AskingAutistics – David Rivera – Autism, NeuroDivergence, & RV Life
Lyric and David answer: How is RV life different from non-RV life, for you, and possibly other ND folks?
This is Pt 5 of the interview with David. Stay tuned for pt 6 next week.
Patreon members and other monetary subscribers had access to this video on January 8, 2023. The video’s public release will be February 1, 2023.
Transcript:
Lyric: Well, that could be a whole nother video dude.
Jessica Ryan-
David: Jessica Rabbit.
Lyric: Ryan
David: Rabbit.
Lyric: No! How is RV life different from non-RV life, for you, and possibly other ND folks?
David: So that could be for us. That questions is for us.
Lyric: Okay. Do you wanna go first?
David: What did they ask?
Lyric: RV Life, how’s it different from stationary life? We’ll just say.
David: Uh, we get to move around.
Lyric: Yeah. It’s NICE.
David: That’s it!
Lyric: We see and do a lot more things.
David: Yeah.
Okay. So lemme –
Lyric: Roaming sensory-bubble!
David: Yeah.
Lyric: That’s what I’ll say.
David: Lemme explain this to you. . So before when we lived in a home, we used to have to work a whole year, to get that weekend, or the whole week for vacation time. We don’t do that anymore. Every day, of every week, is vacation time for us.
Lyric has a business, still, but when that’s done, hey, we’re on vacation.
Lyric: Mm-hmm.
David: We do whatever we want to. We don’t have to be anywhere. We don’t have to be tied to one lot, you know, like our home where, you know, the weekend’s over, now we have to return to home base.
Lyric: I work while David’s driving down the road. I did most- like, we were driving a lot the last two days and I was mostly just working, while David was driving, and then I was shooting reels while David was inside Walmart doing grocery.
David: Yeah.
Lyric: So, uh, yeah, working from the road, it’s, uh, I’m still doing like work days, like I’ve got work.
David: Mm-hmm.
Lyric: I’ve got tasks, I do meetings, and calls. I just schedule those when we’re not driving down the road, so it’s quieter. Like today we’re shooting this, because we’re not driving down the road, so they won’t be all that background noise.
Yeah. But I mean, we, we do normal home things, and it’s, but it’s just like, instead, at the end of the day, one, there’s no traffic on the commute to and from work. So we get that time back.
David: Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Lyric: Uh, but at the end of the day, like we’re parked, like right now, in the middle of the desert, and we can just go out and like, you know, this morning I was out running with my puppy off leash in the middle of the desert, uh, right before we came over and started shooting this.
So we’re just out, where we can go play. Like if we were go back in Colorado, we could go out and paddleboard, as soon as we’re off for the day. You just, you-
David: or hike the mountains we were at.
Lyric: Yeah. Like nature is our backyard, which is great, but then also like we didn’t get out and do as much, like even when we had vacation time before, it wasn’t easy and we never had money to go on vacation.
David: Right, exactly.
Lyric: So we would have vacation and then we wouldn’t go anywhere.
David: Right.
Lyric: So… you know, we had the house, and it was all we could afford. And so
David: that’s it.
Lyric: We, we spent all our time, like on vacation, like working on the house.
David: Working on the house.
Lyric: We would stay home and do a bunch of like yard work, and house-
David: Chores.
Lyric: Projects and chores. We were like, we, it’s like that song in Eddie Vedder? Like, uh, what is it like in Cages, they bought- something, something? Everyone is something in Cages they bought? And I was like, yes, “we’ve bought a cage. We’re paying for our own prison!”
David: Our own prison. Yeah.
Lyric: And it felt like a prison because it was like, it had so much upkeep, and stuff was always breaking, and the taxes kept going up and up and up and,
David: and it was too big of a house for us.
Lyric: Yeah.
David: You know?
Lyric: Yeah.
David: Upstairs, downstairs cleaning, uh, it was just too much and
Lyric: that payment is way more than an R, the RV payment!
David: Yeah.
Lyric: You know, like our electric bill is like our, in the house, is like our RV payment, basically!
David: Yeah.
Uh, so for us, you know, the RV living, if we have extra money, we can just travel a little further, but if we, if we’re, if we’re tight on funds, we just, we just don’t go very far.
We don’t have to go anywhere at all.
Lyric: Yeah. We, we can stay for a place for two weeks at a time, m- for free.
David: Yeah.
Lyric: In most places. This is a little different, so I don’t know. We might not push that more than a day or two.
David: Doesn’t matter, we can move down the road up there, if you wanted to.
Lyric: This is a big place!
David: You know. Massive.
Lyric: We found this interesting, like abandoned ghost town. It, we’re not telling you where it is. It’s our secret. It’s really cool.
