This Always Happens

A few years ago Lindsey and I were looking for a new house to rent, still resisting the double-edged sword of homeownership.

One day we find a property we like and set up a tour. The couple who owns the house texts us the address which we copy/paste into our GPS, then drive nearly an hour to the location.

But when we arrive, we are staring at an empty field. No house in sight.

I ‘force quit’ the GPS app and start over. After a 10 minute detour we end up at the same empty field again.

So I call the owners.

“Hi Dan, it’s Brian and Lindsey. We’ve been driving around for a while and can’t find the house. We put it in the GPS just as you texted it. Did you accidentally type the wrong address?”

“Oh,” he says, “this always happens. The GPS gets this address wrong for some reason. It’s always sending people to an empty field. Stay on the phone and I’ll guide you to the house from there.”

*sigh*

What a joke

We’re going to talk about “this always happens” syndrome, but first, a classic joke:

A couple on a tight budget move into a small apartment and decide to change the wallpaper in the dining room.
They ask a neighbor with an identical dining room how many rolls of wallpaper he bought when he did his dining room.
“Seven,” he says.
So the couple buy seven rolls of wallpaper and get to work. When they get to the end of the fourth roll, the dining room is finished.
Frustrated, they tell the neighbor, “We did exactly what you told us, but we ended up with three extra rolls!”
The neighbor raises an eyebrow and says, “Oh, that happened to you too?”

I’m a sucker for classic joke-jokes, and our house hunting experience a few years ago felt like I was living one.

Here’s the point:

Apparently it never occurred to the owners of the rental house to warn visitors that the GPS location is always wrong. And if you’re being honest, there’s something in your life or business you’ve simply ignored out of convenience.

Change

I’ve been putting off baby-proofing the drawers in my 19-month-old toddler’s room.

Every night we go into his Hundred Acre Wood themed nursery to start the bedtime routine, and every night he makes a bee-line for the drawers and joyfully starts opening and slamming them. And every night we get into a fight with him asking him to stop, then telling him to stop, then physically pulling him away from the drawers.

For months I walk out of his room, close the door as he grumps himself to sleep, and say to my wife, “I gotta babyproof those drawers.”

But I’m not handy, and when it comes to tools, the Resistance is real.

Then last weekend I was in the right mood to tackle the project. I cleared the entire afternoon and… it only took 30 minutes. Easy-peasy.

That night Milo runs to the drawers at bedtime, pulls one and… it won’t budge. He tries the other two. Same thing! He looks up at me, shrugs, peacefully gets his jammies on, kisses me on the cheek, and goes to sleep.

And all I can think about is how silly we wasted so much energy for months, when 30 minutes solved a repetitive problem.

Change is hard. But in many ways, not changing is harder.

Is your email signature outdated? Do you have a broken link on your website? A typo in your LinkedIn profile?

Find something that’s broken you’ve decided is easier to live with than to fix, and fix it.

Nothing should always go wrong.