EDIT: The RV is sold, pending receipt of payment. If anything changes I will email everyone back and update this post, but I would assume it's not available. The new buyer also has a tricked out Rialta and I will share a link to if he decides to sell it.

I've kicked this decision down the road by a year or so because emotionally I don't want to part with my RV. I've put hundreds of hours into it, as well as a lot of money, but I'm spending so little time in San Francisco that it's about time I admit it doesn't make sense for me to keep it. So,time to take that leap into the next phase of my life and put it up for sale.

If you've been thinking about the RV lifestyle and want to live in the RV that started the Rialta craze, here's your chance. Or if you just want a cool RV or a pied-a-terre in San Francisco, this could be for you. I'm really hoping that a reader buys it because I'd like for it to "stay in the family", and maybe someone continues my work on it and takes it to the next level.

Living in the RV was one of the best decisions I ever made. I've saved tens of thousands of dollars by having it, it helped me appreciate minimalism, and it was a ton of fun. Many other people who have followed in my footsteps have said the same of their decision.

And just like that another year has passed! Every year of my life has been better than the last. I used to believe that this was a nearly universal experience, as every year you should become smarter, learn from your mistakes, build on your successes, deepen your relationships, etc. But I talked to some people who told me that their years are up and down. Very hard to comprehend, barring some major death or catastrophe.

Anyway, I like to write my annual wrap-up because it helps me get perspective on what I was able to do in a year, how I progressed, how I met or missed my goals, and it lets me set a little bit of direction for the next year.

Budapest

I really fell in love with Budapest as I mentioned in my annual wrap-up post last year. In May I had the idea to buy a place there with friends (not so original, as I've already done things like this), and I went there in August. Within six weeks we had closed and moved into the new place!

I switched to Linux a few years ago. Four, I think. It wasn't my first time— I remember driving with my friend Phil to pick up a Slackware Linux CD in 1997, being very excited about how different it was, and then switching back to Windows a couple weeks later when I wanted my computer to be usable again.

That's not a knock against Linux, but it was a complicated process to get it running properly and I didn't persevere through the process.

This cycle repeated every year or two. Each time I was heartened by how far Linux had come, but would regress back to Windows after some period of time.

This time it stuck, though. I was surprised when I was still using it two, then six months later. I was surprised when after a year Windows felt foreign to me.

And now it's time for the one post per year about which people bug me for months: the 2017 gear post.

I realized that a lot of non-subscribers read this post every year, so I thought I'd drop a little background for context.

I've been more or less a nomad since 2008, and was one of the very first to really travel in a minimalist (one small backpack) way. I'm sure others came before me (and my friend Todd), but none I'm aware of who were writing about it.

I still travel for half to two-thirds of the year, exclusively with the gear I'll outline below. And even though I obviously have more items at home (cooking stuff, gym shoes), I don't have any additional clothes or warm-weather gear. In any given year I go to warm places in the summer as well as cold places in the winter. I work full time from my laptop both programming and writing. In other words— this is all of the gear I have, and I use it to do a lot of stuff.

It begins with a basic acceptance that we will never really understand what's going on around us. We'll be wrong all the time, and oblivious even more frequently. It may feel as though we understand ourselves and our world around us, but the number of times we are wrong or surprised illustrates how little we actually know with certainty.

What do we do with this uncertainty?

We consider the facts that we accumulate, even though our perceptions on which those facts are based are often incorrect, and we fill in the gaps with assumptions that make sense. Then we turn those assumptions to fact with a magic wave of a mental wand.

This idea is uncomfortable for all of us, maybe even repulsive. It's hard to swallow the idea that the world is so big and complex that no one really understands with certainty much of what's going on.

For a long time I was very proud of the fact that no girl I had attempted to kiss had given me the cheek. I thought that this meant that I was a precision sniper of dating, finely attuned to the subtleties of the male-female dynamic. I knew when girls wanted that first kiss to happen and had been right every time.

