My October 2017 Career Screw-up That Paid Off Big Time
You know, people see a headline about a horoscope and they think it’s all crystal balls and magic. Nah. For me, it was just a trigger. A complete, terrifying, career-ending (or so I thought) trigger that I had to pull.
Back in September/October 2017, I was stuck. Not just stuck, I was drowning in a job that was sucking the life out of me. The hours? A joke. The pay? Insulting, considering the sheer stress I was under. I was managing three different product lines, two of which were totally obsolete, and the boss kept telling me, “Just hold tight, growth is right around the corner.” Growth was actually an industrial shredder heading straight for my sanity.
I remember sitting there, late one night, eating cold takeout, when I pulled up that specific Virgo Career Horoscope for October 2017. Why? Because I was desperate. I had already fought with HR, begged my boss for help, and crawled into bed every night feeling like a failure. It was the absolute last resort, a total Hail Mary pass.
What did it say? Now, this is the part you’d laugh at.
- It straight-up advised “a dramatic severing of ties”, like the universe was telling me to quit immediately.
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It warned against any “large financial decisions with existing partners,” which I interpreted as: do not sign that awful bonus structure they were trying to push on me.
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And the kicker? It mentioned looking toward a “geographical direction aligned with your ruling planet’s strength.” I looked that up. For my specific sign details, the strong direction was Southeast. Southeast of where I was living and working.
A dramatic severing, a financial freeze, and move Southeast. I laughed out loud. This was complete trash. But the stress of where I was living was too much. The company culture was toxic. It was a pressure cooker, and I was about to blow.
My old job, honestly, was a complete disaster under the hood. It looked polished from the outside, but inside, they were doing all sorts of shady stuff. The IT infrastructure was a mess. They had patched security holes with duct tape, ignored compliance issues for years, and kept promising a massive overhaul that never came. My “practice,” my daily routine, was just shuffling paper to make it look like we weren’t about to fail a big audit. It was the definition of unsustainable.
The Messy Process: I Actually Jumped Ship
Now, here’s where the practice really began. The weekend after I read that horoscope, I took the plunge. I drafted my resignation letter. Did I have another job lined up? Hell no. Did I have enough savings? Barely, and I had bills coming for my kid’s school. But I sent that email on a Monday morning and walked out before lunch.
That initial “severing of ties” felt amazing for about 48 hours. Then panic set in. And I mean full, cold-sweat panic. I spent the next two months struggling. I applied for dozens of jobs. I interviewed badly because I was so stressed out and scared. My savings account was draining faster than I thought possible. I was seriously wondering if I had made the biggest mistake of my life, ignoring logic and relying on an astrology column.
The Reality Check and The Odd Fulfillment
It gets weirder. Remember the “Southeast” thing? A buddy of mine called me up out of the blue. He had just opened a small consulting firm about 200 miles Southeast of where I was. He said he needed a senior guy to help him build their compliance framework from the ground up, no nonsense, clean slate. The job was stable, promised decent equity after a year, and had great working hours. It was the complete opposite of the environment I had just escaped.
I drove down there, interviewed, and within a week, I had the offer. It meant I had to pack up everything and move, a huge pain in the neck, but I did it. Why? Because that darn horoscope had accidentally created a bias in my brain that this was the “safe” direction to go. It was a risk, but it was a guided risk, if that makes sense.
My practice, the thing I learned from this whole mess, is that sometimes you need an external, ridiculous-sounding reason to give yourself permission to do the logical thing. The stars didn’t magically guide me; they just kicked my rear end out the door of a horrible job. The “details” weren’t in the cosmic alignment, they were in the fact that my gut was screaming, and the horoscope just put a name to the necessary action.
I tracked the old company for a few months. They eventually had to fire half the management team I used to work with and face massive fines for those compliance issues I was fighting. Turns out, my “dramatic severing” was exactly when I needed to get out. I look back on October 2017 not as the month I checked my horoscope, but the month I grew the spine to tell a terrible job to screw off and started building something real.
Now, I’m settled. I built this blog. I started mentoring people. I work reasonable hours and I actually enjoy what I do. All because a questionable online article gave me the reason to do what I already knew I needed to do. So yeah, I check them occasionally now, not because I believe, but because sometimes they give you the necessary excuse to make the leap.
