Criteria For In An Ideal Living Environment

11/8/23

Between the days of November 4th and November 5th, I resided almost exclusively in and around a beach house in Ventura, CA. I arrived on Friday night around 11:30pm, and departed on Monday morning at about 8:00am. In that time, my car moved only once, to back out of the driveway, let a car out of the garage, and move back into its place in the driveway.

I move around a lot. I have not lived at the same address for a period longer than two years since I was 14. As time has gone on, the amount of time I spend in a place, on average, as decreased. Since May, my maximum time in one place is about one week.

Now, there are a number of factors contributing to this, but a large one is that I have a hard time finding things I really like about a place. I usually leave because I want to, not always because I have to.

But this weekend was different. I left, eventually, in part because I wanted to, but mostly because I had to. In looking back at the experience, I identified several things that contributed to my wanting to stay, and several things that ended up making me want to leave. The result is, as best as I can formulate at the moment, a list of what I need a place to have in order for me to consider staying there for any long amount of time.

(Disclaimer: At the current moment I don’t know what exactly I mean when I say a long time. A long time for me right now is a week, or two weeks. It is certainly less than a year. I could speak more about my current ideal long-term living situation at another time, but it would not necessarily mean being stationary for that entire time. However, this list still seems important enough to me to justify writing it down.)

1. Access To Nature

Specifically, easy access to nature. In fact, the easiest possible access to nature. At this specific beach house in Ventura, the access to nature was about one step. Luckily for us, the house was situated at the end of the street, directly adjacent to the wide stretch of sandy beach. We jumped from the balcony directly onto the sand. I decided that this level of access would suffice. Particularly, this level of access would suffice to justify living in a house.

Nature access must be upheld at all costs. With it comes the opportunity for exploration, peace, entertainment, beauty, and, if you’re lucky, a bit of adventure. There is no situation where a person like me can live in a house and not have easy access to nature. Which is exactly why people like me tend to not live in houses.

2. Grocery Store Within Walking Distance

Regrettably, I do not know how to grow my own food. As much as I don’t like the concept of grocery stores (see: effects on population growth, and disassociation with food) they exist and they’re not going to stop existing any time soon. So for the time being I would like to take advantage of them.

The thing is, I want to be able to walk to the grocery store. Walking adds to my ability to explore along the way, limits the things I’m able to buy to things that I can carry, puts more intentionality into the errand, and helps me avoid being in a rush. Not to mention a nice bit of exercise. All good things, in my opinion.

The grocery store, Vons, was about a mile or so from the house. Well within striking distance. Although I might consider anything farther to be reaching the edge of my comfort level.

3. Relatively Consistent Good Weather

By good weather, I mean decent weather all day long. And by decent weather I mean comfortable-to-be-outside weather. Does this make me a fair-weather fan? Absolutely. Good weather makes me want to be outside. Good weather also makes me happy. To be outside and to be happy are two of the biggest goals I have in my life. Someone else might say they need a lot of money, I say I need a lot of warm weather. I see very little difference in these two demands.

4. Presence of Good Friends

I shared this weekend with five other people. Five male friends, six including me, who all lived together for nine months a year ago. Each one is someone who I have a lot of history with, I have shared interests with, makes me laugh, has good thoughts, and loves nature. For the entirety of the weekend we spent time with each other, in different combinations, and no one from outside of our group. We stayed in the same house, ate the same food, drank the same drinks, and did mostly the same activities. I enjoyed some moments alone, but always welcomed the presence of another’s company.

For someone who values friends very highly, this is a perfect setup.

5. Availability Of Books

When one finds themselves bored in an otherwise lovely place, their first step should be opening a book. The more books available, the more likely you will find one that will cure your boredom. If a place had no books, and one became bored, then their chance of rediscovering joy would be much lower. Not zero, but lower than if books were present.

Luckily, I brought some books with me to this house, but the house offered many of its own as well. If I stayed in this house long enough for some of the other things on this list to fail, the books would be the thing to save me. A nasty storm, a lull in the conversation, an exhaustion of the natural world, would all result in me looking for a book. Having books, and in as large of a quantity as possible, is a necessity.

6. The P In FWARPS

Protection, which the P stands for, is equally important to the other things on the list. By protection I am referring to, mostly, things that are going to keep me from physical harm. Layers to keep me warm, sun protection to keep me cool, running water and soap for cleaning, a way to use a restroom at any time (this could be outside if needed), and some form of a roof to sleep under.

This is fairly self explanatory, I assume, but needs to be stated regardless. However, protection can take many different forms to different people in different situations, and I think my needs are fairly low, compared to other people.

Some problems to consider:

Now, the most obvious problem would be money. Many of the things I’ve outlined cost money, unfortunately. There was a time when they didn’t cost any money, and everyone had all of them, and perhaps that’s what I’m really trying to get at. How can we have all the things that people used to have, with as little effort possible, in our current cultural moment. However, I consider myself one of very few people who would like to see that happen.

Regardless, in this little dream life I am detailing, I would still need to make money. Ideally, there would be a job that I could walk to. Given that there are other houses close by, with other people living in them, there might be needs such as child care, which would be my first preference. There would also be grocery store clerk, restaurant server, recreational rental equipment worker, rental home cleaner, and hotel bellboy, to name a few within walking distance in this specific example of Ventura beach. Any of which, considering the presence of the list above, I would be happy to do.

Another big problem would be friends. Friends is the thing on the list that you have the least control over, due to the fact that they are other human beings. It might be difficult to find people who value all of the same things that you value, especially when looking for a potential long-term residence. For instance, several of my friends that weekend were more than happy to operate a vehicle, when I was not. This results in you either having to take what you can get, in terms of the types of people who like what you like, or sacrifice some of the things you like in order to keep the people you want. I think the latter would be most ideal, as anything is better with good friends, but even that has been a challenge in my life thus far.

Additionally, not all of my friends were jobless, like I was, and the weekend came to a close when the majority of them had to leave to go back to work. Them leaving (and thus being locked out of the house, and with it the bathrooms) was the main reason I wanted to leave. Remember before when I said that this was a place I didn’t want to leave, but eventually had to. Because something about the place changed, the friends left, and without them I wanted to leave as well.

You might notice that a girl was not factored in anywhere above. Given that there were no girls present, and a girl’s absence was not felt too strongly, it’s quite possible I would be totally ok without one, provided the other things on the list. But if one were present it might have caused a change in the list, or the list might have changed to reflect it.

However, based on experience, it would suggest that any change that a girl’s presence would have caused to a list of criteria for an ideal living environment would not be the sort of changes you would want to have. For example, the presence of a girl might create a decreased interest in friends, and this, in the long run, is not good. Notice I don’t say a loss of friends, because it is usually not the girl’s fault that friendships suffer, but a decrease in interest of friends, compared to the girl, that causes friendships to suffer. Now, a healthy relationship with friends and a girl might provide a positive change to the environment, but I don’t have the experience to know that for sure.

If you’ve paid attention, you might have noticed that this blog could have equally been titled, how to live a happy life without a car, and you’d be right on. I think it would be great to not need a car. To have a car is great, to need a car is not great.

You might also be thinking: “It would seem that you just had a nice beach weekend with the boys. Obviously that was a vacation, and you can’t expect life to be a vacation all the time.”

And to that I would counter by saying: “Why not?” Especially if you consider a few things that most vacationers usually don’t.