Man, sometimes you just hit a wall, you know? Like, you wake up, pour the coffee, do the same old grind, then it’s dinner, TV, and back to bed. For a long while, that was my life. My job wasn’t bad, exactly, but it just felt… flat. Like listening to a song with no bass. I was just going through the motions, pretty much every single day.
Then, one day, I was just mindlessly scrolling, probably looking for cat videos or something equally useful, when this headline popped up. It was something like, “June Horoscope Pisces Career: Find Your Path Today!” Now, I’m not usually one for horoscopes. Never really bought into all that cosmic alignment stuff. But that “Find Your Path Today!” part, man, that just hit me different. It was like a little jab to the ribs, a “Hey, you! Still stuck in neutral?” kind of feeling.
I didn’t click on it, didn’t read my horoscope. But it got stuck in my head. “Pisces career.” What the heck did that even mean? I remembered hearing Pisces were supposed to be dreamy, creative, maybe a bit artistic, intuitive. And my job? It was spreadsheets. Lots and lots of spreadsheets. Nothing dreamy or artistic about calculating quarterly reports, trust me. But the thought, the idea of it, started to worm its way in.
I thought, “Okay, forget the horoscope part. What if I just took the ‘find your path’ bit seriously for once?” I grabbed an old, dusty notebook – the kind you keep meaning to use for great ideas but never do. I just started scribbling. Not about career goals or five-year plans, just… things. Things I used to enjoy, things I’d always wanted to try. Stupid stuff, even. Like, I used to love drawing these goofy little stick-figure comics when I was a kid. Or tinkering with old radios and seeing if I could get them to work again. I even wrote down how much I enjoyed organizing my tool shed, which sounds bonkers, but I really did. It felt good to bring order to chaos.
After a few days of this random scribbling, I had a messy list. No clear path, just a bunch of disjointed interests. So, I decided, “Alright, let’s make this a personal experiment.” I told myself I’d try out one thing from this list each week, no pressure, just for the hell of it. My own little “practice record,” if you will.
Week One: The Guitar Retrieval. I dug out my old acoustic guitar from under the bed. It was probably as dusty as that notebook. I hadn’t touched it in years. My fingers were clumsy, trying to remember old chords. It sounded awful, truly awful. But I sat there for an hour, just messing around, and for that hour, I wasn’t thinking about spreadsheets. That was a win.
Week Two: The Friend’s Wi-Fi Fiasco. A buddy of mine was having a nightmare setting up his new smart home gadgets. He was pulling his hair out. I offered to swing by, just to take a look. Spent a solid four hours untangling wires, resetting routers, connecting all his smart plugs. It was fiddly, kinda annoying, but when everything finally clicked and worked, he was super stoked, and I actually felt… useful. Energized, even.
Week Three: Kitchenette Chaos. Our office kitchenette was a disaster zone. People just dumped stuff everywhere. No rhyme or reason. It always bugged me. So, on a slow Friday afternoon, I just went in there with some labels and a roll of paper towels. I reorganized the entire thing – made a spot for mugs, a spot for snacks, labeled the shared spices. Completely outside my job description, but damn, did it feel satisfying. People actually started keeping it tidy after that, mostly.
Every time I did one of these “experiments,” I’d jot down a quick note in my notebook: “How did that feel? Did time fly or drag? Was I totally drained or buzzing afterward?” What I started to notice was a pattern. The things that involved creating something, or fixing something, or bringing order to chaos – those were the things that made me feel good. Really good. My spreadsheet job? Still felt like a flat song.
Then, a weird thing happened. My buddy, the one with the Wi-Fi, told his cousin about how I fixed his network. His cousin then called me up, desperate for help setting up his home office network. I did it, and he actually insisted on paying me a bit for my time. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time something I genuinely enjoyed doing actually brought in some cash. That was a spark, for sure.
It wasn’t like a magic light bulb moment where the horoscope told me, “You should be a network engineer!” No, it was more subtle. It was the horoscope title that made me stop, made me look at myself and what I was doing. It didn’t give me answers; it just nudged me to ask the right questions about myself. To actually try things instead of just thinking about them.
I started doing more of these small tech support gigs on the weekends. I even researched some online courses for IT fundamentals. I realized that the organizing and problem-solving I loved in my personal projects actually had a name in the real world. It wasn’t a sudden, dramatic career change. I didn’t quit my job overnight. Instead, I started talking to my boss about taking on more project management tasks, more internal system organization projects at work. Things I actually enjoyed, things that felt like I was solving a puzzle, not just filling in cells.
Now, I’m in a totally different spot. I’ve shifted roles within my company to something that’s way more about systems and operations, which means a lot more problem-solving and organizing. And I still do those tech support gigs on the side; they’ve grown into a small, steady stream. It’s not a perfect dream job, but it’s got more bass, you know? It’s got more rhythm. I actually feel like I’m building something, learning new stuff, and generally not just sitting there watching life pass me by.
That silly horoscope headline? It didn’t predict my future. What it did was give me the kick in the pants I needed to actually start looking for my own path, by doing. And sometimes, that’s all it takes.
