Man, February 2021, that was a wild one for me. You see those horoscopes, right? “Get ready for big changes!” usually I just shrug them off. But back then, if you told me my career was about to get flipped upside down, I would’ve just laughed. But guess what? It totally did. And it was all totally unexpected.
I was cruising along, you know, doing my thing at this office gig for years. It wasn’t glorious, but it paid the bills, and I had my routine down pat. Wake up, commute, sit in meetings, crunch some numbers, clock out. Repeat. I thought that was my life, set in stone. Never really thought about doing anything else, honestly. I had this little side hobby, tinkering with old electronics, fixing up radios and stuff. Just for fun, mind you. Never thought it could be anything more.
Then February rolled around. Out of nowhere, my boss calls me into his office. No big deal, right? Just another performance review, probably. But he starts talking about “restructuring” and “downsizing” and how “economic climate” was making things tough. My stomach just dropped. I saw it coming a mile away after a few sentences. He basically told me my position was getting eliminated. Just like that. After eight years, I was out. Gone. Done. They gave me a severance, which was nice, but man, I walked out of there feeling like a ghost.
I remember just sitting in my car in the parking lot for like an hour, staring at nothing. What was I supposed to do now? My whole identity felt tied to that job. My friends were there, my schedule was built around it. Panic started to set in. Bills don’t stop just because your job does, right? I had rent, car payments, groceries. It all started piling up in my head, a massive mountain of stuff I suddenly had no idea how to pay for. I spent the next couple of weeks just moping around, applying for everything that popped up, getting rejection after rejection. It felt like nobody wanted a guy who could just “crunch numbers” anymore.
One afternoon, I was staring at a pile of dusty old circuit boards on my workbench, just feeling useless. My wife, bless her heart, she walked in, took one look at me and that mess, and just said, “Why don’t you try making something out of this?” She pointed at my tools, my soldering iron, all my little projects. I just scoffed, “Who’s gonna pay me to fix ancient radios?” But she was serious. She reminded me how I used to spend hours on this stuff, how happy I got when I brought something back to life. It got me thinking.
Taking the Plunge
- I started digging into what it would take to actually turn my hobby into something real.
- I went online, watched a ton of videos, read forums, connected with other enthusiasts.
- I started posting some of my repairs, the “before” and “after” photos, on a local online marketplace.
Slowly, people started reaching out. First, it was just little things, fixing a broken amplifier for a neighbor, getting an old cassette player running again for a friend’s dad. I was nervous as heck on every single job, wondering if I’d mess it up. But each time, I managed to get it working, and the smiles on people’s faces, it was something else. Way different than just finishing a spreadsheet.
I decided to really commit. I spent a chunk of my severance on getting some proper equipment, setting up a little workspace in our spare room. I designed a super basic website myself – yeah, me, the number cruncher, building a website! – and started taking on more complex projects. It wasn’t easy. There were days I wanted to throw everything out the window when a repair just wouldn’t work, when I felt like I was completely out of my depth. But I pushed through.
Fast forward a bit, and here I am. It’s been a journey. That “big change” in February 2021, it felt like the end of the world back then. But it forced me to look at what I really enjoyed doing, what actually made me feel alive. Now, I’m my own boss, working with my hands, making things work again. I get to meet interesting people and hear their stories about the old treasures they bring me. And honestly, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. That horoscope, “Get Ready for Big Changes!”, well, it turned out to be the real deal for me.
