It Rained, Now I'm Homeless!?

In this heartfelt episode, Charles from the Mindfully Masculine podcast dives deep into the unexpected challenges he faced after Hurricane Milton left him without a home. Through his story, Charles shares personal insights on resilience, gratitude, and empathy for those experiencing homelessness. He explores the fine line between temporary hardship and chronic homelessness and reflects on the financial, mental, and social safety nets that helped him navigate this tough period.

Tune in as Charles discusses:

• His real-life hurricane experience and the flood damage to his RV, leaving him “homeless.”
• How support systems and resources can make a difference in crises.
• Insights on empathy, privilege, and the challenges faced by people without such support.
• Minimalism and the lessons he learned from losing his possessions.
• His recent journey to Texas for an unforgettable car-buying adventure.

This episode is a journey of personal growth and perspective, offering valuable lessons on resilience, community, and the importance of having people to lean on.

Keywords: Hurricane Milton, homelessness, resilience, minimalism, mental health, gratitude, community support, crisis recovery, privilege, empathy

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Hurricane Milton's Impact
• 2:34 Dealing with Loss and Insurance Woes
• 4:35 Newfound Empathy for the Homeless
• 5:49 Mental Health, Resilience, and the Role of Luck
• 16:24 Embracing Minimalism and Life Lessons
• 17:57 Adventure to Texas and Moving Forward

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles. In this very special episode I will discuss my experiences with old Hurricane Milton and the difficulties that it imposed on me and the adjustments I've had to make. We'll talk about some of my somewhat newfound empathy for the unhomed or homeless people or bums, depending on what generation you're from. We'll talk a little bit about insurance and recovery, mental health and resilience, perspectives on luck and success, minimalism, self-reliance versus asking for support. And then we'll talk a little fun, little fun stuff about my trip out to Texas to get a car for Dan and bring it back to him. So check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom. Anything that we find worth sharing will be there, including audio episodes and video episodes and anything else, and enjoy. Good morning sir. Hello again, dan. How's it going? It is going really well. How are you Really well is that's a high bar, but pretty good, not bad, all right, all right, going to be a busy day. So just wanted to.

Charles: 1:17

We've alluded in several of our episodes to the planning, the getting ready for hurricanes, the dealing with the aftermath of hurricanes, but we weren't really we haven't really talked about it since after Hurricane Milton.

Charles: 1:28

I think it went on shore around Siesta Key, just south of Tampa, and then wrought a bit of disaster in the west coast of Florida that I was not spared from. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I'd moved my RV from Bradenton up to Wesley Chapel, so going from South of Tampa to North of Tampa, and we got a fair amount of rain in the Wesley Chapel area, so much that the pond in my new campground overflowed and the management had me move from my spot that was close to the pond actually same spot that we were working with yesterday to a bit further over, but not far enough, and the water got real high, went up multiple feet to the boy. I had six inches of water, and that's six inches not from the ground but above the floor of my camper, which is probably what two feet, I'd say, above the ground. Oh yeah, I had six inches had to go over a tire yeah, a large tire and retire.

Charles: 2:34

Yeah, it got very high and stayed there for probably a couple days. So for a uh, 2015, 19 and a half foot rv, um, that much water is enough to pretty much destroy it. So my camper, as of what is that this? I'm sorry? October, the to I want to say it made landfall october 9th, so two weeks ago today, and, and from that point I've been fairly homeless for the last two weeks and, yeah, so, no more camper, no more RV. It still exists but it's not livable.

Charles: 3:14

I yeah, it hit overnight on Wednesday, the 9th, thursday the 10th Went to visit it on Saturday, the 12th, and the water had receded some, but not enough that I could actually get to it. That didn't happen until Monday, the 14th, when I got there. Yeah, it was pretty much anything that had been on the floor was ruined, destroyed. Lots of shoes man, I didn't realize I had so many shoes and they all got policed. Shoes, luggage and appliances were pretty much all destroyed, and that very quickly added up to the amount of insurance that I had for personal effects. So that's done. Very likely that the camper is totaled. I'll be shocked if it's not when the wood flooring of a camper that is almost 10 years old gets soaked in water. The idea of them replacing it and then engaging in mold remediation.

