Man, 2020 was a wild ride for everyone, right? But for me, February of that year, it was kind of a turning point. I remember looking at my chart and seeing something about Virgos and career paths, and I just thought, “Yeah, right.” But honestly, something was stirring inside me, something that had been bubbling up for a while, and it really started to crystalize then.
Before that, I was just kind of clocking in and out. Not really hating my job, but definitely not loving it either. It was… fine. Stable, paid the bills, but I felt this itch, you know? Like there was something else I was supposed to be doing. I’d finish work, go home, watch TV, maybe scroll a bit, and then it was rinse and repeat. The days just blurred together, and I started feeling this low-key dread about Monday mornings. It wasn’t a good place to be, mentally.
So, the seeds for change actually got planted a few months before February 2020. I started feeling really restless. I found myself just thinking, like, “Is this it? Is this what I’m gonna do forever?” That thought really stuck with me. It was uncomfortable, but it also lit a fire under me. I began to just observe myself, what I actually enjoyed doing outside of work. It was simple stuff at first, fiddling with old gadgets, trying to fix things around the house, helping a friend build a small website for their new craft business. These little projects, they didn’t feel like work. They felt… engaging.
I started digging around online, just loosely at first. Not even looking for a job, just reading about people who did things they loved. I stumbled upon stories of folks who turned hobbies into careers, or who just completely switched paths. It felt inspiring, but also super daunting. Like, how do you even begin to do that? I didn’t have any fancy degrees or a special skillset that screamed “dream job.” I just had this nagging feeling.
My first practical step was super small. I decided I needed to learn something new. Something completely unrelated to my current job, just to see what sparked. I picked up a book about basic coding. I mean, real basic, like for kids almost. I just started playing with it a few nights a week. And man, I sucked at it. Seriously, I felt like my brain was trying to run through mud. But I kept at it, maybe 30 minutes here, an hour there. And slowly, things started to make a little sense. I wasn’t building anything crazy, just making little things move on a screen, but the act of creating something, even a tiny something, from scratch? That was a powerful feeling.
Around late January, heading into February, I had a bit of a breakthrough. I was helping that friend with her craft website, and she was struggling to get some pictures to display correctly. I remembered some of the basic layout stuff I’d tinkered with, and I actually managed to fix it for her. It wasn’t rocket science, but seeing her face light up, and knowing I did that? That was a rush. It wasn’t just about the coding; it was about solving a problem and making an impact, even a small one. That’s when the gears really started turning for me.
I started thinking more seriously about what I could do with this. It wasn’t just about coding; it was about understanding how things worked behind the scenes, how to build and organize information, how to make things functional for people. I began looking at job descriptions for “web developer” or “front-end developer” – terms I barely understood a few months prior. I saw all these skills listed, things I’d barely touched, but suddenly, they didn’t look completely alien anymore. They looked like challenges I could learn.
My process became more structured after that. It went something like this:
- I mapped out all the skills listed in entry-level job postings that interested me.
- Then, I started searching for free or cheap online courses to tackle those skills one by one.
- I committed to spending at least an hour every single evening, no matter what, learning and practicing.
- I began building tiny projects, just for myself. A fake online store, a simple calculator, a to-do list app. Nothing fancy, but each one taught me something new.
- I started joining online communities, just lurking and reading at first, seeing what questions people asked and how others helped.
It was a slow grind, honestly. There were days I wanted to throw my computer out the window. Days where I felt like I was hitting a brick wall and would never get it. But that feeling of dread about my old job, combined with the small victories of building something new, kept me pushing forward. That February, when I looked back at how far I’d come in just a few months, from being totally clueless to actually building small, working things, it felt like a huge leap. It wasn’t about the astrology predicting my best career; it was about me finally putting in the work and seeing a path open up.
It gave me the confidence to actually start applying for jobs a few months later. And yeah, I got rejected from a bunch. But each rejection taught me something. What they were really looking for, what skills I still needed to polish. Eventually, I landed an entry-level position as a junior developer. It wasn’t flashy, and it definitely wasn’t easy, but for the first time in a long time, I was excited to go to work. I was learning every single day, building real things, and finally feeling like I was on the right track. That February 2020 felt like the moment I finally stopped drifting and started steering my own ship.
