The Digital Nomad Guy

The Digital Nomad Guy Exploring NomadLife as a growing culture. Mobile living, remote work, and building community beyond traditional systems.

09/06/2026

Behind me people are protesting. That should tell you something.
Buildings like this are supposed to represent trust. The idea that even when we disagree we still believe the system basically works.
But that belief is getting harder to find.
Trust in the federal government is near historic lows. Confidence in major institutions has been below 30% for five straight years.
Nearly nine out of ten Americans say corruption is widespread in government. Gallup published that number two days ago.
A country doesn’t become unstable the moment people get angry.
It becomes unstable when people stop believing the rules themselves are legitimate.
When losing feels rigged. When courts stop feeling neutral. When institutions stop feeling like they belong to you.
That is a different kind of fracture.
Because once people stop asking how do we fix this and start asking why should I believe in it at all something has already broken.
Not the government.
The belief holding it together.

09/05/2026

In 2003 an Oxford philosopher published a mathematical argument nobody has refuted.
Nick Bostrom called it the simulation trilemma.
One of three things is true.
Every advanced civilization destroys itself before it can simulate reality. Or advanced civilizations exist but never run simulations. Or you are almost certainly living inside one right now.
The math favors option three.
If that’s true here’s what it means.
The rules you were handed - the mortgage. The lease. The credit score. The 40-hour week. The landlord’s permission to exist somewhere.
Those rules were written by whoever built this.
They are not physics.
They are code.
And code can be questioned.
You are not the character.
You’re the one who noticed it’s a game.

09/05/2026

Behind me is the Washington State Capitol.
Last year Washington paid $537 million in settlements and verdicts tied to government misconduct and negligence. An all-time record. Roughly five times what it paid in 2021.
Children left with abusive caregivers. People who died behind prison walls. Workers who faced discrimination.
The government failed. Then came the lawsuits. And taxpayers paid the bill.
$388 million came from claims involving the agency responsible for protecting children.
Washington’s self-insurance fund was authorized to run as much as $1.7 billion in the red. So lawmakers approved more than $1 billion to shore it back up.
The machine fails. The victims sue. The taxpayers pay. The fund gets refilled. And the machine keeps running.
Washington is now studying how to change the system. But until it does - failure has become an operating expense.
This is public record. Someone just had to read the receipt out loud.

09/04/2026

You’re probably wondering what’s going on down there. Let me explain.
Those are the people who read the fine print on the American dream and asked for a refund.
Call them nomads. Van lifers. Gypsies. Economic refugees. Voluntary outlaws.
The government calls them a problem to be solved. The algorithm calls them a gap in the dataset. The housing market calls them priced out.
They call themselves free.
The matrix has a glitch.
You’re looking at the people who found it. And drove through it. At approximately 60 miles per hour.
The world you were told you couldn’t live without starts looking very small in the rearview mirror.
The system calls this unstable.
We call it being alive.

09/03/2026

There are two kinds of people. Carpet walkers and nomads.
Carpet walkers wake up inside the same four walls. They know where they’ll sleep tonight. They usually know what tomorrow looks like.
Nomads? We woke up this morning in the middle of a forest and somehow ended up doing yoga in the rain.
Nobody scheduled it. Nobody planned it. It just happened.
That’s the difference.
The carpet-walker life is optimized for predictability. Ours is optimized for adaptation.
Random roads. Broken plans. Strange people. Unexpected places. And apparently impromptu yoga in the rain.
Maybe comfort makes life easier.
But randomness makes you feel alive.

09/02/2026

Things that got worse since I moved into a bus.
Home prices. Student debt. Consumer confidence. Trust in institutions. The climate. The oil supply. The surveillance apparatus. The job market. The K-shaped economy. The public land restrictions.
Things that got better.
My tolerance for discomfort. My ability to adapt. My awareness of how fragile normal life is. My mental clarity. My resilience. And my ability to survive when “normal” stops working.
I didn’t move into a bus because I thought the world was ending.
I just accidentally became a lot more prepared if it does.

09/01/2026

Something alarming happened in American culture this year.
A majority of an entire generation started rooting for economic collapse.
Not because they’re nihilists.
Because the housing market crash is the only scenario in which 58% of Gen Z believes they can afford a home.
3 in 5 Americans believe AI will eliminate their jobs and make housing even less affordable.
They’re probably right.
Consumer confidence just hit an all-time low. Lower than 2008. Lower than the pandemic.
The system is producing a generation that has given up on the system.
The collapse they’re waiting for is already happening.
It just doesn’t look like what they expected.
The people in this footage recognized it early.
And built something that doesn’t require the market to crash for their life to work.

08/31/2026

In every simulation there are people who notice the glitch.
The places where the code doesn’t quite render. Where the story the system tells about itself doesn’t match what’s actually happening.
Those people always end up somewhere outside the simulation’s range.
In forests. In deserts. On public land. In vehicles. With each other.
The simulation was designed for participants.
The people in this footage became observers instead.
From up here the difference is visible.

08/30/2026

Living in your vehicle is not a federal crime. No federal law prohibits it.
But in the last two years over 350 cities passed ordinances criminalizing it.
In 2024 the Supreme Court ruled cities can ticket, fine and jail vehicle dwellers regardless of whether shelter is available.
In July 2025 a presidential executive order urged cities to arrest and forcibly institutionalize unhoused people.
What was tolerated in 2020 can now mean a citation, a tow, or an arrest in 2026.
Living in your vehicle is still legal.
For now.
The question isn’t whether it’s a right.
It’s how long before the right requires permission they can choose to deny.

08/29/2026

Sheriffs came to our camp. Told us we had to leave. Called it an organized event.
So we did what nomads do.
Packed up. Formed a caravan. We left together.
Fifty vehicles. Rolling down the road to another location. Set up again.
This is the hardest part of nomad life nobody talks about.
Finding somewhere you’re allowed to gather without becoming too organized to be left alone.
You can move the camp.
But the community has wheels.

Address

Bend, OR
97701, 97702, 97703, 97707–97709

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Digital Nomad Guy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The School

Send a message to The Digital Nomad Guy:

Shortcuts

Share