Kathryn Bird spent five years living full-time in a motorhome expecting it to transform her into a yoga-doing vegan. It didn't. She argues that changing where you live won't fix your mental health; what matters is how you manage the specific stresses you carry, whether that's air-traffic control or YouTube comments.
When I started living full-time in my motorhome, I became convinced that I would become a vegan who ate carrot sticks for breakfast, a marathon runner who did yoga and meditation every morning, and I would somehow become blonde. 5 years on, I can report that I have never run a marathon, I do occasionally eat carrot sticks but normally with an awful lot of hummus, and I am most definitely not a vegan, and as you can see, not blonde. From this, I think we can conclude that Sadly, no matter where you live, in a van or a boat or an 8-bed mansion, where you live is not going to make a difference to your mental health. What does make a difference are the stresses. So I went from being an air traffic controller worried about 2 planes hitting together to being a digital nomad and a YouTuber and worried about mean comments on social media and an overflowing inbox because I'm traveling and trying to edit videos and trying to answer emails and all these other stresses. Now that might sound silly to you, but But those are my stresses, yours will be different. So no, living in a van isn't an instant fix for your mental health, but how you live your life is what's going to make the difference. Now you know.
