Sunday’s Inspiration: Homeless, Aimless, Gameless – My Fall From Grace In September 2025

“Saw a vagabond king wear a Styrofoam crown, wondered if I might end up the same” – Jon Bon Jovi.

This time it was me. Homeless. Aimless. Gameless. Grace fall. Vagabond. Nomad. Nowhere. Lost. Lonely. Lazy. My world had come down. It was always going to…

With the lifestyle I have lived for 22 years, the wheels of my life were always going to fall off at some point. I knew it myself. I have never had stability. From 2003 to 2025, I’d estimate I have slept in 5,000 different rooms spanning about 20 flats I rented (I will blog that sometime, as I have a list and timelines) plus 1,000 hostels, 1,000 hotels/other spanning 230 countries. I have slept on/in hundreds of flights, buses, cars, trains, taxis, boats. I have slept on/in hundreds of airport floors, bus stations, train stations. I have slept in mate’s flats, farmer’s barns, couchsurfing places, tents, offices and I slept in a bus depot once when I fell asleep on the bus and the driver locked it without noticing me. Plus a few months in tents obviously.

“Little by little the wheels of your life are slowly falling off” – Noel Gallagher.

I can’t put my finger on when the decline started, but I’d hazard a guess it was on 15th November 2014.

My travel blog and life peaked at that exact point. I had no idea it would be a peak. Everything was easy. I backpacked non-stop without a home from June 2014 on leaving Hong Kong to July 2016 when I finally rented a flat in Gdansk. In that 25 month period, I had no home, I paid no rent, I wasn’t based anywhere. I was a proper nomad. I loved it. Life was easy. In fact, from July 2013 to January 2017 I was never in the same flat for longer than 4 months, and only had one fixed job in that time. The rest was all blogging and freelancing.

I’ve now written over 5,000 blog posts and about 12 books. Busy busy writing on the move. To be a writer, you don’t always need to be online, you can write on paper and on an offline laptop. To be a blogger, you need to at least connect online every few days, but I write blog posts offline too, and schedule them in advance.

Yet it was during that amazing nomadic period that I split up with Panny Yu and somehow fell in love with another girl, both of whom would change my fate. Neither of whom really wanted to be part of my life and the Don’t Stop Living journey. The second one lised so much to the point I was spiralling out of control. I penned a song on her “Drowning in the Ocean Of You”.

“Drowning in the ocean of you” – Jonny Blair on MSL.

I did everything myself for those 3 years or so. Hong Kong was left behind; being based in Kyrgyzstan was a brief safety net. But nothing was concrete.

I always had a rough plan of what I was doing and where I was going next, but some days I’d wake up and be due to leave that hostel, yet I’d extend another day. Everything was spontaneous. I was never far from being homeless at any time. At one point I was non-stop nomadic for over 2 years, that in itself is almost like being homeless but on the move. Looking back, I don’t know how the hell I managed that for over 2 years…

Before the wheels fell off – life was nuts again! While back in England, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland in August 2024 I was still having the time of my life – I watched Oasis again, went out and about in Cork, Dublin, Bangor and Belfast. Oasis reunion was mind-blowing.

I enjoyed touring Bangor and Belfast again – loved them both, years on…

I watched Glentoran again – we went top of the league by beating Glenavon 2-0.

Then I spent a wild week in England visiting Bournemouth, London, Stansted, Basingstoke, Winchester, Salisbury and King’s Somborne. I watched AFC Bournemouth again – we went second in the league at one point.

During that week, I reminisced 31 years later in the Heathlands Hotel, my travel blog turned 18 in Salisbury, which was such irony as that was where I first got paid to write about travel!!! Don’t Stop Living became professional in Salisbury. I also reviewed a prison cocktail bar in London with Millwall Neil. On the outside, things looked good. On the inside, this barmy life had come to a dramatic end.

And then came the news that I was homeless. The owner of my flatshare in Olsztyn Poland was selling up and I had to be out within a few days. At late notice I luckily found a storage place and put my stuff in there, thanks to a friend. That was a Godsend, but once I locked the door on that storage place I realised I was nowhere. I had nowhere to sleep. I was on the street. I was homeless.

A blocked bank card, another card overdrawn, lingering debts and no financial stability had left me out in the cold air. Alone. Vagabondic. Nomadic. I couldn’t even go down the pub and think about life. I went to the park, I slept in a garage, I slept on a bench. I had wasted all the money I had earned through blogging, teaching and working online. I received a lot of help and I don’t think it is fair to mention those who helped me, some asked not to be named. Mum and Dad paid for a night in a hotel. The rest of the help came from good contacts down the years and reaching out on social media. I was given a reprieve by a local business owner in Olsztyn who let me sleep on the floor in his business for a week while I blogged my ass off, taught online and tried to get the money together to pay the massive fee to move into a new flat. Every flat I viewed was beyond budget. You need to pay a month’s rent and a month’s deposit (which we all know id “dead money” – you never get it back). The officer floor had tea and coffee which was good and I drank tap water and ate bread and butter only.

Then by luck I found a landlord who only wanted half a month’s rent to start with, so I could afford it. I moved in at the end of September, and collected my stuff from the storage place, which I also slept in, in darkness and discomfort. Dreams and nightmares were wild.

I got through it and by the end of September 2025, I was in a flat again, paying rent once a month. I started a more regular teaching job in a school in 2025 as well. I will perhaps write about all that in the new year. Right now, I am focused on clearing debts and trying to work life all out again. Life has calmed down to a slow pulse here in Poland’s Lake District.

My next book, Average Inhabitant is also now extremely delayed. I had hoped to release it by December 2025 at the latest. Bang goes another dream.

I am unsure of what the future holds for me now. Something new needs to happen soon. Don’t Stop Living

“Illusion never changed into something real” – Natalie Imbruglia.