Man, I have to tell you, things went completely sideways three months ago. I was cruising, right? Running the whole EMEA account management pipeline. Felt like a total rock star. We just finished the Q4 review, numbers were through the roof, and I was already drawing up plans for the summer. Then the email landed. Not even a meeting, just a cold-as-ice email detailing a “strategic restructuring.” Translation: I was out the door. Severance was okay, but the feeling? Like a punch to the gut. I spent the first four weeks absolutely enraged, pacing around my apartment, trying to figure out how they could ditch someone who brought in that much revenue.
I scrolled through job boards for a bit, sent out maybe fifty applications, and got nothing but generic bot responses. Every single interview I did felt like a repeat of the last, talking about “synergy” and “leveraging assets.” It all felt hollow. I needed a direction, but more than that, I needed to figure out why I always ended up in situations where my stability rested on a management decision I couldn’t control.
The Accidental Discovery of Ancient History
I was so stuck, I started doing weird stuff. Like cleaning out the junk drawer of my phone’s photo album. You know, old screen grabs, memes I forgot I saved, blurry pictures of my cat. And then I stumbled across a screenshot from late 2020. I remember exactly when I took it. It was the annual career horoscope prediction for Pisces for the year 2021. I’d been having a laugh, thinking about how ridiculous it was, but I’d saved it anyway.
I pulled up that old image and started reading the rambling, vague predictions. Most of it was standard astrological fluff—”major transformations,” “redefining success,” “focus on deep connections.” But one line hit me hard, like a brick to the head:
- “In late 2021, Pisces will face a critical choice: either double down on an opportunity that offers huge short-term gains but requires compromising your personal time and long-term values, or step back and invest in foundational skills that promise slower but undeniable growth.”
I read that line maybe ten times. See, back in 2021, I was still at my old company, and I got offered the massive promotion to manage the APAC expansion team. The money was insane. I told myself it was worth the sacrifice. The job demanded 80 hours a week, constant travel, and meant I had zero life outside of work. I totally ignored all my friends and family who said it was too much. I was convinced I was chasing “undeniable growth” when I was actually chasing “huge short-term gains.”
Mapping the Past Mistake to the Present Mess
That 2021 prediction, which I had laughed at, perfectly described the exact career decision that led to my total burnout and ultimately, made me vulnerable to the current restructuring. I realized I hadn’t learned a thing since 2021. When I moved to the company that just let me go, I took the biggest, flashiest job they offered—the one requiring the most aggressive travel schedule and the craziest hours. I jumped right back into the exact same unsustainable pattern.
I spent the entire next day cross-referencing my old work logs, performance reviews from 2021, and the commitments I made then versus the ones I made this year. It wasn’t about the horoscope being right; it was about the simple fact that my life themes hadn’t changed. I kept choosing the path that offered immediate validation, ignoring the voice telling me that volume doesn’t equal value.
I started tearing apart the job descriptions I had saved. I looked at the ones I applied for right after the firing. Every single one was a high-pressure, high-visibility role, designed to replace the exact level of stress I had just escaped. I was trying to patch the hole with the same garbage that ripped it open in the first place.
The Realization and the New Plan
What I figured out was brutally simple: I screwed up in 2021 by prioritizing the title over the actual work-life structure. The current job shift isn’t just bad luck; it’s a direct consequence of a decision I made years ago and kept repeating.
So, I wiped the slate clean. I stopped applying for the “rock star” jobs. I opened up a spreadsheet and instead of listing salary expectations first, I listed required boundaries:
- No more than 10% travel.
- No required evening calls with APAC time zones.
- A role focused entirely on deep, specialized project work, not generalized management oversight.
I started applying for roles that were technically a step down in title but were a massive leap forward in stability and focus. Last week, I accepted an offer for a Senior Analyst role. It’s way less money than what I made running the pipeline, but the work is exactly what I wanted to be doing back in 2021 before I got distracted by the big shiny title.
The best part? My new boss told me during the interview, “We don’t do emergencies here. We plan.” That’s the exact opposite of my life for the last five years. I used a three-year-old, totally meaningless horoscope to stop me from making the same damn mistake all over again. Sometimes you just need a random artifact from the past to remind you of the lesson you already paid for.
