e were standing side by side in the shop where we worked. I was twenty years old. He was twenty-eight.
‘The problem, Carly, is that no-one really gets to do what they want for a living. You can’t just go knocking on The Age’s door demanding a job. You might think you’re a big fish in a small pond here but there are a hundred girls just like you in Melbourne. Girls who are smarter and cooler than you, who have been playing the game for twice as long. No one will give you a second glance. I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m just being realistic.’
My run-away-to-Melbourne-and-live-as-a-freelance-writer conversation wasn’t going very well but he was only being honest. He’d lived in Melbourne trying to make it as a musician. It didn’t work out so he had to move back in with his parents in our home town. The hustle was hard and the industry was a bastard. He was just trying to warn me because he knew. There was no point in trying because that’s just the way it works out. ‘You shouldn’t even bother unless your last name is Murdoch.’
I nodded at everything he said. He was right. It was really hard. I probably wouldn’t make it.
The next day, I went to work at my other job at a newsagency. My favourite customer came in that day. Every Sunday she’d buy an adult services advertisement in the paper. Her hair was short, messy and blonde. She’d fluff it up with her long red nails, charm bracelets and beaded earrings tinkling every time she moved. She’d steal me away from the counter to the office out the back to help her write that weeks hook. Her clients liked the variety and I liked coming up with PG ways of saying ‘full sex and blow jobs’ so it could be printed in the local paper.
She asked me about Melbourne. I told her I was having second thoughts. I knew a guy who’d tried to make it in the music industry and it just seemed impossible. She stopped writing and looked at me.
‘Do you want to be scraping by, working part-time at any job you can find, living at your parent’s place in a town you hate when you’re nearly thirty?’
I shook my head.
‘Then why are you are taking advice from someone who’s scraping by working part-time at any job he can find, living at his parent’s place in a town he hates when he’s nearly thirty?’
She finished filling out her ad form and gathered up her enormous handbag. Flinging it over her shoulder she hollered ‘You better be living in Melbourne the next time I come in.’
I did move to Melbourne. I didn’t get a job at The Age despite relentlessly tweeting Jan Breen Burns every fashion week. I am a freelance writer. For now. I think ignoring the advice of my workmate over a decade ago was a pretty good life choice.
Failure sucks and no one plans on it. My ‘realistic’ workmate really was trying to help but the best thing I’ve ever done in my life is to stop listening to the people who aren’t doing what I want to be doing.
Never take advice from anyone whose life you don’t want.
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Have you ever ignored anyone’s advice? Was it a good move?
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