Dan: 4:07

I was about to say that's the expensive part. It's probably more expensive for the mold remediation than the actual flooring replacement.

Charles: 4:13

So I suspect I'll end up at some point when they're able to inspect it and see what the situation is. I'll just get a check for the policy amount of coverage that I bought and they'll take it away, and that'll be that. Yeah, so I'm living the life of a nomad, vagabond, wanderer. Call me what you will.

Dan: 4:33

It's not like you're sleeping under the studio table here.

Charles: 4:35

That's correct. Thankfully, you've been happy to put me and the cat up in your spare bedroom the last two weeks, along with some travel sprinkled in there, yeah, gave me a little bit of break from the reality of my day to day, which we'll talk about in a minute, but, yeah, it did provide me with a little bit of. Just because my place is not available certainly does not make me a homeless person, right, but it does provide a little bit of empathy and insight into people who don't know exactly what to expect as far as where they're going to sleep, yeah, and what it is that separates people dealing with a temporarily inconvenient housing situation to people who are homeless. There's, yeah, a big difference, a huge difference, and I attribute that difference to a couple things. I've got some money. I've got credit, which means I've got access to other money.

Dan: 5:25

I've got friends and a support system that are like, no, it's not okay for you to not have a place to lay your head and also you've got money from insurance that you're planning on putting into another place to live, versus whatever your needs might be or wants might be in terms of food, alcohol, drugs whatever it might be right.

Charles: 5:49

Yeah, I don't have an addiction or a mental health issue either. That is providing an undercurrent of helplessness and lack of options, because my number one thing is I need heroin or I need alcohol or whatever. I don't have to deal with that. Yeah, it's. It's definitely given me a perspective on okay, what? What is it that gets people into these situations in such a way that they feel like they can't get out and I, I don't have to deal with any of those challenges. So it is.

Charles: 6:20

It's a bummer not being able to go to my place that I've made the way that I want it, I've been comfortable with for going on six years now. It's not an option that doesn't exist anymore, Right, and so sort of roll with the punches. But, yeah, it is the difference between inconvenience and feeling like trapped with no way out, and so I'm very grateful for yeah, for the money I've got, the job that I've got, the people I've got in my life where it's okay. Something like this happens and you can get through it, because you know that there are resources and people that are not going to be okay, with you just struggling your way through Absolutely.

Dan: 6:58

And next time you face something that is not nearly as difficult, you can think back and go, oh shit, I was able to survive. Yeah, is not nearly as difficult. You can think back and go, oh shit, I I was able to survive. Yeah, this building this is not being not having a house.

Charles: 7:07

And I was able to pull out of that and, yes, maybe even potentially be in a better situation because correct, yes, and so yeah, and just having this idea of when I first got the inkling of, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be something that I have to deal with is, yeah, and it's going to be. This is going to be something that I have to deal with is, yeah, and it's going to be some rough weeks or months, but it's not forever and I can yeah, I can just handle this inconvenience and things are going to be okay, or better than okay, in the not too distant future. It does.

Charles: 7:38

My heart goes out to people that don't have those feelings where it's I don't know, this sucks and I don't know that it's going to be any better tomorrow. Yeah, of those feelings where it's I don't know, this sucks and I don't know that it's going to be any better tomorrow, and that would certainly break me down. It caused me to make a lot of bad decisions and, yeah, it's rough. So I feel bad for people that lose their housing because of storms, people that lose their housing because of mental illness, because of addiction, because of family that they can't count on. It sucks, but I'm just so grateful that I've got the best version of this disaster that you could really have, which is I've got money, I've got credit, I've got insurance and I've got friends that I can count on. And for the people that don't have that man, I don't know how they get through it.

Dan: 8:18

I understand how some people don't get through it. And you got to give yourself some credit because, with all the mental health work that you've been doing and all the things that you've been creating for yourself, you can come in with the right type of attitude, knowing, hey, this is temporary. Putting in perspective and going, hey, listen, I have other resources and so because of that I can be resourceful, right and figure things out. And you have that. You've done things in the past where you have that confidence that you know you have the capability to figure it out, so you're not hopeless at that point. You've got the skill set. You may not know where you need to apply it, what skills you need to apply, but you do have that self-confidence to know that, regardless of whatever that is that comes along, you'll be able to handle it.

