The whole thing started when I was trying to clear out the garage. Seriously, that space was a graveyard. I mean a literal graveyard for broken tools and bad decisions from the last ten years. I was in this high-stress mode, trying to clean up my physical world because my mental world was total chaos. It was already a disaster before the bat even showed up.
The Day the Thing Showed Up
It was maybe 11:30 AM, sun pounding down hard. I was wrestling with an old, rusted workbench, trying to heave it onto the curb where the trash guys would hopefully take it away, when I stopped cold. I saw it. Not flying like they do at dusk, all zippy and fast. This one was slow, kind of bumping into the wall near the shed roof, disoriented. A bat. During the day. Look, I’m not some spiritual guru, but even I knew that’s not normal. My brain immediately screamed the question: Is this good, or is this really, really bad?
My first move wasn’t some deep, mindful practice. It was what any stressed-out guy in 2024 does: I grabbed my phone instantly and hammered the keyboard. “Bat during the day spiritual meaning.” The internet, naturally, gave me every possible, conflicting answer all at once. It was a total mess, like those open-source projects everyone uses—a bit of transformation, a bit of death, a big piece of ‘you are neglecting your shadow self.’ Great. Super confusing, super annoying.
The Real Practice: Figuring Out Why I Was Looking
I realized the true practice wasn’t just reading those sites and looking for an answer. The real work was figuring out why that specific bat, at that specific time, spooked me so much. Why did I need an omen? Because I was already stalled out, completely spinning my wheels.
I’ll tell you why I was in that garage, sweating my guts out instead of sitting at my desk. You gotta understand the context that led to the sighting. About a month before this bat incident, I walked out of the worst job I ever had. I mean, totally combusted in a ball of fire. I gave notice, then I got laid off, then I had a big fight over the last paycheck—you know, the usual corporate drama. After I finally escaped that mess, I had this whole, beautiful plan. I was going to launch my own thing—a consulting gig I’d been dreaming about for years. I had the skills, I had the contacts, I had a decent chunk of severance money to float me for six months. I felt free!
But did I launch anything? Nope. For four weeks, I locked myself in the house. Every time I tried to write a simple email announcing I was open for business, every time I tried to design a landing page, I froze. The fear was paralyzing. Instead of working, I’d wander into the garage, thinking I needed to “organize” the space, but I was just procrastinating on a massive scale. I was completely terrified of failure. I kept seeing those worst-case scenarios play out in my head: running out of cash, having to beg for my old job back, the whole family judging me for quitting stable work. It was a nasty, black cloud hanging over everything I tried to touch. The transformation I was supposed to be doing was completely stuck in the mud.
What the Bat Forced Me to Do
So, back to the bat. When I saw it stumbling around, half-blind in the high sun, it hit me like a shovel. I stopped wrestling the workbench and just stared. All the websites said the bat is about transition, facing the unknown, and trusting your inner voice. I had dozens of tabs open, all telling me the same thing in different, complicated ways. But the sight of that small, vulnerable creature in a place it shouldn’t be—that flipped an internal switch.
I realized the omen wasn’t inherently good or bad. It was a mirror I couldn’t look away from. I was the bat. I was stumbling around in the daylight (the time I was supposed to be doing focused work), completely ineffective, running into walls (my own fear and procrastination). I was supposed to be doing my night work—my real, deep, skilled work—but I was trying to force myself into this fake, daylight routine of organizing a damn garage.
Step One: I shoved the workbench back into the deepest corner of the garage. Organizing the space was officially declared a waste of time and just noise.
Step Two: I closed every single browser tab. Stop reading about omens. The true sign was in the experience, not the definition I was trying to find.
Step Three: I wrote an email to my five best contacts right then and there. Short, simple, no fancy website: “I quit my old job. I’m starting my own consulting practice. I’m taking on clients now. You should hire me.” No logo, no business cards. Just raw, terrifying commitment.
The “practice” was me forcing immediate, painful action. It wasn’t some gentle spiritual awakening with scented candles. It was a massive kick in the pants. It was the bat basically screaming, “Get off your butt and do the transformation already! Stop hiding in the shadows!”
The Final Result of the Omen
Within two hours of sending those emails, I got three immediate responses. Three “Yes, let’s talk about a project” emails. Those three contacts became my first steady consulting clients, and honestly, they’ve kept me totally swamped for the last nine months. The income is steadier now than the old job ever was, and I get to pick the color of my own damn coffee mug. I never did properly organize that garage, by the way. It’s still a mess, but I see the mess differently now. It’s not a symbol of my failure; it’s a symbol of the time I spent working instead of cleaning.
So, was seeing a bat during the day a good or bad omen? Neither. It was just a trigger. It was the universe banging me over the head, telling me to stop making excuses and start building the real transformation I was already sitting on. If you see one, don’t worry about the definition. Ask yourself what uncomfortable thing you’re currently running away from. That’s the real message. Every single time.
