The Absolute Mess I Made in 2023 and Why I Started Tracking These Pisces Career Pitfalls
Man, 2023. What a total train wreck for my career. I swear, if you’re a Pisces, you probably made at least one of these three mistakes, because I hit the entire bingo card. I’m sharing this whole dirty laundry process not because I’m some guru, but because I finally got tired of being broke and burnt out just because I wanted to “follow my heart” or “help everyone.”
I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to write a list of tips. This came out of genuine pain. I had to rip apart my previous year to see where I went wrong, and I documented every single stupid decision I made. This was my personal “Reality Check Project,” and I started it in January 2024 because I was so financially gutted from the year before.
The whole thing kicked off when I started feeling that familiar Pisces drift. We get lost in the work, right? We see the potential, the art, the mission, and we totally forget about the paycheck or, you know, the actual contract. I spent the first two months of 2023 chasing a “passion project” with a friend. We were going to revolutionize something obscure. I poured maybe 700 hours into it. I mean, poured. I bought the software, I did the late nights, I ignored my main consulting gig because this felt more meaningful. The first thing I documented was the sheer time investment versus the actual financial return. Zero dollars. Negative return, actually, because of the software costs.
This first practice step was crucial: I grabbed a cheap notebook and started logging every decision where emotion beat logic. I wrote down the hours I worked versus the compensation I received. Most people just track income. I tracked the emotional toll. I used simple, rough metrics: Was I drained? Yes/No. Did I get paid what I deserved? Yes/No. I realized immediately that I had normalized being drained for the sake of “artistic fulfillment.”
Then came the second big realization that forced this documentation process to be real: the total career mistake of ignoring boundaries and burning out for clients who didn’t respect me.
The Moment Everything Collapsed and Forced Me to Write This Down
Why do I know these Pisces mistakes so intimately? Because they literally cost me my job and almost my sanity in the spring of 2023. I was working for a tiny agency. Classic setup: lots of promises, high energy, everyone felt like family. As a Pisces, I ate that up. I worked 70 hours a week, didn’t log overtime, and fixed everyone else’s screw-ups because I wanted the team to succeed. I thought loyalty and effort would be rewarded. Big Pisces mistake number one: assuming loyalty is a currency.
Then my old man got sick. Suddenly, seriously sick. I had to fly across the country, fast. I emailed my boss, asking for five days off, unpaid, just five days. I thought, after all those 70-hour weeks, the saved projects, the cheerleading, they’d say yes instantly. They didn’t.
I got an email back at 2 AM saying, “We can’t afford this interruption. If you leave, we’ll consider it abandonment of the contract.” Abandonment! After all that work! That email hit me like a physical punch. I looked at the hours I logged versus my paycheck, looked at the plane ticket I was about to buy, and something just snapped. It wasn’t the money; it was the total disrespect for my personal life, which I had allowed to happen by never setting a single boundary.
I fired back an email right then—totally unprofessional, totally emotional—and quit. I told them exactly where they could stick their project. It was messy, it was stupid, but I finally realized I had let my dreamer nature turn me into a doormat.
That forced me into unemployment for three months. No safety net because, you guessed it, I was too busy helping others to focus on my own savings. It was scary, dark, and humiliating. That period of struggle is why I am so militant now about avoiding these specific three mistakes, and why I created this log.
The Three Mistakes I Documented and Now Tell Every Pisces to Avoid
My documentation process showed these patterns clearly. I went through old emails, bank statements, and my old time logs and boiled down the chaos into practical warnings:
- Chasing the Vision Over the Contract: I realized I had accepted two jobs in the past three years solely because the founder was “inspirational” or the mission “felt right,” even though the pay was 20% below market. The fix I documented: Never accept a job where “potential” is 50% of your compensation. You need cash now, not dreams later.
- The Martyr Syndrome (Emotional Overload): I logged all the times I volunteered to take on extra work because someone else was struggling. I’d pull an all-nighter for a coworker’s mistake. This led directly to my burnout and the lack of respect that got me fired. The fix I documented: Log every single extra hour. Charge for it, or trade it for equivalent time off. Do not give it away for “goodwill.”
- Ignoring the Financial Details (The Drowning in the Deep End): I never read the fine print on my contracts. The moment I started tracking my actual finances during that unemployed period, I realized how vulnerable I was. We need safety nets because we are often too trusting. The fix I documented: Pay a lawyer or a trusted friend $100 to review every contract. Make sure you understand the exit clauses and non-competes.
This whole practice of logging and reviewing my own failures, especially that painful quitting moment, woke me up fast. I stopped relying on that soft Pisces intuition and started using a spreadsheet. Now I’m back in a role that pays properly and, crucially, respects my time. If you’re a Pisces heading into 2024 or beyond, grab a notebook. Start tracking those emotional costs before they hit your bank account. Don’t be the dreamer who drowns in reality like I almost did.
