Oh, thank god for July.

It’s been a hell of a speedy time since spring started with the Venus exaltation. Jupiter entered Aries and Mars came charging through. Eclipse season happened and now we’re reeling with a strict, retrograde Saturn.

It’s the big slow down, not here to stay but here to tease, slowly of course, minute by minute.

Why? Jupiter is still in Aries. Isn’t that such a speedy god? Well, Mars enters Taurus early July (thank god) and it remains debilitated until next spring, retrograding in Gemini (thank god) before hitting Cancer (thank god).

Saturn is retrograde all month and the Sun comes home. Leo season is actually such a slow time because the Sun, upon coming home, appears to not want to leave it and draws out its days, making every languid and salt.

The world’s been flying by way too fast. We’ve gotten into too many fights. We’ve placed too many bets. We’ve played too many games. We’ve downloaded too many pirated ebooks. It’s like speed has become its own virtue and we’ve spun too many times around the roller coaster. We’ve done it. We’ve fucked around and fucked up.

And now we tiptoe. We walk from heel to toe. We deliberate and we walk deliberately.

It’s actually time to come down from the high of knowing that you can try anything once and always recover as long as you get a lucky break. What’s next? Nothing’s next. You stay the person you are exactly for a moment. You get to learn how to enjoy being that person you already are or not—it’s your choice.

What would happen if, just for a while, you didn’t try to grow? If you didn’t try to change or make something of yourself? If you didn’t try to improve yourself or work harder or make more money? What would happen if you didn’t make new friends and just recognized where, in your friendships, you feel the most full? What happens if you give up on aspiration entirely?

What would happen then? What would feel scared? What would feel relieved?

Oh, sure, maybe there’s a recession coming or not. There’s always a recession coming and, always, every day of every year, there are those of us who live in recession. Recession is a contraction of the imperial apparatus that mandates perpetual growth.

There are people who feel safer in speed and there are people who feel safer in contraction. For most of us, we are both people.

Cancer

What friends would join you in imagining an unaspirational future? What do those friendships feel like? Friends who don’t need to see you grow into anything other than who you already are in order to support you? Friends who are not networks or scenes that rise and fall? What home do you find in these friends and do you know that they will be with you?

Neoliberalism encourages so much overlap between labor and friendship. That’s what networking is. It’s not a true network. It’s a theft of friendship. July is about slowly enjoying your friendships, whenever you have the time, pretending that you have all the time in the world to lay around in the sand if you have to. July is about languishing in freedom.

Leo

You find yourself in the position of wondering to yourself whether your home is still your home. There have always been the jagged edges of the parts of you that don’t quite reach belonging. There are also the lazy pools that you fear grow too stagnant when they’re stuck to the floor like this. One thing is clear. Your home has asked you to change and you reel with apprehension over it.

Instead of focusing on belonging, which risks long tirades about inclusion and exclusion, focus instead on survival. Home is something that you have survived in addition to it being something that may be part of your survival. If peace and belonging are inaccessible at home, then focus on survival.

Virgo

If you go anywhere, walk slowly. There’s the getting to your destination and then there’s all of the joy of just being on a ride. If you travel in July, spend more time in transit than at a place. Go places where you know you can rest well. Let patience set your tempo and let patience be what welcomes you back into yourself.

Remember that it takes much, much longer for your soul to catch up to the movements of your physical body no matter what you do. Your soul will move slowly no matter how quickly you try to make other kinds of changes. It is okay to do nothing for quite a bit of time just to play catch up with your soul. Sit back, bring some water, and do your favorite waiting room activities.

Libra

You’re a strongman when it comes to sharing. You know just when to attach, when to ask for help with something or to ask that someone take on the responsibility for something, and you also know just when you detach—when to know that you must take on something alone or when you must set yourself up for self protection. Your one requirement is that things feel fair.

Sharing may not feel fair all the time. Fairness, like trust, is something that must be practiced and built together with other people. You may be more practiced in certain aspects of fairness and less well practiced in other ways. Take it slow and make each negotiation worth your while.

Scorpio

The first time you allow someone in for the first time—the first time you let something into something new for the first time—will feel unfamiliar no matter how welcome or desired or yearned for this attachment is. Even as you shout for joy, you might also clench up. Even as you pull another body into yours, you might also wonder when you will get your own space back.

