What I Thought Was Right Is Now Going to be Wrong

Now that I've committed my entire pool of energy, thought and focus into creating a Gap Year Life for myself, some previous assumptions that have always...and I mean always...been in my life are no longer valid. And it is really making me wonder how to deal with that.

Assumption 1 - "I have an address"
How many times have you completed something as basic and mundane as ordering something on Amazon and having it shipped to you? Well, the other day I was completing an online form and it asked for my address. That is an easy answer at the moment as I have an address. But I then began to wonder "What  happens when I no longer HAVE an address?

If I am, say, living in Tiny House and on the road, how am I supposed to answer that question? How can I get something delivered to me if I want to shop online? What do I list as my billing address for an entity like my bank who wants one for my checking account?"

My immediate thought was that, sure, I could simply list my mom's address, or maybe one of my kids (heaven knows family are the only people one could possibly impose on to the extent of having them handle both their own junkmail AND yours!). That wouldn't solve the problem of how to get something shipped to me if I'm on the road, but it would at least resolve the issue of having something as basic as a billing address for a checking account.

But how authentic is it for someone trying to live a flexible life to lean entirely on someone ELSE not living a flexible life in order to make one's own life possible? Yeah...that sounds like cheating.

No answers right now, but I remember the last time I was in one of those franchised UPS retail locations I saw a sign that said "Get A PO Box With A Real Street Address" and thought at the time "Hmm...I wonder how that would be useful?" because, well, at the time I was under the assumption I would always live at a physical address! Now...contemplating a more flexible/mobile life...I realize there is an excellent chance I won't have a physical address in the near future.

So, in checking out UPS Mail Services, I found that it could be a possible solution to this problem in many ways:

• When you rent a mailbox from the local UPS store, you can get a small box for $12/mo. And, it turns out that if you get more mail than your box can handle, they'll set up an overflow box for you for free. Not bad!
• That rented mailbox has...hugely important!...a "real" street address that UPS/FedEx/US Postal Service/etc. will ship to. No shipping company, on the other hand, will ship to a PO Box.
• They will forward your mail to you for a fee. Say, if I was going to be setting up shop in someplace like Alaska for a two months to learn how to be a musher for a sled dog team and there was something I wanted to specifically forward, they'd do it for me.
• You can call in and they'll tell you if you have mail in your box.
• They will set up a text notification any time a package arrives for you.

Could this be the home address I use going forward in life?

That brings up a corollary assumption which I've always automatically had without question:

Assumption 2 - I always have a permanent abode

When I meet someone new, eventually I'll get asked where I'm from. My typical reply is "I live in the Jackson, Mississippi area, grew up in Phoenix but I've lived all over the country and in Europe." But once I move to a flexible life, a big part of that will be living in a mobile fashion. Not that I am structuring my life so that I HAVE to go anywhere specific, but simply that I plan to live in a "home" that is on wheels.

And the simple fact that my future home will be on wheels means...to me at least...that I no longer HAVE to have a permanent abode, or "home base" as I've begun to term it in any kind of traditional sense. If I want to spend a week or two a year in each of the lower 48 states, what would I then say when someone asks me where I'm from? What would I then consider as my home base?

Or, more pointedly, which of the thousands of UPS store locations out there would I choose as the one that would be my physical mailing address?

And that is something I definitely don't have an answer for.

In the past, I've ALWAYS moved either for school or for a job. Now, for the first time in my life, l have the option of choosing any place in the country as the place I would...at some sort of interval...go check my mail.

And to answer that question, I think I have to have a much better idea of why, exactly, I wouldn't just call the Jackson area my home base. And, I'm not sure at the moment that I have sufficiently good reasons to switch my "home base" away from the Jackson area, though I know it is possible that with more thought a reason, or reasons, may reveal themselves.