I mentioned this to someone and they said something like, "Well, you're probably playing it way too safe then. You've avoided rejection, but you've probably not kissed a bunch of girls who wanted you to kiss them."

The wind was taken out of my sails immediately. I had been looking at it all wrong this whole time. Something I took as a sign of success was actually a sign of a different sort of failure.

If you never fail, you are leaving success on the table. It's comforting to imagine that you are perfect, but perhaps more likely that you aren't pushing far enough past your comfort zone.

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Although it started with religion, it's become a secular holiday that's pretty pure. Everyone who celebrates it does so with people they're close to, and they think about what they're thankful for. There's a bit of gluttony mixed in, but even that includes a lot of healthy food.

Today will be the first time I celebrate Thanksgiving with friends instead of family. I'm grateful to have the option, and it makes me think of how lucky I am to have such great friends and family. I love my friends as though they're family, and I consider my family members to be some of my closest friends as well.

The emotion I feel the most throughout my day is gratitude. I'm always thinking about the various people in my life and how lucky I am to have them there. I think about the people who were in my life but aren't anymore, and I'm grateful for how they affected me. I think about how lucky I am to have a roof over my head, Chipotle and sardines in my belly, and the ability to constantly travel around the world. I think about how glad I am that this world exists and that I get to be here. That one fluke alone is enough to flood my brain with gratitude.

And, of course, I'm grateful to have you and people like you reading my blog and my books. I was having dinner with my friend Ramit the other night and we were talking about blogging. I told him that I may not have as many readers as some other blogs, but that I thought my readers were the best group of readers out there. I'd take that trade any day. Whenever I meet you guys I'm totally humbled to have such smart and interesting people care about what I write.

I get called weird a lot. Not usually in a bad way, usually as a term of endearment. Looking at it objectively, I see the argument — I'm definitely a strange person who does unusual things.

The thing is, I don't feel weird. My day to day life feels pretty normal, and the decisions that I make also feel very standard. Take in input, process it, make the best decision possible, move on.

The disconnect, I think, is because of how I make those decisions. When I think about why I often end up doing very different things than most people, it boils down to one key distinction: I completely disregard decisions that others have made in similar scenarios.

Here's why. While everyone obviously has a ton in common with each other, we also have enough differences that decisions can't be made in a one-size-fits-all manner. You and I could be in the exact same scenario, but because we value different things and have different abilities, the correct decision for each of us could be opposite.

I get called weird a lot. Not usually in a bad way, usually as a term of endearment. Looking at it objectively, I see the argument — I'm definitely a strange person who does unusual things.

The thing is, I don't feel weird. My day to day life feels pretty normal, and the decisions that I make also feel very standard. Take in input, process it, make the best decision possible, move on.

The disconnect, I think, is because of how I make those decisions. When I think about why I often end up doing very different things than most people, it boils down to one key distinction: I completely disregard decisions that others have made in similar scenarios.

Here's why. While everyone obviously has a ton in common with each other, we also have enough differences that decisions can't be made in a one-size-fits-all manner. You and I could be in the exact same scenario, but because we value different things and have different abilities, the correct decision for each of us could be opposite.

Maybe you unexpectedly have a free week appear on your calendar. You've been working a lot recently and have been making a lot of money, so you decide to go on a last minute trip to Hawaii. Sounds like a good decision. I have an unexpected free week pop up, but I've been socializing too much. So I go to Vegas, hunker down, and work for a week. Also a good decision.

As you may have noticed, I've been very early on some big cultural trends. I was into pickup way before it was mainstream, was one of the first "digital nomads", was living in an RV before the tiny house craze, and was playing poker profitably before it went big, etc.

This isn't because I'm clairvoyant or because I invented any of these things, it's just because I'm very comfortable with risk and am willing to try new things and see what happens.

I thought that it would be fun to talk about some things that I think will happen in the future. Maybe I'll be right and maybe we'll laugh at how far off I am, but maybe some will resonate with you and you'll get into them earlier than you would have otherwise.

1. Shared Assets