The premise sounded really fascinating - a recent college grad leaves everything behind, except for the clothes on his back and $25. He was on a quest for the American Dream, to put it in corny terms, but basically just to prove that good livin' is still possible. His goal was to end the project after a year having a furnished apartment/dwelling, a vehicle, a steady job, and $2,500.

This was an informal rebuttal against Barbara Ehrenreich's books Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She's totally down on the American Dream. She argues that once you're poor, you stay poor, you can never get your head back above water, your life will progressively go downhill, and you'll be working shit jobs your entire life just to make ends meet. Granted, this is NOT a lie. Some people are like this. It's just really depressing to read Nickel and Dimed as a senior in high school and think, "Shit, I'm going to slave away my entire life and never get anywhere, and never be happy." So in that book, she left her life behind (except for say, her laptop, car I think, credit card, etc) and moved around to different cities to work retail jobs and try to find an apartment and make ends meet. She couldn't do it. She worked at Walmart, complaining for several chapters about this and that, yada yada. It's just a dark read, I felt bad with each page I turned. I haven't read the other book, and I sure as hell won't. Apparently she takes off trying to get a higher-up position in the corporate world, and can't get hired because she's a woman of a certain age. I call bullshit, but that's my opinion. Maybe it's fact, maybe it's a good book. Tell me if you've read it.

In comparison, Adam Shepard is a hero. Yeah, that's a strong word, and probably a little lame to use in this context. Sure, he took a year off to do a crazy experiment for no real reason. It's not a formal rebuttal against Ehrenreich, and as far as I know he didn't have a book deal or anything ahead of time, kind of sponsoring his project as she did. So he goes off to a randomly selected city using none of his contacts. He stays in a homeless shelter for 70 days, even though he'd gotten a steady job as a mover by that point, and was saving money like nobody's business. By the time he moves out, he's steady enough to stand on his own and not be forced back to the streets. His project lasts only half of the allotted time, because his mother's cancer comes back and he goes home to support her, but even in that short time he had accomplished all his goals. In fact, he had doubled his projected savings. Take THAT, Ehrenreich. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it, if you're driven.

That's what I take from this book. I'm not going to go out and attempt this project myself, but I loved reading about it. More than that, I love the inspiration it gave me. I come from a similar background to Shepard - supportive parents, never living paycheck to paycheck, having a good college education, pretty much being able to go where I want with what I have. So I shouldn't be complaining at all. A car wreck or hospital stay won't break me. I can lose my job and take time searching for another, because I have savings. But still, reading about his extreme drive was just what I needed to kick my ass. The last chapter of the book was more inspirational than any self-help book I've ever read the back of. And that he's so like me, and from my generation, and has this attitude makes me really optimistic. With his background: family, college education, being an athlete, being attractive, he could pretty much sit around and get stuff shoveled onto his plate for nothing. But he wants to work for his dreams, and that makes me want to work for MY dreams.

Ok, that was a whole bunch of chicken-soup-for-the-soul crap, but really, READ THIS BOOK if you want to feel hopeful.