Man, 2018. What a mess. I was sitting at my desk, staring at some Excel sheet that felt like it was written in a dead language, and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. It was late 2017, and honestly, I was just completely burnt out. My job was fine—not great, but stable. But every morning felt like dragging myself through mud. I’m a Pisces, and you know how it is, we get all dramatic and think the universe is against us.
I started doing what every miserable person does: checking out those ridiculous online articles. You know the ones. “Your biggest career opportunity is coming!” or “Major financial shift in Quarter 1!” I read a specific one, I don’t even remember where, but it stuck. It said for Pisces in 2018, the opportunity was abandoning the safe harbor and diving deep into something digitally focused and independent. Sounded like total garbage, but I was desperate enough to grab onto anything.
I didn’t need much convincing. I had been saving up for a down payment on a boat—don’t ask—and I figured I had about eight months of runway if I ate nothing but instant noodles. So I did it. I walked into my manager’s office on December 15th and handed in my badge. I didn’t even give two weeks notice. I just said, “I’m done with this spreadsheet hell. I’m going digital.” The look on his face was legendary. He just stammered something about benefits and then walked away. Zero effort to keep me. That told me everything I needed to know about the value of my work there.
The Practice: Becoming a Builder
The first few weeks were pure panic. I had quit a good salary based on some stupid online prophecy. My wife was looking at me like I had grown an extra head. I told her I was going to learn how to build mobile apps. That was the ‘digital transformation’ part I picked.
The process was painful, messy, and mostly involved shouting at my monitor:
- I bought one of those “Learn to Code in 30 Days” courses. Total scam. I got through about three videos before I realized it was designed by someone who already knew how to code.
- I threw that out and started watching free tutorials on YouTube. Hours and hours of terrible audio quality and confusing code.
- My focus was Android development, because everyone had an Android phone, and I figured the market was huge.
- I managed to get one of those developer environments set up. It took me three solid days just to get the thing installed and not crash my old laptop. It felt like I was battling the machine itself.
- I finally wrote my first app. It did one thing: it told you the time. My kids thought it was hilarious. They asked if I spent three weeks building a clock.
I was burning through cash. The ramen diet was in full swing. This ‘biggest opportunity’ was feeling like the biggest mistake.
The Twist: They Called
I hit my low point right around May 2018. Savings were gone. I was about to dust off my old resume and start applying for similar misery jobs. Then the phone rang. It was my old job. Not my manager, but the head of some HR department I’d never spoken to.
She starts off all professional, then says, “Mr. Matthews, we’re calling regarding an administrative oversight related to your departure.” I figured, great, they finally found the big bonus check they owe me. No such luck.
She told me that due to my ‘unconventional departure,’ and because they were restructuring, they had completely lost my paperwork. Not only was the promised vacation payout totally lost, but they were now demanding that I come in and sign a stack of release forms or they would mark my employment record as ‘abandonment.’ Can you believe the nerve?
I remember standing in my kitchen, holding the phone, and just laughing. A deep, angry laugh. This company, which I had slaved for, which I had just risked my entire financial stability to escape, was so dysfunctional they couldn’t even process a simple resignation. I told the woman, “You know what? Do whatever you need to do, Brenda. I’m busy building my future. Don’t call me again.” And I hung up.
The Real Opportunity
That call, that fight about the lost paperwork, was the kick I needed. I realized that if I had stayed, I would have been dependent on that complete administrative mess. Being an ‘abandonment’ was probably the best compliment I could receive. I wasn’t just unemployed; I was free from that chaos.
I took that anger and finished that first real app. It wasn’t fancy, just a simple task tracker for construction sites—something niche. I cold-emailed ten local contractors. One of them actually replied. He paid me a pitiful amount, but it was enough to cover the next month’s cable bill.
By the end of 2018, I had three small, steady clients paying me monthly to maintain and tweak their simple little apps. I wasn’t rich, I wasn’t a tech genius, but I was my own boss, sitting in my dining room, and I made more than I did pushing paper. The biggest opportunity wasn’t some mystical prediction for my star sign. It was the chance to see how broken the ‘safe’ path was and have the guts to walk away and build my own damn clock.
