Prius Hilton #7: Lifestyle Changes
Now that I’m past the honeymoon phase, I think it’s appropriate to reflect on my relationship with Prius Hilton. This post will focus more on the indirect impact car living has on my lifestyle.
Social activity
As an introvert, one of things I need to be intentional about is balancing the immediate comfort of being by myself, with the future benefits of making memories and having a healthy social circle.
Living in an apartment with my own room makes it harder for me to choose to be socially active. It’s too easy to nap, too easy to watch shows, too easy to read a book, etc. Maybe “too easy” is an exaggeration, but you get the point.
Take away the apartment, replace it with a Prius, and the needle moves. Don’t get me wrong, my car is comfortable enough to live in, but it’s not nearly as appealing for spending extended periods of time in. In place of my bedroom, I now spend my downtime at cafes, armed with my noise-cancelling headphones. It’s comfortable enough for me to not miss my apartment, and uncomfortable enough for me to still prefer going out.
Since moving into my Prius, I’ve been more open to going out, more proactive about reaching out to friends, and I’ve visited family more frequently. I don’t want to make it seem like a panacea though; it’s more like I’m now in an environment where it’s easier to make the right choices. I would say that I’m more purposeful with how I spend my time in general, but this is the area I noticed the most improvement.
Sleeping around
Now that I effectively bring my home with me wherever I go, my plans are much more flexible. Before moving out of my apartment, when I would hang out with friends in the South Bay, I always felt like I needed to get back home to San Francisco unless I had explicitly planned on staying over that night. This meant that I couldn’t stay out too late, and that I had to keep checking the time so that I didn’t miss the last train back to the city.
If I was unprepared and wanted to hang out late and sleep over, I had to consider:
- getting a tooth brush
- borrowing contact solution
- how to charge my phone
- not being able to shower that night (or at least not having a change of clothes)
- transportation for getting home the next day
- etc
Individually, all of these things are minor. But taken together, and coupled with the emotional draw of being “home”, it made it so I rarely made the decision to spontaneously stay over somewhere.
There’s an amazing feeling of freedom now that home is wherever I happen to be. There’s no loss of comfort if I end up sleeping over at a friend’s place, and no sense of missing home. Even if I don’t stay over, it’s liberating being able to park anywhere and call it home for the night.
Road trips
Another obvious benefit to having a mobile home is that the barrier to taking road trips is now much lower. As an example, I finally took a week-long trip down to San Diego, where I went to college, after “meaning to go” for the past four years.
One of the reasons it took so long for me to go was all of the logistical planning required. Now, with Prius Hilton, I had:
- a way to get to SoCal
- a fallback place to stay every night
- transportation while down there
With those things taken care of, it was much easier to pick a date and just commit to going on the trip, and to figure out all the details later. To be fair, being able to work remotely also makes road trips easier to justify.
