Happy 1st birthday, Super Cool Van Trips
With the first birthday of Super Cool Van Trips here (I posted our first blog about buying a camper van one year ago today), I’m feeling a bit reflective.
You see, March 2023 was full of surprises — including starting this blog.
The month started off in typical fashion. Working long hours at a startup in the hopes of being promoted from senior to lead content designer.
Taking advantage of local restaurants’ fish and seafood specials for Lent. Not that we’re religious.
Getting the camper van ready for spring and summer travel.
Pretty normal stuff.
One of the older buildings in the Anheuser-Busch complex in St. Louis, Missouri, features granite statues of a fox drinking beer. The fox is also a tattoo on my right arm.
A bit out of the blue, I got a new tattoo at a 314 Day event. The St. Louis area code is 314, and all the tattoos in the flash event celebrated the Lou. Mine is a fox drinking beer.
Three days later, also out of the blue, I no longer had a job.
I wouldn’t have sprung for the tattoo if I had known that was coming.
Locked out
I opened my laptop to start work from my home office that morning to find most of my accounts were locked. I couldn’t log in to email or Slack.
Definitely not normal.
An apprehensive text to my boss quickly got to the bottom of things.
We’d all been fired.
Just like that. No notice. No forewarning.
We were just done.
Talk about a cold and brutal shock.
How could a company for which you worked 14-hour days, five days a week and some weekends, be so uncaring? Not even a phone call?
Given they weren’t profitable and were fully investor funded at the time, I imagine their investors told them to cut costs fast after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse on Friday, March 10.
And, so they did.
I was one of those costs. So were a lot of other talented and amazing individuals.
It was like being set adrift without realizing you had even stepped on a boat.
And, that boat was on a one-way trip to nowhere, with no provisions or life jackets.
Great.
I already had one of the key ingredients for starting a camper van blog: a camper van.
Time to cut my own costs, starting with streaming services like Disney+.
Before it ended, I wanted to watch The Beatles: Get Back documentary series — all 8 hours of it. I certainly had the time, now, didn’t I?
And, so I did, in the middle of a few workdays. Like a total unemployed boss.
In my PJs. On the couch. At 1 pm.
Of course, I was also updating my resume and portfolio site, applying for jobs, doom scrolling LinkedIn and making ill wishes against the startup.
I would miss working in the startup’s RV travel and camping space. I’d really miss my paycheck. The 14-hour work days, not so much.
A camper van blog is born
Then it hit me. I could still work in the RV travel and camping space. I just needed to start the camper van blog that had been on my mind for two years, ever since buying the van.
You could almost call it a revenge blog. It was the anger over the layoff that finally motivated me to start my site. Anger can be useful like that.
The ill-fated text thread with my boss.
But, revenge is such an ugly word.
Not to worry. The anger soon turned to excitement.
Creating and publishing my own website, with full control over most every aspect of it (save for a few template issues), was everything I ever wanted in a job. I even set my own hours.
Sure, there wasn’t a paycheck. There still isn’t.
But, a year later, I’m staying open to what this blog could become while still working as a content designer.
I’m hoping one thing it becomes is a revenue stream.
As well as an inspiration to others who want to get out on the road, travel the U.S. and experience something new.
Get moving
I don’t know everything about running a profitable blog yet, but I’ve been learning.
Besides, working at a startup taught me that’s how it goes. You get started, and you learn along the way.
If you never start, you’ll never learn.
I thought people who ran websites, startups and companies knew way more than I did. That’s why they ran things, and I didn’t.
Turns out, that’s not true.
The difference between those people and me, at the time, was that they took action on their vision and their dreams. While I simply sat on mine wondering what else I needed to do before I’d be ready.
Apparently, I needed to work at a startup that got completely gutted following a bank collapse to realize I was ready.
And, here we are now, celebrating our first birthday. Because, as John Lennon sings on Dig a Pony (on the Get Back album), “Celebrate anything you want.”
I can’t wait to look back again in another year and say, yep, that’s super cool about whatever happens next. Dig it.
Wisdom you can wear
Another favorite line from Dig a Pony adorns this super-soft hoodie. Get it now from the Super Cool Van Trips store or from our Etsy store. We appreciate your support!
