Digging Up the Dust: Why October 2019 Was a Career Warning Shot
You know how you keep those little screenshots of goofy things or maybe a quick horoscope you thought was kinda neat? I do. And for some reason, I’d held onto the Virgo career forecast for October 2019. Now, I’m not saying I live and breathe by the stars, but man, digging that specific thing up a few months ago after the dust finally settled in my life? That practice was a trip.
My career was a mess. Straight up. In 2019, I was technically doing great, hitting targets, getting steady raises, the whole nine yards. But I was miserable. The work was just rote. It felt like I was paddling a canoe that was tied to a dock. I kept telling myself, “It’s fine, just push through, the stability is worth the soul-crushing boredom.” I was looking for external validation and a quick fix, chasing a title bump or a bigger paycheck to make the emptiness go away. That’s the mindset I carried into that October.
Flash forward to earlier this year, I was reorganizing my cloud storage—the kind of ridiculous administrative chore you only tackle when you’ve truly run out of Netflix to watch. I stumbled across a poorly cropped image labeled “VirgoOct19.” My heart actually jumped a bit because I remembered reading it, smiling, and totally forgetting it five minutes later.
The Clues I Blew Past: The Actual Reading and the Real Grind
I finally pulled up that old screenshot on my big monitor. It was grainy, but it was all there. I remember thinking at the time it was just typical fluffy horoscope stuff. But reading it now, with the benefit of hindsight, I saw it differently.
The forecast talked about a major “clearing out.” It mentioned “shedding professional dead weight,” and specifically emphasized that the “safest course of action is to plan for a year, not a month.” At the time, I interpreted “dead weight” as my messy inbox or maybe a couple of projects I didn’t like. I ignored the whole “plan for a year” thing, because I was trying to get a quick raise that month. Big mistake.
This is where the real work began. I grabbed my old physical calendar and my planner from 2019-2021. I laid them out on the dining room table. I basically started charting the forecast against my actual actions and the huge shifts that followed. I cross-referenced the job anxieties I’d scribbled down in November 2019 with what the forecast was saying about “emotional attachment to comfort.” It was like suddenly connecting all the dots in a huge, sad puzzle.
I realized the “dead weight” wasn’t a project—it was my whole mentality toward that company. I was resisting letting go of something that was already structurally failing, professionally. The stars weren’t telling me the company was going to have massive cutbacks in 2020 (though it did, and I was on the list), but they were pointing to the fact that I was too dependent on a path that had run its course.
5 Crucial Insights I Finally Got Off My Butt to Realize
After that deep dive, I distilled the whole messy practice into five core lessons. These aren’t cosmic warnings; they are human practice notes:
- The Pivot is Internal, Not External: I wasted six months in late 2019 applying for the exact same job at a different company. The forecast said “pivot.” It meant I needed to change my skills and my value proposition, not just my employer.
- Dead Weight is Attachment, Not Task: I was fighting for a job that was making me unhappy because the title gave me status. The “dead weight” was my ego holding onto a comfortable identity. I needed to let go of the idea of who I was supposed to be.
- Stability is Built, Not Given: That whole “plan for a year” thing? I finally got it. It meant building a diversified skill set and a side hustle, not just relying on a monthly check from one source. When the check stopped, I was sunk.
- The Universe Doesn’t Spoon-Feed: The warning was abstract for a reason. It wasn’t “You will be laid off in March.” It was “Start separating yourself from this environment now.” I misread the subtlety and paid the price later.
- Retrospective Practice is Everything: The most crucial insight. Looking back at your past thoughts and actions against what you thought the future held is the only way you learn how you habitually mess things up. I’d never have truly learned this if I hadn’t forced myself to compare the 2019 prediction with the 2020 pain.
The Aftermath: Closing the Door and Walking Away
And here is the kicker, the part that ties back to why I even bothered with this deep-dive practice.
When I got the ax in mid-2020, I panicked just like anyone would. I immediately tried to call my old boss, begged for any kind of contract work, basically proving I still hadn’t learned the “shed the dead weight” lesson. My old company treated me like a ghost—suddenly no one returned calls, and my old access badges were already deactivated. It was cold. It felt exactly like I had been removed from the system with no explanation or apology.
But that forced, awful isolation gave me the space to actually listen to that dusty old October 2019 warning. I stopped obsessing over getting back in the door and I started building the thing I’d been putting off—this blog, this sharing space, and a totally new freelance path. I took the “long game” approach and put my head down.
Now, I’m in a completely different game. I call the shots on my schedule. I stopped chasing the comfort I thought I needed and built the stability I actually deserve. That old horoscope wasn’t a prediction; it was a mirror I refused to look into until I was forced to. I highly recommend everyone go back and find the warning signs you ignored in your own life. It’s the best practice you can do.
