30x30| #29: WiFi Tribe International Community Builder and Chapter Host

Just 6 months prior, I had been climbing down from a moving truck in Portsmouth, NH on a cold winters day to pick up some restaurant chairs and move them to a storage unit. Then, suddenly I found myself being charged by a rhino on safari in Namibia, swimming alongside huge whales in the Indian Ocean, and watching the most incredible sunset of my life over a stunning pine forest in the Canary Islands. It’s been a wild + unexpected 3 years since then, so I thought I’d share the story of how this all came to be.

As mentioned in my previous story, at the beginning of 2022, after a decade of trying to “figure it out”, I felt completely defeated. I was almost 30 and none of my plans had worked out as I’d hoped. My friends and siblings were getting married, having kids, saving for retirement, and I was just floating around aimlessly from one thing to the next.

I had spent the decade vehemently defending the notion that it’s possible to live a life that you love and that you don’t have to settle for a 9–5 + a 401-K. Yet, over the years, I found that I wasn’t all that happy, hadn’t found “the way” myself, and pretty much felt like a complete failure.

Sure, I’d had some fun times and my Instagram feed made my life look awesome, but it wasn’t real and it was no longer enough to convince me that I was on the right path. The idealism of my youth had been slowly beaten out of me and I finally gave in to the societal pressure to “grow up” and get a “real job”.

However, due to my bouncing around from job to job for years, my resume was a total mess and I didn’t have any hard skills to show for any of it. Further, despite my mom’s steadfast belief that I’m “special”, I didn’t hear back about a single one of the dozens of professional jobs that I applied to during this time.

So, on a particularly cold winter day in January, I found myself scrolling jobs on Craigslist (you know, the place professionals find employment…) and I came across a posting for Warehouse + Moving Team Manager.

A local entrepreneur was looking for someone to run the day-to-day of his moving and storage companies. From the outside this might not seem ideal, (and it certainly wasn’t) yet I felt that through working alongside the owner I might be able to learn a lot about business and make some decent money along the way.

Plus, what option did I have? I had no other prospects on the table, so I was offered and accepted the role. Of course, it was settling and basically meant giving up on all my dreams, but that’s life right? As you grow up, you slowly realize that your life isn’t going to be what you hoped it would be…. isn’t that how it goes?

A week into the job I was learning a lot, but not about what I had expected. I was learning how to wrap and tape moving boxes (something I already had a pretty good grasp of) and how to fill out forms and tags for the outdated and inefficient storage system they were using in the warehouse. Then, to add injury to insult, the nasty, tiny office dog bit my ankle. I think I would select this moment as the absolute low point of my adult working life.

Yet right then, when all hope seemed lost, I received an email with the subject line: “Chapter Host (Leadership + Community Building + Travel)” and clicked it open.