Midlife crisis = Skoolie!

Who are we and why would we choose a skoolie?

My name is Allison. My husband is Alan. We found each other in 2002, and we have been together ever since that first date.  After being thoroughly disgusted with the world in 2016, we questioned our own lifestyle. Our choices and our trajectory. Are we who we want to be and living the life we are excited about. Short answer was NO!.

We had gotten complacent, spent our paychecks, and enjoyed every convenience. We volunteered once in a while, we worked long hours and never visited family. More importantly, we realized, we can’t continue to live like this. Housing in Phoenix, in our area, that we love, is way above what we can afford. Once we retire, we will be hard pressed to survive in Phoenix. So I began a journey to find an alternative we could live with. We examined/searched/read about every alternative living arrangement available to us. In the end, we decided that living with people in any arrangement was not for us. We are homebodies, and we need our home to feel secure. I hate to sleep in a strange bed. So no co-housing for us. So then we are back to dwellings. Tiny homes are awesome but we don’t own land, we hate AZ in the summer. So then where? With that our family is all along the west coast. So we looked at nomad life. 1st RVs and then we discovered the skoolie. The clouds parted, the sun shine, the angels sang…we found it. 

With that, we found a bus a builder. We began plans for a business for Alli to retire from the job she hates to promote other nomad artists and writers like her on the road. 

A ten-day test run to Skooliepalooza in January 2022 proved to us that there’s an alternative society waiting for us. We met and fell in love with our tribe. People that we will be friends with for the rest of our lives. With that, our 10-month plan became a 4-month plan.

We will be full-time in May 2022.

Loving Lavinia an ART installation:

Lavinia, our bus, is my Mom’s memory lovingly reimagined as a Big Old Girl. She is a powerful vessel that no one will intimidate, using her massive strength to lift others.

This 1999 Bluebird bus with 8.3 Cummins/DT 643 is my art-in-residency. It’s a stage to promote nomad life, art, music, and writing. Every element of this bus is intentional. I have painstakingly designed every inch of our giant steel tube to be our home and please my Mom. She gets to be liberated and live vicariously through us and our love of all things Hippie.

Legacy:

Bus life for us is about the legacy we’re leaving our family and the planet. Concentrating on what we want to be recognized forgave our life a new purpose. Our incarnations are far too unique to let it fade into obscurity once our meat skins get shucked in the furnace.

Alan and I are not the same people we were when we were growing up. In those days, we were consumed with power struggles, survival, fear of failure, and insecurities as with the majority of the humans in the USA. We realize we have work to do to heal our family and the planet. We have mastered a level of spiritual-mental-financial health/wealth and well-being we think is healthy. That wisdom is the real treasure we leave our family and the planet.

Mental Health:

A spiritual path without a commitment to mental health is just theater. It’s just all fake and can actually be dangerous and misleading.

I’ve recovered from my childhood trauma. A mess of abuse, rape, neglect, and abandonment. I’ve survived some ugly things. I consider myself a “recovered” and living with mental health illness, not mentally ill. I’m not sick at all. I have done the work now, I have to go live my life. Radical acceptance as it is the key to healing. We are all human, humans can be complicated.

Accepting my biology is empowering. It’s how I’m built, and it’s from that centered viewpoint I maintain my health. That peace is like a web protected by a giant hairy spider. I’m in harmony with every vibration and how that affects my life. I’m no longer identify with being a victim.

I’m a student of all forms of healing, from standard psychiatric treatment therapy/counseling to esoteric shadow-work and soul-retrieval. I’m a natural healing modalities/remedies student and firmly believe cannabis cured my bipolar/menopausal depression.

I explore the “crazy” aspects of my diagnoses, namely Bipolar II, Borderline Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a host of attachment and anxiety issues, as excerpts from Crazy Acres Asylum for the spiritually gifted. A fun way to examine the spiritual side of mental illness.

I’m not a guru or life coach, but I am an empath and deep thinker. I have so much more to master. I know that this lifestyle will shake up my insecurities. I welcome the triggers as it is my final frontier to claiming to be “cured .”My memoir is in the works.

Abundance: How about a big fat welcome to our dying town?

I want to use my time left on the planet to enrich and celebrate everything nomadic. We acknowledge that the “dirty hippie” mystique will follow us, so why not embrace it? Considering the hippie aesthetic and Marijuana industries are both billion-dollar industries! We can tap into that and spread some abundance to traveling nomads.

What’s more fun than a circus coming two towns over? Remember that excitement and money that came to town? Imagine the small businesses that benefit from our choice to refuel and supply in their town. If we spend consciously, we can change our image and expand to even more abundance.

Now… What kinds of opportunities await nomads? Imagine art shows, music jam, or open mic night resuscitating a dive bar, coffee shop, or a library? Being on the set of a video or movie? Save the drive-in theaters by turning them into a campground with film! Buy food & water from farmers. Barter for a place to park-learn the skills of Permaculture. Surprise an 80th-year-old hippie for his birthday? A bus makes an impression. We could be hired on for protests or promotions, whatever your jam is. We hope to connect nomads with people that want a bus to make an impression.

I want to take our bohemian roadshow to the hearts and souls of those who can’t leave home/room/cell? Visiting the elderly, foster kids, group homes, prisons, and more. I love matchmaking for people and businesses. I think there is abundance and love here.

All this takes is desire, organization, and promotion.

Want us to visit YOU? Check our location on our Instagram @Skoolielifestyle

Email me [email protected]

Text me: 602-618-9401