The Quest for 1%: Did I Just Live Homeless for 30 Days?

My Fellow Riskologists,

Did I just live homeless for 30 days? That’s the question today, and the answer isn’t so clear.

So, you’re going to decide, and I’m going to live with your decision. Read on for more details.

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Welcome to a special edition of The Quest for 1% for April, 2012, where I share my latest progress towards the biggest challenges of my life. I hope you find something useful for your own big adventures.

If you haven’t been here before, you’ll want to get familiar with the 1% Club and read some of the previous updates.

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Did I Just Live Homeless for 30 Days?

When I started Riskology.co, the 1% Club was home to my ultimate “to do” list. I recently changed the format, and  now it’s strictly my “to done” list, but one item from the past that I still think about is the goal to live homeless for 30 days.

I grew up in a small town where the idea of homelessness was vague and never felt real. Moving to Portland where there’s a large population of homeless people was a real wake up call for me. All of a sudden, it felt very real because it was right in front of my face. And I wasn’t comfortable with it.

Over the years, I’ve worked in a number of very small ways to help with the homeless here, but one thing I’ve never been able to get over is the fact that all my efforts have been guided by sympathy. I feel compelled to help, but mostly because I feel sorry for them, not because I understand or can connect with them.

When I decided I wanted to live homeless for a month, it was because I wanted to change this. I wanted to be able to look at the problem from a place of empathy—of understanding—rather than from a place of sympathy.

I never worked out all the details about how this challenge would happen, but the idea was simple: remove my access to all of my money, pack a small bag of essentials, and try to survive on the streets of Portland for a month.

Well, thanks to a few recent life events bordering on “comically tragic,” I’ve essentially been living out of my car for the last 45 days.

A friend I stayed with recently joked, “You know, I think you met your goal even though you didn’t realize it.”

We had a quick laugh about that, and then moved onto another topic.

When I think about it in the loosest sense, I did technically live homeless—I didn’t have an address to send mail to (which proved problematic on several occasions).

Also, I understand homelessness doesn’t look the same for everybody.

For each person that sleeps under a bridge or in an alcove in downtown Portland, there are probably five more who are living in a car, in a shelter, or bouncing around from place to place unsure of where they’ll sleep the next night.

If I apply the right filters and the right logic, I can almost say “I’ve lived homeless for over a month” with a straight face and not feel like I’m lying. But the fact remains the experience wasn’t anything like what I’d romanticized it to be.

To be more clear, here are a few of the circumstances that make me feel I didn’t satisfy my goal:

• I never actually slept outside or in the car. I have lots of friends who were happy to lend me a couch or spare bedroom.

• I had full access to all of my money. After about a week of living out of the car, I only continued because I was waiting for the best solution, not just any solution. At any time, I had the ability to go to the bank, make a quick withdrawal, and declare “game over” if I wanted to.

• I wasn’t in the right mindset to process this as an “experiment.” This was real life, and I spent my time thinking about real life stuff. Some might say this makes it more legitimate, but I really had no time to sit around and think about how what I was doing fit with the goal I created.

• At one point, I got on a plane and went to Arizona for the weekend to relax. I feel like this alone invalidates any chance of it being a legitimate “homeless” experience. Have you ever met a homeless person with options like this?

At the end of the day, I feel like counting this experience on the 1% Club list would, at the very least, require an asterisk. Technically, I kind of, sort of, maybe lived homeless for a month. I don’t feel like I did.

But, sometimes technicalities still count. And, sometimes, a different perspective—one that I don’t have right now—is needed to see the value in something.

So, I’ve decided to do this the fun way and let you decide.

I don’t normally let big groups dictate what happens in my life, but this seems like a good opportunity to let a lot of really smart and thoughtful people (that’s you!) pick the outcome.

In the comments below, let me know:

Did I meet my goal, or didn’t I? Why or why not?

I’ll abide by the group’s decision. If the answer is yes, I’ll add it to the 1% Club list. If it’s no, well, I’ll have to do it again!

Over and out,