Man, September. You know how it is. Every year around that time, you start seeing all those online articles pop up, “Will luck be with you this month?” or “What the stars say about your finances!” I don’t usually pay them much mind, not really. But last September, something was different. I was in a bit of a bind, trying to get this one side project off the ground, and things just felt… stagnant. So, yeah, I saw one of those headlines, “Pisces monthly September horoscope: Will luck be with you now?” and it just sort of stuck in my head. Not that I believe it, but it got me thinking: what is luck, really? And could I, you know, coax some of it my way?
I was really trying to build out this little online thing, a small tool I thought folks might find useful. I had started it back in July, really excited, sketching out ideas on napkins, scribbling code late into the night. August came, and I kept at it, pushing through, making decent progress. But then September rolled around, and everything just felt heavy. Bugs started popping up where there weren’t any before. Features I thought would be simple turned into massive headaches. I was banging my head against the keyboard more often than not. That’s when the “luck” question started nagging me.
So, I thought, okay, if I can’t rely on some cosmic force, what can I do? I decided to treat this whole thing as a bit of a personal experiment, a “luck practice,” if you will. I didn’t have a fancy journal or anything, just a beat-up old notebook I found in a drawer. Every morning, I’d jot down three things I was going to push forward on that day, no matter what. No big, grand goals, just small, actionable stuff. Then, in the evening, I’d write down what actually happened.
My Daily Grind & Little Victories
- First thing, I tackled the planning. I sat down, not for hours, but for twenty minutes each morning, just to outline the day’s attack. I wanted to get super clear on what needed to happen next. Before September, I just kinda dove in. But this time, I was mapping out every little step.
- Then, I forced myself to walk away when stuck. This was a big one. Usually, I’d just fight a bug for hours. This time, if I hit a wall for more than an hour, I’d close the laptop, go make a coffee, or just stare out the window for ten minutes. Surprisingly, a lot of solutions just sort of… popped into my head during those breaks.
- I started reaching out. Before, I was a lone wolf, thinking I had to figure everything out myself. This September, I started posting questions in online forums, messaging old colleagues. Sometimes, just articulating the problem to someone else helped me see the answer. Other times, I got a direct tip that saved me days.
- I celebrated the small wins. Every time I fixed a bug, no matter how tiny, or implemented a new little piece of a feature, I’d write it down in my notebook. “Fixed the login redirect!” or “Got the user profile picture to actually show up!” It sounds silly, but seeing that list grow really kept me going when I felt like giving up.
It wasn’t easy. There were still days, many of them, when I felt like I was wading through treacle. I remember one particular Tuesday where everything I touched just broke. I spent six hours trying to get this one API call to work right, and it just wouldn’t budge. I wrote in my notebook that night, “Today was a total bust. Felt like all the bad luck decided to hang out with me.” But then I looked at the previous entries, all those little wins I’d recorded. It gave me just enough juice to not throw in the towel.
I kept pushing, kept doing those three small things every day. I kept taking those breaks, kept asking for help, kept noting down whatever progress I made. Slowly, things started to shift. The big, gnarly bugs got untangled. The features started to click into place. It wasn’t some sudden, dramatic turnaround. It was more like a slow, steady climb out of a ditch.
By the end of September, I actually had a working prototype. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was functional. I could share it with a few friends, get their feedback. And when I looked back at that cheesy horoscope headline, I laughed a bit. Was luck with me? Maybe. But what I really felt was a sense of accomplishment, like I had wrestled some control back. It wasn’t about the stars aligning; it was about the little steps I took every single day, even when I didn’t feel like it. It was about defining my own “luck” through persistent, often frustrating, effort. That September, I learned that sometimes, you just gotta put in the work, and the “luck” sorta follows.
