The Astrology Project

Just some guy using his daily horoscope as a springboard for action and possibility: entirely non-scientific, unless it is.

[theastrologyproject]

My writing partner seems to have secured a cash bonus and is talking about a business trip to L.A. soon. Maybe I’m just tired of arguing with him - rare, but possible - but the idea sounds somewhat appealing despite the fact that I still hate Los Angeles/Hollywood. A short trip might be tolerable, however. Maybe even fun.   Heavy work day today: just a TON of extra freelance stuff came in super early this morning, so I was busy trying to clear that. I don’t have a romantic novel in the works, though there is the shell of one I wrote a while back that I never finished. Maybe I’ll crack open some of that old writing and get to work. 

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This was good. I wasn’t planning any important conversations, but I had one that I needed to have just to clear the air with someone and, sure enough, the air was cleared (at least for me, at least for now). 

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It’s almost 2pm and my calendar is still empty, alas.   That said, I’m in an ok mood and cognizant of the good things in my life today. There’s a new variety of food for my cat, which makes me happy. I managed to sleep in a bit, which was nice. There’s a possible movie deal on the horizon, which I am cautiously optimistic about. What I miss is having someone to share those little things with (well, not the cat food: that’s covered), so the mention of “a beautiful smile” and a “sincere hug” are poignant today.   As far as bubbly times with plenty of laughter... well, I guess I’ll stay cautiously optimistic about that too. 

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Pretty sure I use most of my imagination to conjure up worst-case scenarios in this fucking dystopia we’ve been living in for the last 12 months, but yeah, sure ok, whatever -- this is stupid. 

I’m a writer by profession: I worked a long time to “have a distinctive edge,” though I’ve long distrusted anyone who agrees with me about anything: agreement, for the most part, immediately makes me reconsider my position. My interest in convincing anyone to agree with me is nil.  This is just another horoscope that seems intended to flatter and I’m not interested in flattery or encouragement. Writing - at least as a profession - is less about inspiration than it is about discipline: about sitting down, turning off your brain’s requirement for imagination, and just doing the work. If my writing is inspired by anything at all, it’s frustration and the desire to get my work done so that I can focus my ever-dwindling attention to other, less tiring distractions. 

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This inspired me to do a little research into a possible relatively-low risk investment product and put a (very) small amount of capital into testing its market viability. While I don’t think it’s very unconventional, it’s really more of a side hustle than my side hustle, so we’ll see if there’s more money to be made than what’ll buy groceries or pay off the endless stream of bills that comes across my desk. I hope to pull down 100% net profit, but we’ll just have to see how it goes. Problem with capitalism is that if you don’t have capital, you’re on the outside looking in: a consumer, nothing more. 

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I do not feel incredibly energized about my creative goals. Getting any kind of creative work done these days feels incredibly draining: my attention, which is tenuous at best, is often called to other projects, other demands, other distractions both personal and professional. At the end of the day, I am drained. At the end of the week, I am exhausted. At the end of the month, I am broke. If there’s any energizing effect to be expected from a planet, I’ve yet to experience it this morning. Then again, I was woken by my cat at 4am and have been a bit foggy all morning. 

[theastrologyproject]

You’ll note that this is a longer horoscope than usual: that’s because I’ve opted into a free week of the more detailed dailies on the Astrology Zone app., hoping to get more out of them for this project.   As far as my finances, values, and boundaries go, that’s sort of interesting. I spent a solid chunk of time earlier this week trying to figure out how to get paid from eBay: they’ve changed their payout policies. While I haven’t been wrestling with my values, I’ve been considering my boundaries as they relate to my ex: “to text or not to text” etc. On Feb. 15 I wrote (in a note to myself): Sometimes it’s less that I want to talk to (my ex) than it is that I want her to want to talk to me. I don’t just want to hear her voice, I want to know that she misses mine too, or, more accurately, I want her to miss me too. I don’t just miss her. I miss that emotional reciprocity: that mutual longing, the mutual recognition of connection, that feeling of being connected, a circuit, stars in orbit around each other (if that’s a thing, and if it’s not, whatever). I want her to call. There’s no surer way of getting to not want to talk to me than by trying and so here I am attempting to generate the illusion of not-trying – fucking Stendhal undoubtedly laughing at me from beyond – and anxious all the while that she actually wants my actual disinterest rather than this thing that I am feigning and FUCK how did I manage to fuck all this up so badly?

Whether or not “questions will be answered now and finite boundaries can be respected” remains to be seen, but what does the second part of that even mean? Christ, that’s poorly written. Are not all boundaries finite by definition? An infinite boundary wouldn’t be a boundary at all. 

I did get a small windfall in the form of a payment posting to my bank account this morning: enough to accomplish some projects I’ve been meaning to get done. Not sure if that has to do with Mercury going direct or the bank just doing its job. 

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Money and passion? It’s funny how the original meaning of passion - it comes from the Latin word pati, which means “to suffer” - has become lost in modern use, even when it appears in words like “compassion,” which nowadays connotes a sterile kind of pity rather than a condition of suffering with someone. Here it seems to suggest romantic love which offers its own spectrum of greater and lesser agonies. As of this moment, I am on the losing end of two put options contracts (puts), so I suppose money and suffering “go hand-in-hand for (me) today,” which might be doubly true if I sold to close those contracts. Two weeks until expiry, however: no point in panicking, especially on a Friday when the permabulls are trying to squeeze out the short options positions they’ve sold.  As far as a special date night: nothing on my calendar, though maybe a walk with The Ex is in the offerings. Splurging on luxuries would likely be correctly construed as my “trying to get her back” and, as with all ambition, the biggest sin in love is obviousness. Stendhal would say the same. Mind you, feigning disinterest didn’t work for him either. Poor Stendhal. 

[theastrologyproject]

A bit tricky, as the “object of (my) affection” is my ex-girlfriend and I don’t think pursuing anyone who isn’t interested in being pursued is a very good idea. Sounds kind of creepy: it could be read as a suggestion that Capricorns should embarrass themselves and create annoyance by literally chasing someone. What the Hell does “pursuing” mean these days? If you’re pursuing someone, doesn’t that suggest that they’re trying to get away from you? Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but God, between “object” and “pursuing,” this horoscope comes across as really awful. 

My love life is actually quite quiet these days and, given today’s snowstorm, I can’t imagine it’s going to suddenly increase in volume today. The language here – particularly in the use of “may” – is somewhat non-committal, but also entirely generic. If anything happens, I’ll update, but this one isn’t very compelling, at least for me.

[theastrologyproject]

I read this AFTER I bought two put options contracts on Blackberry (BB: NYSE) with a strike price of $11.00 and a 02/26 expiration at $49.00 each. By market close, I had lost a few dollars, but sold them on 02/18 at market open for $66.00 each: a small profit of 35%. BB went back up over $11 shortly after I closed my contracts.

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02/17/2021

The Astrology Project is fairly straight-forward and based on a college project I was told about some time ago: each day I will post my horoscope from Susan Miller’s AstrologyZone app and then take steps to make it “come true.” This is entirely unscientific: just an exercise in self-determination and positive action using astrology as a guide.