In July, remember to laugh as you feel the desiring parts of you collide with the protective. These kinds of feelings often produce laughter or whimpers or moans. They might produce the most embarrassing of sounds, sounds like screeches or squeaks, which is part of the fun. Feel all that you feel and remember to make sounds.

Sagittarius

When you feel like you have just way too much going on and like you can’t possibly find the time to do it all, try this: try not doing it all. Never plan to do too much in one day. Always give yourself more time than you thought that you needed to get from destination A to destination B. Give yourself enough time to ruminate and to wander. Give yourself enough time to sleep in. Sleep in. Get enough sleep before you do the things that you need to do.

July is busy. There’s busyness and then there’s stress. Remember that you have enough time for all of your choices. Remember that you have the time that you have the energy to maintain. Feed yourself and, if you have the urge to pull a one nighter, get some sleep instead. You move better when you are rested.

Capricorn

It’s time to have sex (if that’s your idea of a good time). Do what you need to do to really enjoy it. Get your inbox down to zero so that you’re not thinking of something else or schedule it early in the day before you’re too sleepy. I know you. When it’s time for you to play, then you don’t give a shit. You do whatever it takes to enjoy yourself to the brim.

Whatever it is that you do for a good time, take your time. Go slow. Take your breath. Always wait even when you don’t think you have to wait. Plan twice as much time as you think you need for everything. Time is really the ultimate luxury even though it shouldn’t be. Put in the time that you need to learn pleasure.

Aquarius

It’s time to move. If you don’t move this year, then you might move next year. If you can’t move, see if any of your roommates might be on their way out or if you have the sudden desire to shift the contents of your room around a bit. Clean out a closet or reshape the insides of a drawer. Redo your cleaning routine so that domestic labor feels like it’s a live conversation.

Something needs to shift at home. There’s something that feels impossibly stuck that you simply cannot live with any longer. You need your home to actually accommodate the person you are now instead of dreaming of a future home where a future self lives. It’s time to face the facts. Who actually cares about the sink being clean? Who actually cleans out the fridge and takes out the trash?

Pisces

Stop seeing the world how you expect to see it and, instead, risk confusion or idiocy. That’s right—no more pushing different subjectivities or definitions around to confirm what you know. This isn’t a negative strategy, by the way, but something that has helped your cohesion tremendously. It’s just that you no longer need the lenses through which you so often gaze.

The best way to challenge yourself intellectually is to actively choose things that make you feel a bit stupid. Putting away the types of intelligence that you are most well practiced at can take some reassurance but, if you can find any kind of self trust, then you might find that your quest for stupidity can be silly and humorous and quite fun. In July, stumble and stutter.

Aries

There are savings times and spending times and, wow, have you been spending. You’ve been spending energy, attention, and quite possibly money as though you can always recharge later. Well, it’s time to recharge now. Recharging means that you go to bed earlier and that you monitor what you have more. If a friend calls you before your bedtime, see if you might need to save your attention until the next day even if you still have a bit leftover from the day.

Learn how to hold onto things for yourself—information, time, and attention. You’re not a superhero who can leap to everyone’s defense. You don’t have enough time and power for that. You’re just a person who needs to learn how to keep some things to and for themselves.

Taurus

It’s time to just fully enjoy all of the hijinks that you can get up to by yourself. Guess what? You don’t need someone else with you to go to the corner store for a delicious and cheap donut. You don’t need someone else with you to hang out at the park. You don’t need someone else with you to go on the most fantastic of dates. You don’t need someone else to give you flowers when you know how to enjoy them for yourself.

Guess what else? You also don’t need someone else with you to be in conflict. You can be in conflict with yourself, to learn and to grow though the rich thing that is conflict, and to call things that were once shy and tucked away into attention. If you can be with yourself in pleasure then you can also be with yourself in conflict. You have the patience you need for both.

Gemini

Waste all of your time reading this month. Read uselessly. Don’t read things that you think will prepare you for obligations or things that you assign use-value due to their inclusion into the most popular think tanks. Read absolutely useless filth. Read spy novels from the Cold War. Read censored stories from another time. Read dirty stories that don’t even get you off.

You need to learn how to enjoy time by fully wasting it all away. You need to enjoy a passage in a book that you do not need to skim because you never need to finish reading it because you never need to read it at all. You need to read things that you don’t even agree with, books that don’t teach you a thing. Not everything is a lesson. Sometimes, life is for the living.