Man, 2015. What a wild ride that was, looking back now. I remember glancing at those Virgo career horoscopes back then, you know, just for kicks. Always talked about new opportunities, finding your passion, blah, blah, blah. Sounded nice, but life’s rarely that straightforward, is it? I always figured you gotta make your own luck, no matter what the stars say. So, let me tell you what actually went down for me that year, no fancy predictions, just plain old real-life grinding and learning.
Back at the tail end of 2014, I was feeling a bit stuck. My job was, well, it was a job. Pay the bills, sure, but not exactly lighting any fires. I was pushing code, same old projects, a lot of maintenance stuff. I woke up most mornings thinking, “Is this it?” It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either, if you catch my drift. I knew I needed a change, something more challenging, something that would actually make me feel like I was building something from scratch, not just patching up old stuff.
The Push for Change
So, come January 2015, I decided I wasn’t just gonna wait for opportunities to knock. I started actively looking. I brushed up my resume, which hadn’t seen the light of day in years. Felt weird, like I was cheating on my current gig, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do for your own sanity. I started networking, going to those meetups after work where you pretend to be interested in small talk while secretly hoping someone’s hiring for something cool. I even tried my hand at some open-source contributions, just to keep my skills sharp and show I was still eager to learn new things.
I remember one specific project I picked up on the side. It was a small tool I wanted for myself, something to automate a mundane task on my computer. I spent my evenings and weekends just hammering away at it. It wasn’t for work, wasn’t for money, just pure passion. I dug deep into a new language I’d been curious about but never had a reason to really use. I fought with documentation, pulled my hair out over bugs, and celebrated every tiny breakthrough. That process, of actually building something from nothing, felt incredible. It re-ignited that spark I thought I’d lost.
The Interviews and the Near Misses
Around March, the interviews started trickling in. I went on a bunch of them, mostly for similar roles to what I was doing, but a few were for more exciting stuff, places doing newer tech or working on products I actually cared about. I bombed a couple, stammered through some others. You know that feeling when you walk out of an interview and immediately think of all the perfect answers you should have given? Yeah, I had plenty of those moments.
There was one place, a small startup, that was really pushing the envelope. I went through three rounds with them. I could practically taste that job. I spent a whole weekend prepping for their technical challenge. I poured everything into it. It felt like the opportunity. Then, a few days later, got the email. “Thank you for your time, but we’ve decided to go with another candidate.” Gut punch. Seriously, it felt like the universe was just messing with me. All that effort, all that hope, just vanished.
A Detour, Then the Real Deal
I almost gave up after that, I’m not gonna lie. It was June by then, and I thought, “Maybe the horoscope was just BS, maybe I’m meant to be stuck.” But then, completely out of the blue, an old connection reached out. Someone I’d worked with years ago had moved to a new company and was starting a brand-new team. He remembered my work ethic and asked if I’d be interested in just having a chat. I wasn’t expecting much, but I figured, why not?
That chat turned into an informal interview. He was building a team to tackle a really challenging, greenfield project – exactly what I’d been yearning for. No legacy code, no endless maintenance. Just pure building. We talked for hours, not about algorithms or data structures, but about vision, about problem-solving, about what it takes to launch something new. It felt different. It felt right.
I went through the official process, which felt surprisingly easy after all the previous rejections. They made an offer in July, and I didn’t even hesitate. I put in my notice at my old job, which felt both terrifying and exhilarating. Walking out of there for the last time in August was a huge relief. It felt like shedding a skin. I jumped into that new role with both feet, full of energy and ready to tackle anything.
The Payoff
The rest of 2015 was a whirlwind. We started from scratch, sketching out architectures on whiteboards, debating tech stacks, writing the first lines of code. It was hard, long hours, sometimes frustrating as hell when things didn’t work. But every day, I felt like I was contributing to something meaningful. I was learning at an insane pace, picking up new tools, new ways of thinking. I was finally building something that mattered, something I was genuinely excited about.
By December, we had a working prototype. It wasn’t perfect, but it was ours. We launched an internal beta just before the holidays, and seeing people actually use what we built, even in a rough form, was one of the most satisfying feelings I’d ever had in my career. All those horoscopes talking about new opportunities? They didn’t tell me how I’d find them, or about the grind and the rejections along the way. But by actively pushing, learning, and taking a chance, I stumbled into exactly what I needed. Looking back at 2015, it wasn’t about what the stars predicted; it was about the path I carved out for myself, one step, one line of code, one conversation at a time. And man, what a difference it made.
