The Spark: When a Fluffy Reading Made Me Move
You know the drill. Every Sunday, I scroll past those generic weekly horoscopes. I’m a Virgo, right? So I saw this week’s career reading: “Prepare for success and money gains!” It was the usual fluffy stuff, total B.S. I usually just snort and keep going.
But this time was different. I stopped. Why? I’ll tell you why. That morning, I’d slammed down the phone after a call with a client who nickel-and-dimed me on an invoice I sent three months ago. Three months! I watched my bank account balance barely creep up, and I was feeling that crushing weight of self-employment where you give 100% and get 50% back in appreciation. I realized I was coasting, just doing the baseline work to survive. That cheesy horoscope, saying “Prepare,” suddenly felt like a direct challenge. I snapped—fine, let’s see what happens if I actually “prepare.”
Initiating Operation “Virgo Tidy-Up”
I turned the airy-fairy ‘Preparation’ into a concrete list. My preparation for “Success and Money Gains” wasn’t praying to the stars; it was cleaning up the mess I’d been avoiding for six months. I broke it down into three actionable steps. This wasn’t about new work; it was about shoring up the old structure.
The Action Plan I Drew Up:
- I updated my rates across the board. The ones I sent out six months ago were pathetic. I increased them by 30%. I figured if a client walks, they walk. They were probably low-quality anyway.
- I revived my neglected portfolio site. It had half-finished projects and a bio that read like I was still in college. I vowed to fix it completely.
- I reached out to three high-value past clients I’d been too chicken to approach again. I pitched them a minor follow-up project, something small and painless, just to get a foot back in the door.
The Grindy, Messy Process
Let me tell you, it wasn’t a neat process. The moment I opened the portfolio site, I knew I was screwed. The framework I used last year had updated, and half the custom CSS I’d written was broken. I wasted four hours just trying to figure out why the navigation bar refused to stay centered. I drank way too much coffee and cursed every single line of code I’d ever written. I tossed the whole custom theme and just slapped a basic, ugly-but-functional template on it. Took me the entire Monday night to get it done. I hit ‘Publish’ at 2 AM, utterly defeated, but it was done.
The client outreach was even worse. Client A? I emailed them my pitch—a gentle, professional email, I swear—and they replied five minutes later with a massive, unrelated support request for an ancient thing I did for them in 2021, wanting it done for free. I just deleted the thread. Client B? Radio silence. Total ghosting.
I thought I had completely failed. I scrolled back to the horoscope, ready to yell at the monitor about false advertising and cosmic lies. I wished I hadn’t even started this whole preparation nonsense. I should have just gone to bed early and pretended the phone call from the morning never happened. I felt like I’d just generated a week of extra stress for absolutely no return.
The Unexpected Turn and the “Money Gains”
Then, on Thursday afternoon, I saw the email from Client C. The one I really wanted back. They didn’t want the small project I pitched. They said they’d actually been wanting to contact me anyway, but my bio was so outdated they assumed I was too busy or out of the business. They mentioned they saw my updated site—the ugly, slapped-together one—and that prompted them to finally send the email.
Not only did they want to work with me again, they offered me a contract for a huge, high-priority project. The terms? My new, increased rates. I stared at the email, then checked the date. Thursday. Right in the middle of the ‘success and money gains’ period. I immediately went back to that little B.S. horoscope and read it again. It wasn’t about the stars moving the money; it was about the reading giving me the kick in the butt I needed to change my own damn rates and clean up my forgotten image.
I spent the next day drafting the contract, reviewing the scope, and sending over the initial payment request. That single project covered the full income I’d need for the next two months. I realized the only real “preparation” was just showing up when I didn’t want to and asking for what I was worth. The horoscope didn’t give me the success; it just made me stop whining and actually do the work that had been sitting on my plate.
I’m not saying I’m a believer now. I’m just saying I got the success and I got the money gains, but it came directly from the ugly, stressful, manual cleanup I was forced to execute.