Charles: 9:06

Yeah, and even that part of it has come down to just being grateful for yeah, and even that part of it has come down to just being grateful for luck. The older I get, the more I realize that so much of the good or bad circumstances we find ourselves in really does come down to luck, the idea of good for me. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps. It's like well, I didn't pick my IQ, I didn't pick my level of self-discipline, I didn't pick any of those Before I became a person.

Charles: 9:37

I didn't fill out like the piece of paper, like we ordered sushi that says I want 150 IQ and I want really high conscientiousness and I want strong willpower. And I'm going to go ahead and, like you, either get those things or don't get those things, based on circumstances that are completely out of your control. And, yeah, coming at looking at your life with either a sense of shame or a sense of pride seems equally foolish to me. It's no, I'm grateful for the luck that I had, not for these things that I accomplished. I'm completely self was. Did I try to make things better for myself?

Dan: 10:01

And I think that's where you can go back and go. Yeah, I did try and because I tried that that took consistent, continuous decisions to say I'm going to put effort into this because I see that this is going to be important to me. Right, and not everybody makes that decision? I think not everybody makes that decision and not everybody can.

Charles: 10:33

That's the point I keep coming back to. Yeah, even the decision of I'm going to try to make a better life for myself. Yeah, there are some people that, for whatever reason, their programming doesn't even let them make that choice. Either they're born with a learning or developmental disability or they just don't have an example of I've got nobody in my life. It's hard. Yeah, I've been an example. Yeah, try to make their life better. So therefore, you can't make your life better by trying you're not even aware that it might exist yeah, and that's interesting.

Dan: 11:00

I was just talking to my girlfriend the other day where I just told you that story, where it's just, she showed me like a world that, or to me, was a universe that I had no idea existed. Yeah, at the same time that we were going through and which long story short, basically it was a few tube videos of armenian comedy troops making fun of people from georgia, right, not, and not the state, right, yeah, and it was like in front of this huge stadium, or not stadium, but a huge studio audience, and it looked like it would been like a game show out of the 90s that we used to watch, like price is right or whatever, and it was it. And it was like it was all happening at the same time. We were watching price is right, bob barker and people going nuts for that stuff, right, it was going on at the same time.

Dan: 11:44

I had no awareness of it until literally last week and she showed me these youtube videos of it and to me that was amazing because, holy, how it put things in perspective, right, just when I thought, you know, I was maybe getting a little big for my britches, thinking I know some things. Wow, how much. I don't know how much I have not experienced right that. And yeah, I see that. Yeah, if you don't have those examples in your life, you're not lucky enough to have friends, family or an environment that shows you what success looks like. Yeah, you may never get there. You may not ever know that it exists or what alternatives look like.

Charles: 12:18

Yeah, I just I was, as you were saying that I was thinking how you know, there will be these lists that come out with the top touring musicians or the top touring comedians, and so much of the time maybe it's because I'm getting older I'm like, okay, yes, I've heard of them and I probably heard some of their music, but I had no idea that, like, droves of people are interested in going to see them. When you read that, like, u2 is still one of the top touring bands, I can't even remember the last album they put out and they're still high on that list. That my mind. Yeah, and it's. Or even bruce springsteen I know he's super popular, I love. I know older folks older than us love to go see him, but I can't. You want me to tell you the last album he released or a single from the last album. Like I, I've not heard new music from him in 25 years. I had no idea that. Yeah, maybe he's not making new music. Maybe people are going to hear the hits I. I have no clue what he's. No idea that, yeah, maybe he's not making new music. Maybe people are going to hear the hits I. I have no clue what he's out there doing 100, but he's still making hundreds of millions of dollars. That's a great way of thinking about it. Yeah, yeah, so there's.

