October 2022. Man, I was flat broke. The freelance market went completely sideways right around the start of fall, and I was staring at my rent check like it was a complex mathematical problem I couldn’t solve. I was trying everything, working long hours, but getting nowhere. Nothing was sticking.
I remember mindlessly scrolling one night, feeling completely hopeless, when this ridiculous headline popped up. Something about Virgo and money days. I’m a Virgo, so I clicked it. You know how it is when you’re desperate; you’ll try anything.
The article highlighted a few dates—I think it was the 5th, the 12th, and the 22nd—as the absolute best times for career boosts and unexpected financial gains. I read it, scoffed, and then immediately decided I was going to try it. I mean, what did I have to lose besides a few hours of my time?
My Practice: Three Days of Maximum Aggression
I decided to treat these three days like they were the only days of the month that mattered. I wouldn’t waste time on small stuff. I would commit the biggest, riskiest actions—the ones I was putting off—to those three dates alone.
- The 5th: I was going to send out aggressive, high-paying proposals to a list of clients I thought were unreachable.
- The 12th: I would finally launch that small side-product I’d been tinkering with for months.
- The 22nd: I’d circle back and try to collect on every outstanding invoice, no matter how old.
I was all in on the horoscope BS.
The 5th: The Big Disaster
I woke up early on the 5th, feeling this weird, manic confidence. The stars were on my side, right? I sat down and spent nine straight hours crafting these perfect, customized pitches. I sent them all out before noon. I felt unstoppable.
Then I waited. I watched my inbox like a hawk. I refreshed the page so many times I thought my laptop was going to scream at me. By the time I went to bed, I had received only one reply, and it was an automated out-of-office message. Eleven perfectly tailored emails, and nothing. I felt like a monumental fraud. I figured the whole experiment was a massive waste of energy and a perfect example of why I shouldn’t trust anything I read online.
The 6th to the 11th: Dead Time
I tried to follow the advice and just chill out during the “unlucky” days. But I couldn’t. I was stressed because the 5th had failed so badly. I barely did any work. I watched the clock, waiting for the 12th to arrive, honestly just planning to scrap the whole thing if the second day was a flop too. I was anxious, not rested. I realized the only real job the horoscope gave me was permission to procrastinate.
The 12th: Low-Effort Win
When the 12th came, I had zero enthusiasm. I was done with big ideas. I just wanted to complete the task I set for myself. I took that little product I had—it was just a simple template package—and I basically threw it up on my site. I used a terrible cover image and a description I wrote in three minutes. I slapped a price tag on it, hit publish, and immediately went to the gym. I totally gave up on it mentally.
I came back sweaty and exhausted a couple of hours later. Checked my email, expecting nothing. Two sales. Not huge money, maybe fifty bucks total, but it was instant cash from a product I had literally spent two minutes promoting. The shock of it hit me hard. It wasn’t the big financial breakthrough I was hoping for, but it broke the dam. It proved that sometimes, action—even sloppy, half-hearted action—was the only real magic trick.
The 22nd: Finishing the Job
The success on the 12th gave me a tiny bit of faith back. On the 22nd, I went after those old invoices. I sent firm, no-BS emails to every client who was late. I didn’t get any huge, unexpected bonuses, but I did collect on four outstanding payments that I had given up for dead. That netted me a decent chunk. The experiment, in its weird, low-grade way, was technically working.
But here’s the kicker—the real, major financial gain that month had nothing to do with those days.
The Real Boost: October 19th
The single biggest deposit I saw in October 2022 landed in my account on the 19th. Which wasn’t a “lucky day” at all. It was a completely random Thursday.
It was severance pay. From a job I was fired from two years prior.
See, I had been battling this old company for ages, trying to get them to pay what they owed me. The amount was a hefty sum, and I had almost quit chasing it. But when I read that stupid horoscope title about “Career Boost” back in late September, it must have triggered something in my brain. It wasn’t the stars, but the mere focus on financial justice that made me finally call a lawyer and tell them to send the nastiest demand letter they could write. I had almost forgotten about it entirely.
The stars told me to hustle on the 5th, 12th, and 22nd, and yeah, that helped pay the bills. But the universe really rewarded me on the 19th, when all the focused energy I had been building finally pushed forward an unrelated, old grudge. The practice wasn’t about the dates. It was about forcing myself to move on the biggest, scariest things, regardless of what day it was. That was the real career boost.
