
- The excitement and flexibility to explore wherever I want, whenever I want
- The comfort and pride in being self-sufficient
	- Getting power from the sun
	- Being able to stop anywhere and instantly make food, stop anywhere to sleep on a roadtrip
- The excitement of exploring new places, of wandering [[202106131436 I really enjoy wandering]]
- The excitement that every day is a new day and every day can be in a new place
- The challenge of daily activities
- The discomfort of seemingly simple activities
- The freedom of working in a new coffee shop of library
- The relief of not spending a lot of money on rent and bills
- The pride in creating a Instagram feed of aesthetic photos, the pride in capturing gorgeous photos
- The serene feelings of watching a sunrise or sunset
- The challenge of being on the border of chaos and order [[202203290751 Feeling too much order in my life]]
- The feeling of being in control of my life
- The flow of working in a coffee shop, wrestling through ideas, editing gorgeous photos [[202209140844 Why I go to coffee shops]]
- The feeling of being able to take my time and not feel rushed [[202203161435 Not liking being rushed]]

Reflecting on apartment life:
- Not feeling the trap of comfort
- Feeling like I'm getting a lot out of my time and life
- Feeling more challenge in life
- Not feeling tied to a location
- Not feeling restricted to an Airbnb, a hotel, especially on roadtrips; not feel rushed

“Being able to stop anywhere and instantly make food, stop anywhere to sleep on a roadtrip”

and

“Not feeling restricted to an Airbnb, a hotel, especially on roadtrips; not feel rushed”

This decision was EXACTLY what I dreamed of.

And just recalling that, being able to peek into the mind of my past, dreaming of what it might be like to double down on this life and buy a van… With that comes a lot of gratitude and emotions I can’t quite pinpoint.

That is a good example of why I love to document my thoughts and take photos.

Business Progress Update

We are BACK!

One of many things I’ve learned in the past couple years is that I resonate a lot with meaning and so reminding myself of why I’m doing something is important.

So my first work session I did some journaling, asking the questions, is this path still worth it? Are there better alternatives?

And based on the results of that, decided to continue.

I left off a couple weeks/months ago in Da Nang, Vietnam, with a particular vision:

Input: Plug in channel/niche
- Find all the relevant channels in your niche
- Analyze all of the relevant channels’ video titles
- Scrape comments for questions and requests
- Converting the high performing video titles into video titles for YOU
Output: Video titles based on audience desire

… and had algorithms that did everything up until the generation of new title ideas.

This week I got that final piece of the puzzle working well-enough.

One of the things I wrestled with this week is the direction that I’m taking this. In trying to backtest examples of video titles and look for how I could prove future results, I realized this is leaning more towards trying to find a video or title that “I can use to go viral” rather than just “get me quality results and save me time.” I want to focus more on the latter and target business owners or freelancers that want quality results rather than newbies who are just trying to go after that next viral hit.

Forced Intentionality

Now that I’m working from my van much more, I draw a lot more electricity powering my laptop and starlink. Unfortunately my “house” battery isn’t big enough, I don’t recharge fast enough, and there were a couple too many cloudy/rainy days that I’ve been very much constrained by my battery this week.

Much of my week I’ve been in the 30-50% charge range, which is not ideal.

This setup seems to work well if it’s sunny… a lot… like that second camp site this week. The problem is that it’s not 😅

So this has presented a new and interesting challenge for me to tackle.

In some ways I’m actually really grateful for this challenge because it’s been forcing me to be intentional about how much I use my Starlink internet, watch YouTube, use social media, etc.

But on the other hand I’d like to be able to put more work in behind my laptop. I keep feeling that I’m just not putting in enough work to get the result that I’m looking for (a successful business).

At the same time though, being able to close my laptop, walk 3 steps, and be completely and utterly enveloped by nature, is absolutely incredible. The amount of mental recharging I get from that is unmatched to anything I’ve experienced thus far.

So anyways, we’ll see how this develops.