The Kickoff: January 2018 and the Prediction Log
Man, 2018 feels like a lifetime ago. But I remember that moment clearly. I was stuck in a job that paid the bills but gave me zero excitement. Pure grind. I always track things—my weight, my sleep, my finances—so why not track something totally random like a career horoscope? It’s a stupid test, yeah, but I wanted to see if that fluff actually meant anything concrete. I figured, if I treat it like a serious investment thesis, I can either prove it right or prove it’s absolute garbage.
I distinctly pulled up that big-name astrology site. I screenshot the whole damn thing immediately. My Virgo career prediction for January 2018 was surprisingly detailed. It didn’t just say “good things are coming.” It specified three major areas I needed to watch out for, and I zeroed in on every word:
- Big Shift Warning: It predicted I would be forced to abandon my primary skill set and move into something entirely unrelated—specifically mentioned “digital creative arts.” I was neck-deep in corporate finance at the time, so this was predicting a massive, unplanned jump.
- The Money Curveball: It said a large, unexpected payment would arrive, but it wouldn’t be from my main employer. It insisted it would be a “side hustle payoff” or some forgotten residual income from a past venture.
- Travel Mandate: I would need to secure a new client or project that required significant international travel, particularly towards Asia, by Q3 2018.
I grabbed a fresh notebook—yep, physical notebook, I prefer pen and paper for tracking long-term stuff—and I started logging the results immediately. I titled the first page: “Operation: Prove the Stars Wrong (Or Right).” I committed to revisiting the logs every three months to compare the reality with the cosmic prophecy.
The Tracking Journey: Trying to Force the Stars
For the first few months, I definitely tried to influence the results. You read something like that, you can’t help but try to make it happen, right? The prediction said “digital creative arts.” I didn’t know squat about Photoshop. But I jumped straight into those cheap online courses. I bought two different subscriptions and spent about six weeks smashing my head against video editing software and basic graphic design tools. I uploaded a couple of truly terrible short videos just to tick the box, thinking maybe this was the catalyst for the shift. Did that lead to a career shift? Absolutely not. I hated it. It felt manufactured and awkward, and my finance job stayed exactly where it was.
Then came the travel mandate. I hounded my boss about any project that involved Asia. I literally emailed him every week asking about international assignments. We had one client who sometimes needed support in Singapore, but my boss was like, “You’re needed here, settle down.” I was getting frustrated. I saw Q3 approaching, and the stars were clearly failing me. My passport was gathering dust.
The money bit was the funniest part. I combed through old accounts, checked every single minor investment I’d ever made, and called two old friends about forgotten debts. Did I forget a lottery ticket? Did someone owe me five hundred bucks from 2010? Nothing. Just my regular paycheck hitting the bank, and my savings staying flat. By July 2018, I was ready to throw the notebook in the bin. The horoscope was absolute garbage. I was still crunching numbers, I hadn’t traveled anywhere further than a miserable business trip to Milwaukee, and the only “unexpected payment” was a hefty fine for an overdue library book.
The Mid-Year Realization: Life Happens Anyway
I stopped actively trying to satisfy the predictions and just focused on my job, which was rapidly becoming more demanding. That’s when things got weird. When I stopped forcing it, the actual events started rolling in, but not exactly how the prediction outlined. It was like the spirit of the prediction showed up, but wearing totally different clothes.
I was dealing with a massively stressful finance project. My burnout hit hard. Instead of moving into “digital creative arts,” I started documenting my job processes and realized how inefficient they were. To save my sanity, I built simple automation scripts using Python to ease the workload. I had taught myself code in the evenings. That wasn’t creative arts, but it was a massive, involuntary skill shift. My primary skill (complex financial modeling) was suddenly supplemented by code, which made me indispensable.
The international travel part? It totally failed in Q3. But in Q4, I got headhunted by a competitor specifically because I knew Python and finance. The new job involved managing remote teams. No international flights, but I was suddenly responsible for people working across three different time zones, including a crew in India. It demanded the same level of late-night communication and cross-cultural management as real travel would have. The requirement for managing an Asia-based workload materialized, but my body stayed put.
The Final Review: Comparing the Logs
I finished out 2018 and finally sat down with the notebook in January 2019 to close the loop. I tally-marked the accuracy for each point, grading the prediction against the reality I had recorded:
- Big Shift Warning (Digital Creative Arts): 0% accurate on the field. I did shift skills dramatically, but toward automation/coding, not arts. However, the timing of the career growth derived from a new skill was spot-on.
- Travel Mandate (International Asia Travel): 50% accurate. No physical travel, but the new role immediately mandated dealing with international teams in that exact region (India, specifically). The responsibility predicted was met, the method was wrong.
- The Money Curveball (Unexpected Side Payoff): 100% accurate, but totally delayed. This is the craziest bit. I completely forgot I’d purchased a small batch of cryptocurrency years before. I had just left the wallet dormant. Early 2019, while clearing out an old computer, I remembered the login and liquidated it just for fun. It had grown enough to cover three months of my new, higher rent. It wasn’t the 2018 payoff predicted, but the exact nature—forgotten, unexpected, non-employer derived income—came true, just a few months late.
What did this whole stupid exercise teach me? First, horoscopes are vague enough that they can be shoehorned into almost any major life event if you squint hard enough. Second, when you actively try to achieve a prediction, you miss the actual, unexpected things that are happening. I was so focused on trying to be a video editor, I nearly missed the Python opportunity that actually upgraded my career. I learned that tracking reality is more interesting than trying to track fantasy. I still have that notebook. It’s a hilarious record of me trying to argue with the stars.
