Man, 2021 was a blur. I was working this job, right? It wasn’t terrible, but it was going nowhere. I’d been at the same desk, doing the same stuff, for almost four years. Every performance review, my manager would nod a lot and say I was “integral to the team’s success,” but the pay barely moved, and the title stayed exactly where it was. I was just stuck.
I felt like I was running on a treadmill. I had bills piling up, and I knew I needed a serious jump to make anything happen. That’s what started the whole astrology mess. My wife, bless her heart, kept getting these chain emails from her aunt, all about what the stars said for our future. She’s a Pisces, and she’d leave these printouts on the fridge, highlighted, showing “Power Weeks” for the career sector.
I usually laugh at that stuff. I mean, my career is determined by whether the legacy server decides to cooperate, not by some planet alignment. But 2021 was different. I was so burnt out and desperate for a sign, any sign, that I started reading them. I’d grab the printout while making coffee and skim it.
The Great Plan and The Reality Check
The predictions were always super vague, obviously. “A major financial opportunity will present itself through unexpected channels.” “A superior will recognize your innate talents and reward your hard work.” I took this to heart and decided Project Titan was my unexpected channel. It was a huge migration of our whole inventory system, something everyone was avoiding because it was ancient and nobody knew how it actually worked anymore. I volunteered for it.
I thought, “Okay, this is the recognition moment. This is where I prove the stars right.”
The next six months were pure hell. Forget stars and planets, I was living under the harsh fluorescent lights of the server room. The project scope kept ballooning. Every time I fixed one module, three new bugs would pop up on the other side. My team lead, Gary, was absolutely no help. Gary spent half his day making terrible jokes on company Slack and the other half claiming credit in meetings I wasn’t even invited to.
I remember one week, the Pisces prediction on the fridge said: “Trust your intuition, a major breakthrough is imminent.” That same week, my intuition told me I needed to pull an all-nighter because Gary had accidentally deployed test data to the production database, and I had to manually rollback transactions from three days ago. Breakthrough? My breakthrough was finding an emergency energy drink in the back of the vending machine.
The constant promising from those readings kept me going, though. It was stupid, but I was invested now. I felt like if I just pushed hard enough to make the prediction come true, it would legitimize all the time I’d wasted on them. It became a weird motivation.
The Pivot Nobody Predicted
I finally wrapped up Project Titan in October. It was flawless. The boss, Mrs. Henderson, called me into her office. I was ready. I rehearsed my new salary ask in my head. I wore my best shirt. This was it. Recognition. Promotion. The stars aligning.
She handed me a plaque. A cheap, plastic “Outstanding Contribution” plaque. And a company-branded water bottle. She talked about my dedication and how “valuable” I was, and then she said they were postponing all internal promotions for the rest of the quarter due to budgeting. The pay raise was a pathetic 1.5% cost-of-living adjustment. I was steaming. The plaque felt like a slap in the face.
I walked out of that office and realized I’d just spent a year chasing a cheap plastic trophy and reading garbage horoscopes instead of actually doing something for myself. I didn’t quit right away, no. I was too mad to quit without a plan.
I started sending out my resume that night. I didn’t care about titles anymore; I just wanted out and more money. I didn’t check the horoscope again. I just relied on my GitHub commit history and my own sanity. I used some of the technical write-ups I did for Project Titan—the ones Gary took credit for—as my portfolio pieces.
Then the unexpected happened, just like the stupid reading said, but not from any superior. A guy I used to work with five years ago, who left to start his own consulting firm, saw my update on my professional networking site. He called me up. He didn’t care about my official title; he just knew my work. He needed someone exactly like me, and he offered me thirty thousand dollars more than I was currently making, plus a full remote setup.
I accepted that job so fast, my head spun. I put in my two weeks, which caused a total panic because nobody else could maintain the Titan system I built. Suddenly, Mrs. Henderson found money in the budget. Gary was pleading with me to stay. They offered me the promotion and a counter-offer raise—exactly what I’d wanted eight months earlier.
I told them thanks for the water bottle, but I was done. The promotion came, but only because I forced the issue by leaving. Not because Mars was aligned or whatever.
I cleaned out my desk, threw that plaque straight in the recycling bin, and walked out. The funny thing is, I saw the December prediction for Pisces on the way out the door. It said: “A necessary end paves the way for a more fulfilling beginning.” I guess even nonsense can sometimes stumble upon the truth