David: You’re drifting off.
Lyric: Yeah!
David: But living the RV life, versus home, uh uh, uh, a stationary home, there’s nowhere we need to be, at the end of the day, at the end of the week.
Lyric: As long as we have internet!
David: If we have internet, we can be wherever we want to be, you know?
So there’s more freedom in this. We feel, personally, that there’s more freedom in this, and the expenses are dropped. Our house home responsibility, clean up wise, has dropped.
Lyric: Yeah.
David: Uh, there’s not much space here.
Lyric: 32 feet, front to back.
David: Yeah.
Lyric: We can clean the whole house in, in together, in less than an hour, probably 30 minutes if we really rushed it.
David: Maybe even quicker than that, like if we had to move. In an emergency, really quick, push the TV back, put those things away, lock it up, close down.
Lyric: Yeah.
David: You know, the dog beds, you know.
Lyric: We’re always ready to roll.
David: Well, we’re ready to go. Not a big deal. It doesn’t really take that long.
Lyric: It keeps it from getting too messy, because we do constantly roll, because you can’t have stuff on the counters, when you’re driving down the road.
David: You can say shit!
Lyric: Schistifff! You cannot!
David: Okay.
Lyric: So like, when you’re going down the road, you can’t have all the stuff everywhere, so you have to kind of keep it somewhat put away, and it prevents us from getting things too chaotic, which is kind of nice. It like forces us to keep it somewhat clean, to where we can get it clean, within 10 to 20 minutes if we need to roll out quickly.
David: Asap. Yeah.
Lyric: We’re re, yeah, we try to be ready to roll just in case.
David: Mm-hmm.
Lyric: Especially if we’re like, sometimes we’re parked in places that are a little questionable, and we don’t know if we’re gonna get the knock, in the middle of the night and we’re gonna get kicked out, by like, local law enforcement ,or something. If we don’t know. So like –
David: Woody! Sheriff Woody!
Lyric: So we try to be ready- um, to roll out quickly, if we have to, or you know, if something shady happens, like-
David: exactly!
Lyric: We gotta roll. We gotta roll, we gotta go. So, yeah, like that, that’s a thing. Um, but the other thing ooh, I wanna share about the RV life
David: Okay.
Lyric: Is that, I like that it makes you more mindful of like, how much water you’re-
David: oh, that’s right!
Lyric: Consuming, how much trash you’re making, how much waste water.
David: Mm-hmm.
Lyric: Like it makes you very aware of the electricity you’re using. So we’re very mindful of like the energy we produce, like everything, and I like being more aware of all those things. Uh, personally.
David: Yeah.
Lyric: I feel a lot more connected to reality, when I’m not just like, you know, just disconnected from things.
Uh, and I feel more connected to the earth, too, because we’re going out in places, and taking care of the earth. David was running around with a trash bag yesterday, picking up trash.
David: Oh, the lot we were at?
Lyric: I was like, oh, look at him go!
David: Because we were there already, might as well pick up the trash. We have trash bags.
Lyric: Mm-hmm. and, and there’s a trash station, they had a, a dumpster right there. I can’t believe there was so much trash!
David: So much trash!
Lyric: They had freaking trash cans everywhere. It’s just obscene. Like why?
David: Yeah.
Lyric: But you know, so it’s like a lot more connection, I think, with, everything, really.
David: Yeah.
Lyric: It feels good!
David: I just like the freedom out here. I love the freedom living here, even though we have a generator to, to, to, to generate power for us here.
Lyric: We’re not using it.
David: We don’t use it much, cuz it’s kind of loud, even though it’s a quiet generator, it’s still loud-
Lyric: and it’s gasoline. We don’t wanna use a bunch of gasoline..
David: So much. You know? We, we use enough when we’re driving from here to there. So…
Lyric: yeah, we try to conserve as much as possible.
David: So, uh, what was the question?
Lyric: About RV life, like what’s it like, what’s, how’s it different it like, than living in a house?
David: It’s, it’s fun. It’s, I mean, it’s freedom, it feels like to us again, personally.
Lyric: Yeah. Yeah. Because even like before, like going out and doing things, for me, like I get kind of like sensory, and I need to remove myself, and recharge and like the rv, like lets me recharge.
David: Mm-hmm.
Lyric: because like I can come back and I’m like –
David: you’re safe space!
Lyric: Mmmhmmm! I’m in my safe space, yeah, I’m in my sensory safe space, my sensory bubble. Um, and so that’s helpful for me.
I need a drinky,
David: drinky Drink it.
Lyric: I need a drinky cuz we’re in the desert.
David: Don’t tell people that.
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With gratitude,
– Lyric