Man, 2026, huh? Everyone’s always talking about “best job moves,” “career horoscopes,” and all that. Honestly, for me, it just brings back memories of when I truly made my best job moves. It wasn’t some cosmic alignment, just a whole lot of gut feeling and then some serious legwork.
Back then, I was stuck in a pretty typical office gig. It was fine, you know? Pay was okay, decent benefits, not too stressful. I just pushed papers, crunched numbers that didn’t really mean much to me, answered calls. It was comfortable, maybe too comfortable. But deep down, I felt like a cog in a machine that was slowly rusting. I’d walk in, do the same stuff, walk out, and feel like I hadn’t done anything real.
I started noticing the vibe change in the company, too. There were whispers, reorganizations, people getting shuffled around. Nothing concrete, but it just felt… off. Like the ship was steady, but the current was getting stronger, pulling us somewhere I didn’t want to go. I’d sit there, looking at my screen, and just feel this huge urge to do something different, something with my hands, my brain, something that made a visible impact.
So, what did I do? I started messing around. And I mean really messing around after work. I wanted to build stuff, not just process it. I didn’t even know what exactly, just that I wanted to create. I started small. I picked up some old parts from a buddy who was throwing out his broken computer. I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about how to fix it, how to put things together. I was completely clueless at first.
- First, I stripped it down. Took out every screw, every wire. Messed it up good, probably broke more than I fixed.
- Then, I tried putting it back. Followed a bad tutorial, got totally lost.
- I kept at it, though. Ordered some cheap replacement parts online, just to try different things. Blew a power supply, sparks flew. My wife was not happy.
It was frustrating as hell, but I was learning. I was actually doing something. From there, I moved onto learning some basic coding. Again, no idea what I was doing, just followed some free online courses. It started with simple stuff, little scripts to automate repetitive tasks at home. Stuff for tracking my expenses, organizing my digital photos, just making my own life a little easier.
The whole process was slow, clunky, full of errors. I’d spend hours on a single line of code, just to have it crash. But every time I made something work, no matter how small, it felt like a little victory. A real victory. That feeling? That’s what I was missing in my old job.
Eventually, I felt like I had enough to actually show for it. It wasn’t professional level, not by a long shot, but I had a portfolio of little projects, things I’d built and debugged. I revamped my resume, not just listing my old job duties, but really highlighting what I’d done on my own time. What I’d learned from scratch.
I started looking for totally different roles. Not exactly easy. Most places wanted experience I didn’t have, or degrees I hadn’t earned. I got a ton of rejections, got ghosted after interviews, you name it. It felt like walking into a brick wall over and over. But that feeling of dread about my old job was still there, so I just kept hammering away.
Then, after what felt like forever, a small local company, kind of a startup, gave me a chance. It wasn’t for some high-level tech role, but more of an entry-level position where I could assist with their digital tools and systems. They saw that I was hungry, that I’d taught myself a bunch of stuff, and I was genuinely excited to build and fix things. They didn’t care that I didn’t have the “official” background. They cared that I did something to get there.
Walking into that new office felt completely different. The work was challenging, I was constantly learning on the job, making mistakes, and then figuring out how to fix them. But every day, I felt like I was actually contributing, actually building something. The anxiety from my old job just melted away. It was wild. From feeling totally stuck to actually making things happen. Sometimes, those “best job moves” aren’t about finding the perfect slot, but about figuring out what you actually want to do, and then just starting to do it yourself, come hell or high water.
