I remember that time, clear as day. It felt like everything just hit a wall. I had been pouring my heart into this one project, building it piece by piece, day after day. Then, out of nowhere, it all just crumbled. Management pulled the plug. Said it wasn’t “aligned with new corporate strategies.” Boom. Just like that. I felt… left out in the cold, really. Like I’d been walking through a blizzard with no coat, looking at a warm building I couldn’t get into, watching others go in.
For a few days, I just sat there. Stared at the ceiling, stared at the wall. My mind was a complete mess. What was I going to do? All that effort, all those hours, just gone. It was a really dark spot, you know? I felt pretty worthless, to be honest. Like everything I’d built didn’t mean a damn thing anymore.
Then, one morning, I woke up and just felt this… urge. I had to do something. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself wasn’t helping anyone, especially not me. I grabbed a pen. Pulled out an old notebook. Started scribbling. Not about the failed project, not about what went wrong, but about what I could do. What skills did I still have? What did I actually enjoy doing, when all the pressure was off? It wasn’t about the job I lost, but about the job I wanted to find or, even better, create for myself.
Taking Action, One Step at a Time
- I started by listing every single thing I’d ever done that gave me a spark. Didn’t matter if it was work-related, a goofy hobby, or just something I fiddled with on the weekends. I just listed it all out. Getting it on paper made it feel more real, less like a jumbled mess in my head.
- Then, I began researching. Not for specific job openings right away, that felt too overwhelming. But for fields. What was out there? What was new? What were people actually getting excited about? I spent hours online, just reading, digging around, trying to get a feel for the landscape. It was like I was a tourist in a new country, just observing.
- I reached out. This was tough, really tough. I felt embarrassed, like a total failure. But I pushed through it. I messaged old colleagues, even some people I barely knew but whose work I admired. I just said, “Hey, how are things? What are you working on?” Casually, you know? Not asking for a job directly, just trying to connect, trying to understand what others were doing and where the energy was flowing.
- I started tinkering again. Remembered that old side project I always wanted to get to? The one that sat gathering dust for ages? I pulled it out. Dusted it off. Started writing some code, just for the hell of it. No pressure, no deadlines, just for myself. It was slow going at first, a bit rusty. But it felt good to build something again, even if it was just for my own satisfaction.
- I revised my resume. Not just updating it, but completely rethinking it. I tore it apart and rebuilt it from scratch. Focused on skills and achievements, not just job titles. What problems did I solve? What impact did I actually make in my previous roles, big or small? I tried to reframe everything in terms of value.
There were definitely moments I wanted to give up. I got a few of those polite “we’ll keep your resume on file” replies. Some people I reached out to didn’t write back at all, which stung. It felt like banging my head against a brick wall sometimes. Money worries started creeping in, making things even harder. It was a real grind, every single day felt like an uphill battle.
But I kept at it. That little side project? It slowly turned into something actually decent. Enough to show off, even, not just to myself. And one of those casual conversations with an old acquaintance… it led to an unexpected lead. Not a direct job offer, no. But an opportunity to contribute to something small. A contract gig, really. But it was something. It got my foot back in the door, got me working, got my brain thinking about actual problems again, not just my own predicament.
Looking back, that “Five of Pentacles” moment, that feeling of being abandoned and lost, it sucked. Absolutely sucked. But it forced me to strip everything back. To really look at what I was building, why I was building it, and who I was without all the fancy titles and projects. It made me realize that sometimes, losing everything is the only way to figure out what you truly value and how much fight you actually have in you. It wasn’t about getting back what I lost. It was about finding something completely new, something better, something that was actually mine. And I did. It wasn’t easy. It was messy. But I got there.
