I’m gonna level with you guys. The whole reason I even busted out this plan, this whole “stop waiting for fate” nonsense, was pure desperation. I was sitting on my beat-up leather sofa, scrolling through my feed, right? It was a Tuesday. I remember because I was supposed to be working on something important, but I was just… checking my horoscope. Pisces. Something about “a major life decision will be presented to you soon, be patient.”
Patience? I swear, I nearly threw my cheap phone across the room. I had been “patient” for six solid months. Six months of applying for that one job, the absolute dream gig, the one I thought was my destiny. I polished the resume. I wrote the cover letter. I sent the follow-up. I did everything right. And they ghosted me. Just completely disappeared into the ether. I realized then: I wasn’t being patient; I was just being passive. I was waiting for the universe or some corporate HR manager to validate my existence.
That feeling of emptiness, that just… sucked. I figured, hell with it. The stars ain’t gonna do squat. The future isn’t something you find; it’s something you build. And I decided I was going to build the damn thing myself, starting that very second. No more waiting on weekly fish advice.
The Trigger and The Commitment: Drowning in Routine
I got up. I yanked a dusty notebook off the shelf—the kind with the coffee stains and bent pages. I grabbed a cheap pen and I scrawled down three things. Not some vague mission statement about “finding happiness,” but three concrete, nasty things I had been putting off that week. I wanted to force momentum.
Here’s what I jammed onto that paper:
- Decimate the “Fun” Money Drain: I had to stop the casual spending. That means no more daily $5 coffee runs. I had to look at the numbers.
- Launch the Ugly First Draft: I’d been talking about starting a tiny side project using that Python library—the one I kept saying I was “too busy” to learn. I had to ship an ugly, functional first draft by Friday.
- Engage the Giants: I had to email three people in my field I genuinely admired. Not to ask for a job, but just to say, “Hey, I like your work, how did you even start doing that?” Pure, terrifying networking.
I taped that list to the middle of my monitor. I swore to myself, I wouldn’t let my head hit the pillow until I had moved the needle on one of those items. Sounds dramatic, but I needed drama to wake up.
The Clumsy, Stressful, Messy Process
Day one: Budget. I dreaded this. I opened the bank app and the spreadsheet. I cringed. You guys wouldn’t believe the amount of take-out I was buying. It was shameful. I didn’t use some fancy finance software; I just created a simple Google Sheet—one column for income, one for expenses. I saw the problem immediately. I slashed the subscriptions I never used. I deleted the delivery app from my phone. It hurt, genuinely felt like I was ripping off a bandage, but by the end of the night, the sheet was still ugly, but the numbers made sense. I checked off number one. A small win, but I did it.
Day two through four was all about the ugly first draft. I pulled up the Python documentation. It was just a wall of text. I searched on YouTube, watched a dozen tutorials that mostly confused me. I typed code, I deleted code, I crashed my environment twice. At one point, I stared at the blinking cursor for 45 minutes, just blank. I felt the old urge to quit, to say “This is too hard, I’m not cut out for this.” But I forced myself to copy one line of working code and just mess with it. By Thursday night, I had something that looked like a joke—a terrible, non-scalable piece of software that barely worked—but it functioned. I pushed it to a private repo. Goal two achieved.
Day five: The Networking. Oh, the anxiety. I drafted those three emails. They were terrible, too eager. I rewrote them, keeping them short, honest, and respectful. I read them out loud. My heart was pounding. I stared at the “Send” button. I drank a whole bottle of water. I thought about all the reasons they wouldn’t reply. Then I just slammed my finger down on the trackpad. Sent. The feeling was less relief, more like immediate, cold dread. But the task was done.
The Outcome: My Future Was Just Waiting for Me to Start Moving
Did I become rich and famous? No. Was the dream job suddenly offered? Nope. But here’s the kicker, the real realization.
Within 48 hours, two of those people replied. One gave me some genuinely useful advice on my side project, and the other said, “Let’s hop on a 15-minute call sometime next week.” The budget is now tight, but I know where the money is going. And that ugly piece of software? It’s the most satisfying piece of garbage I’ve ever written.
My fate didn’t come to me. I had to chase it down, drag it into the light, and force it to do what I wanted. I stopped thinking like a Pisces waiting for the tide to turn and started acting like a shark that just swims directly at the meal. The future wasn’t waiting for a horoscope to grant me permission. It was just waiting for me to get off the sofa, stop scrolling, and start the engine. If you’re waiting for your sign, stop. Your sign is right now. Go do something ugly.
