The Start of Naked Nomad

Who exactly is that naked girl, what is she doing with that keyboard?

Hi, my name is Julia. I’m a naturist.

That’s a nudist just in case you weren’t sure.

I say that because I’ve seen people use “naturist” and “naturalist” interchangeably to the point where I’m no longer sure if they’re talking about someone who likes to be bare or someone who likes to watch bears. It’s hard to tell these days.

I suppose one could surmise that it’s natural to be a naturist, just like it’s purposeful to be a porpoise, or grateful to be a great fool.

One could only imagine a naked David Attenborough on a sailing vessel with the wind flopping his weenie while chasing a pod of dolphins along the California coast, or a naked Jane Goodall flopped over the shoulder of a silverback in the jungles of Tanzania.

If you’re going to be a naturalist, why not be a naturist too?

But I digress…

I’m a freelance writer, a copywriter primarily. I’ve been earning a living at this for seven years now.

I live and work in a van. No, not while permanently parked in a downtown slum riddled with tents, plastic tarps, and shopping carts. I drive this thing up and down the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle and back, year after year. I don’t have any particular reason to connect these dots together other than the need to end the boredom of being in one place for too long.

Independent contracting has been my thing from the very start of my writing career. Most of my work goes to a company that owns numerous publications printed on cheap fish wrap normally stacked up in wire racks inside truck stops and 24-hour restaurants across the United States. A lot of it is advertorial; but there’s also volumes of page-fodder intended for commercial drivers who want to read something with their steak and eggs that won’t require a longer journey through their cerebral cortex. It’s rote, it’s laborious, it’s dry, it begs me to toss in one, just one, alliterative amalgamation of adjectives to stir up an otherwise boring pursuit of two-, three-, and four-letter lexicography sandwiched between panels of truck wash and adult boutique advertisements.

But alas, I’m not allowed to.

Oh, and I also write the copy for the truck wash and adult boutique advertisements. Try these on for size… “Where the women drive stick and the guys get kicks!” or, “Because a clean machine is a trucker’s dream!”

Yeah, this is where the QWERTY gods decided my contribution to the Universe shall rest.

And of course, it all makes sense they would choose a twenty-something year old, naked, introverted nerd living in a van camped deep inside the forest to regurgitate all this inane infotainment, month after month, year after year. I mean, I could have been an Instagram influencer shooting photos of my bare legs hanging out of the back of a van along the Oregon coast, waiting for someone to pay me $500.00 to give them a shout out. I could have been the token creative girl swinging in a hammock in a Manhattan ad agency, dictating ad copy for some French brand of scented cat urine. Or I could just be doing lesbian prison porn with a pair of 200-pound custard-bellied prison guards with a taste for boobies and bacon grease.

But I can’t complain.

Ghost writing gives me the freedom to live the nomadic lifestyle I want.

I mean, thank God, I don’t have to sit in one of those San Francisco sweat shops churning out “top ten list” videos for a media company run by bearded millennials wearing man buns and Pendleton shirts. And thank God, I don’t have a job requiring me to drive to the scene of a school shooting where I shove a microphone into the mouth of a wailing mother and then ask the camera guy if we can get audio. And thank God, I don’t have to sit on a downtown sidewalk holding a sign that says, “I lost my job to ChatGPT!”

Well, that last part could still happen.

The truth is that I’ve got my own shit too. I’m overly shy and very much introverted. I’m just a skinny five-foot-four-inch-tall van hermit who stays in her head far too often stringing together 5-cent words laced with 5^th grade humor, trying hard to stay in my head long enough to ignore the ground swell cacophony of chafed concerns that linger in my soul. And that suits me because I’m much more controlled at expressing myself through my fingertips.

And that brings up this other thing…

I want to start writing fiction.

I mean, as you read this, you’d never know how hard I pound the keyboard in anger. The letters of the alphabet that I strike with angst are the same artful and gentle characters as those you’d see from Angelou, Emerson, or Seuss. Yet somehow, my letter “A’s” will never become as guilded as theirs. Even trashy romance novels get saved for later on bookshelves. Meanwhile, my newsprint ends up as splooge rags for truck drivers.

And that’s why I want to start writing fiction.

I want to write stories that involve a naturist or someone discovering naturism. I think I have a unique perspective on humanity, society, even physiology, from the standpoint of being nude 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I think fiction is a more effective vehicle for illustrating the concepts that swirl through the neural nexus in my noggin. I mean, Rand could have easily barfed up essays about free markets, but instead she wrote stories, and now look at the impact she’s had!

How everyone defines beauty is another thing I have a problem with. It’s always about what people hide behind rather than what they bring out. Beauty is defined in terms of clothing, jewelry, perfume, hairstyles, accessories, even expensive cars… What about the beauty of a normal, natural, human being? Does Elle ever put out an issue of naked people with no makeup and plain, natural hair? Aren’t there any magazines that show photos of just regular, naked people?

Oh wait, I guess there’s National Geographic.

Okay, I didn’t mean to suggest this new Substack as being focused on society’s maladjusted standards of surface sumptuousness. There’s already a lot of investigative journalism diving into the social dysfunction of cosmetic surgeries, fast fashion, and the whole “fear of missing out”.

You certainly don’t need moi trogging in the same 800-pound gorilla!

Rather, this Substack is going to be about how naturism changes people, their priorities, their paradigms, even their physiology.

Everyone should spend a full weekend being naked, from when they finish up work on Friday afternoon, to when they get ready for work the following Monday morning. They should not wear a single item of covering, not even a pair of socks, that entire time. That should be a once-a-month thing for everyone.

Why?

Well, that’s the point of this Substack.

I mean, there’s a reason why Naked Yoga is a thing!

If this piques your interest, if this sounds like an exploration you want to dive into some more, then give me a subscribe.

No, I’m not going to post photos of myself, at least not beyond my avatar! I’m not here to help guys get through their cans of Crisco! There’s plenty of naked girls you can watch elsewhere…

Is anyone reading this?

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