The Absolute Mess That Started With a Five-Year-Old Star Chart
Man, I gotta tell you, revisiting some old crap you did five years ago feels real weird. You think you’ve moved on, you think you’re smarter, then you dig up some ancient file and you realize: I blew it. I totally blew it back then, and I’m about to blow it again today if I don’t wise up.
My whole reason for even thinking about the Virgo career horoscope from September 2019 was simple: I hit a wall last month. I was ready to sign on for this huge, high-risk consulting contract. Massive payout, but zero stability, the kind of job that swallows your weekends and spits you out dusty. I was this close to saying yes, and then my wife, bless her heart, casually brought up how stressful things got in late 2019 when I was chasing that big, shiny thing the first time. That got me thinking: What the hell was I doing back then?
I knew I had saved a screenshot of some horoscope from that time. Why? I don’t even remember. Probably just for a laugh, or maybe I was secretly hopeful, who knows. So, I went hunting. I opened up my old cloud storage. I scrolled through five years of junk photos and random documents. I dug deep into a folder labeled “Old Crap.” It took me maybe an hour, but I finally uncovered it: a cropped phone photo of a magazine clipping. The source doesn’t matter, it was some random online prediction, but the date was September 12, 2019, and the header clearly read “Virgo: Career Crossroads.”
I read it. Three short paragraphs. It basically said, and I’m paraphrasing here in my rough language, “Don’t chase the quick bucks. You’ll be tempted by a grand, unstable offer. Choose the quiet, stable path that lets you build your foundation slowly. The flash will fizzle.”
Mapping the Disaster: The 2019 Blunder
This is where the practice part got real painful. I pulled up my old calendar and work history from late 2019, and I compared it to that simple warning. What happened?
- Sept 2019: I received two offers. Offer A was from a huge, boring corporation. Steady paycheck, good benefits, low stress. Offer B was from a pre-funding tech startup, way bigger salary promise, stock options, and lots of promises about being a “co-founder” (which meant I was just working for cheap).
- Action: I laughed off the boring corporate job, calling it “stagnant,” and I jumped into the startup, seduced by the stock options and the massive promised bonus.
- Reality: The startup collapsed six months later when the first pandemic wave hit and funding dried up. The stock options were toilet paper. I spent the next nine months scrambling, watching all the folks who took Offer A coast through the chaos with full benefits and stable jobs.
I had literally done the exact thing the horoscope, which I’d inexplicably saved, told me not to do. I ignored the sign and chased the flash. The consequences? Total mess. Financial stress. Wasted time. My wife remembered how bad it was because she lived through it.
Clarity and Avoiding the Next Screw-Up Now
So, why revisit this old crap? Clarity. The stars weren’t right; the pattern was right. The warning was about my own tendency to prioritize excitement and cash over security and sanity. It’s a character flaw I thought I had fixed, but damn if that high-risk consulting contract didn’t look exactly like the startup gig from 2019.
The practice isn’t about finding some magical guidance. It’s about forcing yourself to look at your track record, warts and all, so you don’t repeat the screw-up.
Here’s the log of what I implemented immediately after staring at that five-year-old warning:
- I called the consulting company and pulled the plug. I made a firm, final decision to reject the offer. No negotiation, no trying to make it safer. Just cut it.
- I contacted a medium-sized, ridiculously boring firm I had interviewed with a while back and accepted their lower, but salaried and stable, offer. They were surprised, but I took it.
- I shut down the personal side project I was investing all my free time into because, let’s be honest, it was just another high-risk, time-sink gamble. I re-directed that time to actual rest and my family.
It sounds simple, but it was hard. Every fiber of my being wanted to chase the big payout. But that damn 2019 screenshot made me stop. It showed me I already knew the ending to that movie. You can call it astrology, or you can call it a documented record of my own predictable stupidity. Either way, this time, I chose the quiet path. And I feel better already. Maybe the lesson wasn’t in the stars, but in the simple fact that I was forced to remember what a total clown I was five years ago.
