Man, 2019 was a weird year, especially when that Pisces season rolled around. I remember feeling this heavy fog, like my career was just drifting without a compass. It wasn’t one big thing, more like a bunch of little annoyances piling up until they became this huge wall. I was just slogging through the days, you know? The enthusiasm I used to have for my work, it felt like it had just packed up and left without a forwarding address.
I started by just feeling really antsy. Like something had to give, but I had no clue what. Every morning, I’d wake up with this low-level dread. Projects at work were stalled, communication felt broken, and I just couldn’t see a clear path forward. It wasn’t that I was bad at my job, it was more like the whole ecosystem around me was off-kilter. I was trying to push things, to make them happen, but it felt like pushing against sand.
My first move was pretty basic, probably what anyone would do: I just started complaining a lot. To my wife, to my buddies. Didn’t help one bit, just made me feel worse. So I stopped that. Then I started just looking at job boards, just to see what was out there. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Nothing really grabbed me. It all felt like more of the same, just a different company name.
That’s when I kinda hit a wall with that approach. I realized just passively looking wasn’t gonna cut it. I needed to actually do something different. Something concrete.
Shifting Gears: My Real Actions
The first real thing I did was pretty simple. I grabbed a pen and an old notebook and just started writing down everything that was bugging me about my current situation. Not just work stuff, but everything. What I hated about my commute, what conversations stressed me out, what parts of my day felt like a waste. I just dumped it all out. It was a mess, but it got it out of my head.
- I wrote down what I genuinely enjoyed doing. Even if it wasn’t work-related. Hobbies, things I liked learning about, stuff I’d talk about for hours if given the chance.
- Then, I listed my skills. Not just job title skills, but actual things I was good at. Fixing stuff, talking to difficult people, organizing chaotic information, figuring out how things fit together. Real, tangible stuff.
After that raw brain dump, I started to see some patterns. There were parts of my work I really didn’t mind, but they were buried under a ton of stuff I hated. And some of the skills I liked using weren’t even tapped into at my current gig.
My next step was to start digging around online, but differently. I wasn’t looking for jobs, I was looking for problems. What problems were out there that my skills could actually solve? I spent hours just reading forums, scanning news articles, looking at what people were complaining about in my industry. It wasn’t about finding a job, it was about finding a fit.
I also started reaching out to people. Not with a “do you know anyone hiring?” pitch, but more like, “Hey, it’s been a while, how are things going? What cool stuff are you working on these days?” I talked to old colleagues, former managers, even some folks I’d met at random meetups years ago. Just casual conversations. The goal was simply to connect and listen. To understand what they were doing and what challenges they were facing. It opened my eyes to a lot of different paths I hadn’t even considered.
One conversation with an old mentor really stuck. He just said, “You’re probably looking in the wrong place for ‘the’ answer. Sometimes you gotta build the answer yourself.” That really clicked for me. It wasn’t about finding an existing slot, it was about figuring out where I could create value.
Putting Pieces Together
So, I started small. I looked at one of the pain points I’d identified at my current job – something that was really slowing down our team. It wasn’t a huge, company-wide issue, just a specific, annoying process. I sketched out a different way of doing it, a simpler way. I didn’t wait for permission. I just started testing it on a small scale, on my own tasks. I tracked the time it saved me, the hassle it removed.
Then, I showed it to my immediate team. Not as “look what I did,” but as “hey, I was struggling with this, and I tried this thing, and it seems to make it a bit smoother.” They actually liked it. It wasn’t a revolution, but it was a small win. It felt good to actually fix something, rather than just complain about it.
That small win gave me a boost. It made me realize that even if I couldn’t control the big picture, I could control my immediate environment and how I approached my work. I started looking for other little things I could optimize, processes I could streamline, small ways to make my own work, and by extension, my team’s work, a bit more efficient. I just kept at it, doing these small things, logging them, seeing the impact.
By the time Pisces season was over, the fog hadn’t completely lifted, but I had a clear path. I wasn’t just drifting anymore. I felt like I had a paddle in my hand, and I was actually starting to steer. It wasn’t about finding a new job overnight; it was about changing my approach, taking control of what I could control, and starting to build my own solutions. And honestly, that made all the difference. It felt like I finally found my footing again.
