I don’t usually mess with astrology crap. I mean, come on, predicting a massive salary bump based on where Jupiter is sitting? Total BS. But here’s the thing: I treat everything as a live-fire test. So, when I read the horoscope for Virgo this week, and it was screaming about “major financial growth” and “unlooked-for career opportunities,” I didn’t ignore it. I decided to make it my practical entry for the week.
My goal wasn’t to prove the stars right; it was to see if the action of believing it could force me to achieve something I was too scared to do otherwise. This wasn’t about manifesting; this was a forced-exposure exercise. I figured, if I’m going to track my career process, why not track a ridiculous one?
The Practice: Chasing the Predicted Raise
I immediately pulled up that email draft I’ve been sitting on for four months. It’s the one to my biggest client—the one who takes up 60% of my time—asking for a 40% rate hike. I’ve rewritten the damn thing a dozen times, chickening out every single time, telling myself I couldn’t risk the income flow. But the ‘scope was talking about “bold moves.” Fine. I hit send without a single spellcheck. That was Monday, 9 AM. I felt sick instantly, a mix of panic and weird excitement.
Next up, it mentioned “reaping rewards from past, forgotten efforts.” I swear, these things are written by marketing interns, but whatever. I literally went digging. I didn’t check old savings accounts or anything normal. I went through three years of archived folders on my desktop. I spent six hours trying to locate three invoices from a freelance project I did a lifetime ago that I was pretty sure never got paid. I finally unearthed them in a deep, dark folder named ‘Misc_2022_Frank_DO_NOT_DELETE’. Turns out, the client had switched payment systems right then and those payments had bounced, but nobody ever followed up. I resubmitted all three, totaling nearly five figures. Not a raise, but a forgotten windfall. I logged the submission time and date meticulously.
The horoscope also said something about “networking for the next big leap.” So, I forced myself to attend that awful virtual industry mixer on Wednesday night. Usually, I’d pretend my laptop crashed and go watch TV. Not this time. I sat there for two and a half hours, enduring horrible small talk about synergy and bandwidth. But here’s the kicker:
- I managed to snag a 15-minute call with a former VP from a major competitor who I thought hated me.
- I bluntly pitched him my idea for a niche consultation service.
- He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. He just told me, “Write up a clean one-pager and send it to me by Friday.”
- That one-pager took me until 3 AM Thursday morning to write, which is more focused work than I’ve done on my own business in months.
So, did the big raise happen this week? Did the client reply and say, “Sure, 40% more, you deserve it”? Absolutely not. They sent a vague, one-line reply saying they’d “review my proposal” next week. The forgotten invoices? Still pending bank transfers. The VP? Radio silence so far.
The horoscope was a crock. The prediction of an easy, sudden raise was total fiction. So, why would I put myself through all that stress just because some internet stranger said “Virgo = $$$”?
The Real Reason I Test the Limits
I discovered why I need to test these things, why I need external pressure to ask for what I’m worth, a little over 18 months ago. It wasn’t because I’m a Virgo; it was because I was screwed over completely by my last corporate job.
I was working myself to the bone, putting in 70-hour weeks for a salary that was decent, not great. I was the ‘go-to’ guy. I thought I was indispensable. Then, one Friday, they announced a massive company reorganization. My department was completely dissolved. The VP walked into my cubicle with an HR person and told me my role was redundant, effective immediately. Standard layoff severance. Fine, whatever, bad luck.
But here is what I found out two weeks later. The severance was garbage, barely two months’ pay. I was cleaning out my old desktop remotely from home—the IT guy gave me permission—and I saw a folder I wasn’t supposed to see. It contained files outlining a completely new ‘consultant’ position. Guess who was filling that role? My old boss’s nephew. Guess what the role’s primary duty was? Overseeing the exact systems I had built and managed.
Even better, I got a call from a recruiter friend who was doing a background check on me for a reference. She casually mentioned that the new ‘consultant’ role for which I was being referenced was paying literally double what I was making. They had simply fired me to hire someone cheaper who was connected to the boss and then had them oversee my work, paying them twice what they paid me. They used my loyalty against me to get rid of my salary and double the budget for someone else.
When I tried to call the VP back, the number was disconnected. When I emailed HR, the account bounced. They ghosted me completely. That summer, I spent three months scrambling, burning through savings, and feeling like a complete idiot for not demanding a raise sooner. I vowed then and there that I would never again wait for permission, or for a review, or for a planet to align, to ask for what was mine.
So, the horoscope didn’t get me a raise this week. But it got the proposal delivered, and it forced me into a pitch meeting I would have avoided. It got me moving. The real lesson? Sometimes you just need a silly, fake celestial mandate to overcome the fear that someone is going to say no. Now I just wait for the client to review the proposal. I feel better already. The action itself was the practice, not the silly prediction.