Charles: 13:20

It's possible that there's stuff going on in the world that you have no concept of, that it's even a thing out there. Yeah, some of it's really big and really popular and it's just not your thing, so you don't know. Yeah, and yeah, when I think about the experiences that people have, either recovering from storms or recovering from addiction or mental health issues, it's yeah, I've got and again, I'm not certainly not saying now I've got it all figured out, because I, my camper, got destroyed in a hurricane, but it's okay. I do understand that there are there are things that happen with the flick of a switch or OK, now my life's been turned upside down and now I've got to deal with it. And thankfully, I've got all these people and things that I can lean on to make this suck as little as possible. Yeah, where there's got to be people that have none of those things and they still have to figure out a way through it, yeah, and some of them don't.

Dan: 14:09

They fall through the cracks and they're stuck yeah, and it's interesting because the reverse is also true in this case. Right like you, you've never lost your home before, right, so you weren't even like aware of all the experiences and all the things that losing your home brings up. Like you weren't even aware of all those things still starting to happen. Yeah, so it's another thing that brought into your awareness, just like somebody else may not know, that a different method of living that might be better for them exists. Yeah, you didn't realize all the things that you need to deal with from losing your home. Yeah, now that gives you that insight to.

Charles: 14:38

Yeah, thankfully yeah, when I one of my customers he lost his house in hurricane andrew and he had a house at homestead and it just got completely pancaked from the hurricane. And when I told him him what happened to me, he's like, okay, here's what you want to do. And he just ran down a list of all the stuff that I hadn't even considered about getting a new place to live and dealing with the insurance company. And it's just yeah, wow, I'm so thankful that you've got all this knowledge. I wish I didn't, because I had to. What I had to go through to learn these things was not fun. And now if somebody comes to me with, okay, the next hurricane, I'm fine, but somebody else got completely hammered in, I can say, all right, here are the things you might want to consider when it comes to getting back on your feet.

Dan: 15:23

It all comes down to your why. Right, if he had started telling you about all these things and you hadn't lost your house, you'd be like all right, all right, that's okay, it's interesting, but you probably would have been in one year out the other. You would have remembered maybe 30% of it. But now I'm hanging out every word that the guy yeah.

Charles: 15:35

Now that Y is hitting home Exactly. Oh, I can do that. I can use insurance. In this way, I can deal with. Yeah, I had just stuff that didn't even occur to me, and so he'll be getting a nice gift basket after. I'm on the other side for all that information. But yeah, so I'm fine, the cat's fine. Once we knew that the hurricane was going to hit, I loaded up the cat, we headed over to your place with a fair amount of change of clothes and I'm down to two pairs of. I currently own two pairs of shoes right now. I own the pair of dock siders that were in my car already, for whatever reason, and a pair of my Mural Nova 3 Gorkex's that I never stopped talking about. And those are it. Those are the two pair I own.

Dan: 16:15

So do you think that's the most traumatic piece of this whole thing for you is just, you're down to two pairs hey, my man, financially it was a big impact.

Charles: 16:24

Yeah, when I made that spreadsheet for the insurance company of here, all yeah lost. Like almost half of it was shoes and I was like you know what, when it comes to rebuilding this collection, I don't need as many shoes, and so I'm going to I'm going to do a little bit better with my minimalism when it comes to how many pairs of dress shoes do I actually think that I need, and how much. Now, I'll still spend the same amount of money per pair.

Dan: 16:47

I just don't know many pairs now, that being said, your new place has a little bit more space than the old one. Are you then going to be a little tempted to fill that space with? Yeah, I don't know shoes.

Charles: 17:00

Yes, I'm going to, definitely gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna resist that urge to grow, grow into the new fish ball yeah because that is something that we do. Yeah, the the serenity that I experience looking around my place and seeing surfaces that don't have anything on it.

Dan: 17:17

I need to remember how good that feels, Because yeah, take some pictures of before and then put it on like a vision board, literally.

Charles: 17:25

Yeah, because I do tend to cover up spaces with stuff that I think is essential. That's not really essential, and so I'm going to make an effort to reduce my small appliances and things like that so that I don't have a bunch of stuff around that I think I need, that I don't actually need, and find places to store it so that it only comes out when I need it, while I need it, and then it goes away. That's great thing too. So, yeah, wipe nice clean, wipe down surfaces. I love those, and I'm going to do everything I can to make that as consistent as I can Sounds good.

