Digging Up the Past: How a 2017 Horoscope Made Me Quit
Man, 2017. What a messy year. I was stuck, right? Just doing the grind, hating the commute, and feeling like my brain was turning into mush. That’s why I was even looking up some flaky thing called a “Career Horoscope” for Pisces in July 2017. I wasn’t usually into that stuff, but I was desperate for a sign, anything. I remember scrolling through that fuzzy screen capture on my old phone.
The advice? It was some typical watery stuff, something like, “The universe is asking you to deeply review your past successes and understand the core energy you brought to them. Your biggest wins hold the key to your future path. Don’t be afraid to take a dive.” Total BS, right? But I was so tired of my boss telling me to make three-thousand copies of nothing that week, I figured, what did I have to lose? I was ready to try anything to break the cycle.
The Messy Process of Unpacking “Wins”
I started the whole process by actually taking that advice way too literally. I went home and pulled out all my old external hard drives. We’re talking dusty, clicky things from like 2012. I spent the entire next Saturday just trying to access files, dealing with corrupted folders, and generally making a huge mess in my living room. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, honestly. I just knew I had to find those “biggest wins.”
What I initially believed was a “win” was something like:
- The huge marketing campaign I did that brought in a ton of money for the company. (The one I got a $50 bonus for.)
- The time I stayed until 3 AM to fix the server crash. (The one where I got yelled at for being late the next day.)
I scrolled through years of emails, looking for compliments or kudos. I opened up old project folders and stared at spreadsheets. The deeper I went, the less impressed I was by those supposed big corporate “wins.” They felt empty. They felt like their wins, not mine.
Then something clicked. I stumbled on this tiny little document—an outline for a personal project I’d started for my friend’s tiny non-profit years earlier. It was totally unrelated to my day job. I had just done it because I cared. I remembered the feeling of building that system from scratch—it was pure stress, sure, but also total focus and satisfaction when it actually worked and helped people. That feeling? That was the core energy.
The Big Realization and the Dive
After about a month of this slow-motion, highly disorganized ‘review,’ I finally understood the horoscope’s garbage advice. It wasn’t about the job or the money I’d made. The “biggest wins” weren’t the things I got paid for; they were the things I did when I was allowed to be fully autonomous and creative. The things where I had full control and could just make stuff happen without needing six layers of approval.
So, what did I do? I spent the next six weeks quietly drafting a plan. It wasn’t about finding a better job; it was about finding my kind of work. I realized the only way to get back that feeling of my “biggest win” was to become my own boss. I was tired of giving my core energy to something that didn’t matter to me.
I pulled the trigger that September, two months after reading that stupid horoscope. I walked in, gave my notice, and honestly, the relief was immediate. I started small, just consulting and picking up the kind of weird, unique projects that my soul-sucking former job would have laughed at. The first six months were a terrifying financial mess, I’m not gonna lie. I worked like an absolute dog, hustling for every penny.
But when I look back now, that moment in July 2017—when I decided to stop listening to my boss and start actually looking at my own history—that was the pivot. The actual “win” wasn’t the money I eventually made; it was the bravery to quit a stable gig to chase a feeling I’d only found outside of a paycheck. That Piscean advice, whatever it actually meant, just gave me the permission to stop making copies and start designing my own damn life. If I hadn’t forced myself to dig through those dusty hard drives, I’d probably still be sitting in that fluorescent-lit cubicle, waiting for an empty bonus check.
