The Day I Realized My Career Was Just A Spinning Wheel
Man, I was stuck. Like, really stuck. For five years, I was pulling good money doing something I absolutely hated. It wasn’t a terrible job; it was stable, the people were fine, the benefits were killer. But every morning felt like dragging a bag of rocks uphill. I’d hit this point where my bank account was high, but my spirit was in the basement. It was peak comfort and peak misery at the same time.
I remember sitting there one Sunday night, dreading Monday, and I just happened to be flipping through some old notebooks—the kind of random junk you save. I stumbled across a drawing I’d done years ago, a super basic sketch of the Wheel of Fortune tarot card. I’d always thought the card was just about “luck” or “fate,” which, frankly, I thought was garbage when it came to business. You make your own luck, right? But seeing that specific image—the figures clinging to the wheel, some going up, some going down—it suddenly hit me: my whole career track was just inertia, a slow, monotonous spin, and I was glued to the top, terrified of falling, but desperate to get off.
The Practice Kicks Off: Documenting the Inertia
I decided to stop viewing my career as a straight line and start viewing it as a cycle. This was my first practical step. I didn’t consult a fortune teller or anything; I just started documenting my own personal and professional cycles. I grabbed a plain spreadsheet—nothing fancy—and for 60 days, I logged three things every evening:
- Job Satisfaction (1 to 10 scale).
- Energy Level (How much I felt like doing anything constructive outside work).
- Fear Level (How scared I was of losing my current stability).
What I found was shocking, even though I knew it subconsciously. My job satisfaction would peak right after a successful project launch (a small upturn on the wheel), but my fear level would simultaneously spike because I knew the success meant the workload would immediately increase. Then, both would plummet together during the ensuing burnout phase. I was riding this tiny, depressing little loop.
The Wheel of Fortune symbolism isn’t just about things changing to you; it’s about recognizing that change is inevitable and positioning yourself for the next phase. I realized I was fighting the change instead of preparing for it.
Pushing the Wheel: Forcing the Change
I started digging into what I actually wanted to do, which was something totally different—consulting in a niche market I’d only dabbled in before. The problem was the risk. Leaving my secure job meant a potential crash. But the Wheel was telling me: if you wait for the external environment to push you off, the landing will be rough. If you jump when you’re prepared, you control the fall.
Here’s what I did next, step by painful step:
First, I carved out two hours every single day, right after logging my daily metrics. I used that time to reactivate old contacts and skill sets. I didn’t tell my boss anything. I simply reinvested the ‘top of the wheel’ salary into learning. I used cash to pay for a couple of cheap online courses and, critically, hired a cheap, one-hour mentor who operated in the sector I wanted to enter. I extracted knowledge actively.
Next, I actively sought a downturn. I know that sounds crazy. I looked for the smallest, lowest-paying freelance gig I could find that was outside my current company’s scope. It paid peanuts—maybe $500—but it gave me a live project to test my new skills and, crucially, a reference outside my current corporate bubble. I needed a taste of the bottom to realize it wasn’t fatal.
When the $500 project was done, I realized two things. One, I hadn’t starved. Two, the satisfaction from solving a problem for a small client was tenfold the satisfaction I got from a massive corporate bonus. The energy level score on my spreadsheet shot up from a 3 to an 8 immediately after I delivered that tiny project.
This is where the Wheel symbolism became real. I wasn’t waiting for a massive upturn; I was using the momentum of my stable job (the slow spin) to build an escape parachute. By actively taking on a small risk, I had already initiated the major change, even though I hadn’t quit yet.
The Jump and The Realization
Six months into this tracking and side-project phase, my original stable job started shaking. A big merger was announced. Suddenly, the security I was clinging to was gone, replaced by layoffs and uncertainty. If I hadn’t been tracking my cycles and forcing the shift, I would have panicked.
But because I had already built the consulting side and proved I could manage a small downturn, I felt calm. The external wheel was spinning wildly, but my personal foundation was solid. I walked out three weeks after the merger announcement, before the layoff list even dropped.
The “major change” wasn’t that I suddenly got lucky and found a new job. The major change was realizing that the Wheel of Fortune doesn’t dispense luck; it dispenses cycles. You are due for a major change the minute you realize you are stuck at any point—top or bottom. If you are stuck at the top, you must prepare for the drop by building something else. If you are stuck at the bottom, you must start building momentum immediately, no matter how small the action.
I’m doing great now, running my own consultancy. Is it risk-free? Hell no. But I learned how to ride the turns. The core lesson wasn’t about destiny; it was about recognizing that inertia is the true enemy. You have to push the wheel yourself, or you’ll just keep riding the same miserable loop until someone else kicks you off.