Charles: 17:57

Yeah, so that's what's going on. The trip I alluded to in the middle of not having a place was you decided that you wanted to do some car shopping for your birthday. I did. And we went on some trips. We spent a lot of time online. We spent some time in person looking around at vehicles, trying to figure out what the market was and what a good deal looked like versus a bad deal. Uh-huh, and we ended up finding a good deal, but it wasn't local.

Dan: 18:20

No, none of these places were local, turns out, not really local.

Charles: 18:24

We went down and we took the Brightline to Miami one day to go take a look and do some test driving and stuff like that, but didn't find a mix Car product plus salesman product that we found appealing down in the Miami area and so none of those panned out.

Dan: 18:38

But we found you a nice, nice sample out in texas y'all yeah, I didn't realize that actually that trip is further than from where I'm from in new jersey. If we were to drive down oh really, you drove, yeah, further than I guess that makes sense yeah, by five or six hundred miles, I would look at. No, yeah, really I think it's under a thousand miles. For if you're in New Jersey, yeah, wow, yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, it just me either.

Charles: 19:00

I didn't realize, I think it is Interesting, yeah, so anyway, yeah, you found one and yeah, thank you. We went through the process of you, went through the process of purchasing it remotely, and then I hopped on a plane and went and got it for you.

Dan: 19:14

Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely grateful. Thank you for making that trip and offering to do that for probably what is going to be a little bit less than getting it shipped over from a bunch of skeevy car carriers.

Charles: 19:27

Yeah, I'm going to add up my expenses today. Yeah, and we've talked about we're going to see Tony Robbins next month up in Jersey, and you had already bought both of our cause. They had a deal right when if you bought a pair of tickets, you'd save a little bit of money over for a single ticket. So you bought them and I owed you the money and I just figured, okay, let me go get this car for you and then my expenses will pay you back for, yeah, no, that that works. And yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to work through. And then I thought the whole trip was going to get real expensive because I lost your key fob At least I thought I did and they gave two, came with the car. Yeah, could not be found and I thought that I had maybe left it in one of the hotels or I had maybe thrown it away by accident.

Dan: 20:10

So I called the Give it to a homeless person, all the usual stuff after feeling a little guilty.

Charles: 20:17

Go and all the usual stuff. After feeling a little guilty, go ahead and sleep in this overnight. You look cold, yeah. So I called the local dealer to say hey, I think I lost a key fob, I need to replace it. What's this going to cost me? And the number was $900. But that was with tax, yeah, that was tax-inclusive $900. And so I was like I'm going to go ahead and dig through my bag one last time and see if maybe I put this and sure enough, it was in the laptop compartment of my osprey backpack, and boy, I felt so good pulling it out of there the amazing nice.

Dan: 20:44

The amazing thing is the why wasn't strong enough for you to check the backpack until you got the 900 cost? Oh yeah, once I got the 900 number.

Charles: 20:53

It's like I am checking every nook and cranny of this backpack yeah yeah, full stop.

Charles: 20:59

Whatever I'm doing, I'm I'm opening every, I'll go through every pocket, I'm going through every, everything. And sure enough, it had somehow gotten into the laptop compartment, which I never would have put it in on purpose, obviously, yeah, but there it was, and it was literally like I just found nine crisp hundred dollar bills, and that's that felt so good, because I'd already decided there's no way I'm letting Dan say, oh, it's okay, this was on me. Blah, blah, blah, like that's not happening.

Dan: 21:23

Oh, that wasn't going to happen. By the way, dan was not going to ever say that.

Charles: 21:26

I said you know you could be a little too forgiving sometime. I see another Absolutely guilty.

Dan: 21:36

No, I'm working on that, but what I was concerned with really was just and again it might have been just maybe an over-paranoia about people like scanning the key and being able to then use that Because they can. So they're basically saying you should keep your keys in one of those Faraday bags so people can't scan them and then unlock your car because they can scan the, the code on the key yeah, the.

Charles: 22:00

I wasn't too the the idea of them getting you out of a garbage can or a hotel room in Texas and having any, any, I was wrestling with that.

