Life lessons #1 – happiness can come from weird things

Hollywood movies will have you believe that life lessons come neatly packaged during events like graduation, marriage and when your high heel gets stuck in a grate as a garbage truck barrels towards you.

However, movie-style life lessons are stupid and wrong. Except of course for lessons from motion picture triumphs Christmas with the Kranks (lesson: don’t be a tight arse and solariums are never a good idea) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (lesson: chocolate is delicious and everyone is a jerk).

Here’s a life lesson involving deeply expensive hardware.

My highly anticipated $1400 ladder arrived recently at my still-being-constructed warehouse. I was so damn happy I did a series of medium kicks in a one person conga line around the warehouse (my hamstrings are very tight OK so actual high kicks are out) and told every person I came across about my ladder.

For the ladder appreciators out there, it’s a Bailey six step Platform ladder (with wheels!). This ladder means I can now retrieve furniture from the 2.4m high shelf without fear of falling off (which I am genetically predisposed to), or dropping anything on my head – which is quite common it turns out, but don’t tell Workcover plz.

A ladder you say! My goodness why didn’t you tell us earlier. This IS something worth blogging about. WHAT CUTTING EDGE WRITING/STORY BREAKING, YOU SHOULD COME AND WORK AT THE HERALD SUN.

But the thing is, the ladder is a metaphorical success signpost for my career change. STAY WITH ME GUYS. I worked in corporate communications for big ol’ companies for more than a decade, before co-founding Good Day Rentals in 2014 when I wasn’t able to hire vintage furniture for my own 2013 wedding. And it’s been a ride! Complete with doubts and high moments (with added medium kicks) and low times and exhilaration and exasperation and chairs falling on my damn head.

Making a $1400 ladder commitment is a major step because I wouldn’t need a ladder if I hadn’t purchased a warehouse, that we’ve then been setting up like a proper, actual, real working warehouse. The ladder says, “This ain’t no side gig that I am running out of my garage/shed/Tarago”. I mean, prior to this, the total I had spent out of my lifetime ladder budget was $0.00.

You may be thinking that I should have come to these career change conclusions earlier, say when, a) we bought the warehouse, or b) when we started major construction on the warehouse, or even c) when I started working full time in my business. But you would be wrong, dummies, because the moments of pointed realisation come in their own damn time, in their own damn way.

Frankly, they do not come as society tells us they will, which is why I have started penning the self-help book; “Career Change Ladder Recommendations Guide 2017”. It will definitely be a hit and won’t need to be self-published, thank you Mum.

You simply do not know what life will bring. When you are an eight year old who wants to be a rollerskating magician and coroner, you don’t know that the moments that will bring you great joy and satisfaction will be the one when your ladder arrives. Society tells you it will be other boring stuff like marrying the love of your life or getting your PHD or like saving someone’s life, but as I mentioned, these things are boring and you should wait until you have a ladder like mine to tell you that you’ve made the right decisions.

Other life lessons (which are mainly things my dad told me)