Man, 2020, right? What a wild ride. Especially that Pisces Moon business, if you even keep up with that stuff. I didn’t really, not much, but looking back, it all just felt like that time. You know, foggy, a bit all over the place, like trying to walk through water.
I started 2020 feeling pretty decent, honestly. Thought I had things figured out with my job. I was pushing code, mostly. Felt like a cog, you know? Just turning and turning. But I told myself, “It’s a good gig, stable, pays the bills.” That’s what everyone says, right? You gotta be practical.
Then things just started to feel… off. It wasn’t one big thing at first. Just this creeping feeling, like a low-grade hum in the background. My motivation just slowly drained out. I’d sit there, staring at lines of code, and my brain just wouldn’t click into gear. I tried to push through it. Drank more coffee. Stayed up later. But it felt like I was running on empty, trying to pedal a bike uphill with flat tires.
Around what I later found out was that “Pisces Moon” period, things got really hazy. I mean, the world was going crazy, sure, but my own internal world was a mess too. I started questioning everything. Like, “Is this it? Is this what I’m going to do for the next thirty years?” And the answer, deep down, was a resounding “Nope.” That was a scary answer to hear, let me tell you.
I started just… drifting. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but I wasn’t deliberately doing anything. I found myself doodling during meetings, not even listening half the time. My mind would just wander off to these weird, imaginary jobs. Like, could I be a baker? A forest ranger? Stuff that was completely out of left field for a tech guy.
My work performance started to dip, naturally. I wasn’t getting called out, but I could feel it. I was slower. Made more silly mistakes. I felt this huge pressure, like I should be happy, should be grateful. But I just wasn’t. It was this constant battle inside my head.
So, I started talking to people. Not about leaving my job, not directly, but just about life, about what they loved doing. I talked to friends who were artists, friends who quit their corporate gigs to travel, even my old aunt who had five different careers in her lifetime. I was just soaking it all in, trying to find some kind of clue.
I also started doing weird things, things I usually wouldn’t. Like, I bought a cheap guitar and just started messing around, trying to learn chords from YouTube. Didn’t get very good, but it was just for me. No pressure, no deadlines. Just strumming away. I also picked up an old sketchbook I had from high school and started drawing again. Really rough, ugly stuff. But it felt good to just make something that wasn’t for a client or a project manager.
One evening, I was just staring at my computer, dreading the next day’s work, and it just hit me. Like a wave. This wasn’t sustainable. I wasn’t just tired of this particular job; I was tired of the feeling of it. The constant push, the corporate jargon, the feeling of being a small part of a huge machine. It felt like my soul was drying up.
The Pivot Point
That was tough. Real tough. Because what do you do when you realize your entire career path feels wrong? You panic, that’s what. I panicked for a good few weeks. Slept terribly. Had vivid, confusing dreams. That Pisces Moon energy, man, it was just swirling around me.
But then, I started to think differently. Instead of “What’s the right job?”, I started asking, “What gives me a little spark?” And oddly enough, it wasn’t coding anymore. It was… writing. Not coding tutorials or anything techy, just plain old writing. I’d always enjoyed putting words together, explaining things, telling stories. I just never thought of it as a “job.”
So, I didn’t quit my job right away. That would have been nuts. But I started looking. I started telling people I was interested in content, in communications. It felt a bit fake at first, like I was trying on a new personality. But the more I looked, the more I saw openings, even within my own industry, for people who could actually write well and explain complex stuff simply.
I even started a little blog, just for myself, where I wrote about anything and everything. No pressure. Just putting thoughts out there. It was clumsy, full of typos, but it was mine. And it felt like a tiny little ember, starting to glow.
By the end of 2020, things still weren’t perfectly clear, but the fog had definitely started to lift. I didn’t jump ship completely, but I made some moves. I started volunteering to write documentation at work, to help with internal comms. I even took an online course in technical writing. It wasn’t a huge, dramatic career change overnight. It was more like a slow, deliberate shift, guided by this weird, watery feeling that told me to trust my gut, even when my brain was screaming for practicality.
And you know what? It worked out. It might not be the career path I thought I’d have, but it feels a whole lot closer to where I’m meant to be. That Pisces Moon in 2020? Yeah, it was a mess, but it shook me awake, showed me I needed to swim in a different direction.