Dan: 22:09

I was wrestling with that. I'm like all right, but uh, yeah. But then I found they deactivate.

Charles: 22:14

Oh, if you tell them it's lost, yes, okay gotcha, it would make sense, right, they would have to be able to do that. That does make sense. But I'm glad, thankfully, we didn't have to go down that road. I didn't have to give away $900 to a dealership.

Dan: 22:32

Or an extra. It's not even like the key that I'd be using all the time. It was the extra too, not?

Charles: 22:37

even. It's not even like the key that I'd be using all the time. It was the extra. Yeah, and I'm currently living with I only have one key to my car and I, yeah, oh, I need to get another one, but then for that I'm gonna pay 20 of the value of my car to get another key. I think so, yeah, I'm gonna learn to live life with one key right, and that's how I make so many of the choices.

Charles: 22:55

When it comes to that car, or every time somebody tells me that it's going to cause this to replace, fix the fuel gauge, or replace the motor, for the actuator, for the window going up and down, I immediately, okay, here's what I paid for the car, here's the percentage of the total value of the car that you're telling me this is going to cost. And then I decide either yes, I need that or no, I do not need that. In many cases, it's no, I don't need that. Yeah, yeah, it's. When you drive a cheap 27 year old beater, it's easy to do that math, okay, so, anyway, that's what's going on with me. I'm gonna probably try to rush to push this episode out sooner than later, so that we're recording it on wednesday, the 23rd of october, and I just want people to know a little bit about my experience of dealing with a hurricane in the aftermath and all that so that it's out there and fear not Rough.

Charles: 23:38

Things can happen and you can figure out ways to deal with them, or you can figure out ways to ask for help and get help from the people in your life. Part of it does come down to boy. You know what you better. Live a life where you're willing and lucky and privileged to jump in and help people when they need it. Lucky and privileged to jump in and help people when they need it, because, look, if you're a miserable prick, then people aren't going to be bending over backwards to help you out.

Charles: 24:02

And in some ways I certainly am a miserable prick, but in other ways, yeah, I do try to live a life where people know that they can count on me when they need me, and so at least you're not just a miserable, right? That's the thing you gotta. You gotta be a miserable prick in a funny way, and you also have to be nice to people sometimes too. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, because it does. It is uncomfortable for me to live in your spare room for a couple of weeks. That is you've. You've made it very easy for me, but it's still. One does have the thought of okay, how can I get by without having to rely on other people? At least having to rely on other people, at least I do, and I don't know that's just a me thing or a man thing or a human thing. Well, it sure would be great if I could figure out a way where I could make it through life without ever having to count on anybody.

Dan: 24:42

That is a thought that does occur to me yeah, and ideally, if you're going for that, I think that's fine, but I don't think it's realistic because, yeah, there's always going to be a time and place where you're going to need some help and you're not going to be able to do it, and it's even in this modern day and age where we have so many conveniences. It's still, I think, really hard to just go through life and never need assistance or help from anybody, and it's unrealistic and I don't think it makes you a selfish person. But now, if you go in the other direction and you're always looking for handouts and you're never trying to do anything for yourself, that's the other right.

Charles: 25:17

You don't want to go there, but I think yeah, try to figure out some kind of balance in life where you're, yeah, letting people help you who want to help you, and you're also delivering value and making those people feel like you're available for them when they need you. Yeah, it's really the only way that I think you can have a healthy, happy life. Right, absolutely yeah, but it does take some work. When we're social animals, when you're not comfortable letting people do things for you, you got to just say, okay, look, it's part of your personal development, it's part of your growth, man, yeah.

Charles: 25:48

Anyway, that's what's going on with me. I thought people might be entertained by the story and maybe some of the potential insights that I've gotten to gain as a result. So there we are. Thank you very much, dan, for both recording this episode with me and letting me live in your house for two weeks, and I will talk to you soon, anytime, bye. Thank you for listening to the entire episode about my recent problems and challenges and my complaints and perspectives on them. I appreciate it, dan, and I know that you have lots of choices when it comes to your men with a microphone in front of them, podcasts, and we're glad you picked ours. Check out our website, mindfully masculinecom, for anything we think is worth sharing. Bye.