There are problems that hard work will not solve.

One of the hardest things that I’ve had to learn: there are some things that hard work will not compensate for.

A case in point—when I was in my early twenties, I worked fabrication. I tried to be the best worker ever. I did things that no one asked of me. I swept the floors fastidiously, I came in early, and I kept my lunch breaks small and quiet. Because we worked with toxic chemicals, I was part of a set of workers who were hired temporarily and had to cycle out. No matter what, I was still paid a shit wage and let go of when the time came.

Another case in point—I had to learn that you can’t control if someone loves you or not. No amount of working harder for another person’s affection, no amount of trying to please, will change that irremovable fact. You can’t earn acceptance.

It’s funny. Venus falls into Virgo in early September while Mercury enters its retrograde period a few days after. The Sun falls in September. There are problems that hard work will not solve. There are things that have nothing to do with working harder that we cannot cultivate through simple effort. There are things that we cannot buy with our labor.

There are problems that we cannot fix through working harder that we also cannot accept. I’m thinking of working shitty jobs and about being in shitty relationships but also about the often too large to comprehend technologies of assumption and pollution that impact all of us but are not controlled by most of us. And then I wonder—is it possible to know that there are issues that cannot be fixed by pushing harder but to, still, retain hope?

Sometimes, working harder and self-bullying and criticism can be a kind of giving up. These are the things that we associate the most with Virgo and we associate Virgo itself with a kind of aspiring movement. Virgo fixes problems. Virgo works hard. And, yet, Virgo itself understands that labor can be its own shitty spiral. Doing things, fixing problems, solving issues—staying as busy as possible—is seen as action but can also act as avoidance.

I think that, when we learn that there are things that the quest to become a perfect version of yourself will never compensate for, that this is when we learn true hope. This hope is not a yearning for perfect and unyielding control. It’s the hope that, after crisis, we re-emerge as a version of ourselves that was always right there all along. It’s the hope that, when there are problems that we cannot solve alone or yet, that when we cannot earn an approval that we thought we would never live whole without, that we are still right there with ourselves. This is the hope of Venus in Virgo.

Virgo

Happy birthday Virgo. This is your chance to forget everything about the previous year. Did I get you? Did you laugh? I understand that birthday is when your mind becomes the most active in taking stock of what just happened to you that you haven’t had a chance to understand yet. And still. What happens if, instead, you forget everything and trust that you know who you are this year?

There is a sense of yourself that lives within you that remains with you when you are both uplifted and humiliated. This sense of you works to nod along with and reject things according to whether it suits all of the things it knows and doesn’t know about you. Can you feel that sense of you without relying on reason to take you there?

Libra

Throw shit away. Clean out the fridge. Get rid of that old lotion you’ve had for five years. Take out any items that you have in storage. If you don’t remember having it, then you probably don’t need it. If you have it and need it but it doesn’t work, then you might be able to fix it. You might not. That is an okay possibility too and you’ve probably learned to live life around it.

I’d like you to do something while you do this pre-birthday cleaning. I’d like you to look at all of the problems that you have learned to live life around and love yourself for finding the ways, however round-a-bout, that you have found to get yourself around. So often we forget to respect problem avoidance as its own survival strategy. When we call something what it is, then we allow it to grow with us.

Scorpio

You’ve done something very important recently. You’re reckoned with the possibility that it becomes possible to build trust with people with whom you’re not willing to share all of you with completely. This trust that you have nurtured is not reliant on explanations nor visibility nor justified goods. It is simply a choice to be with each other.

Look at yourself. Look at how you have made choices to better other people and not yourself. Call this what it is. It is not always called people pleasing or self sabotage. It is often called the spirit of generosity. You have this spirit within you, this wild and sometimes almost crazy need to love people for no reason at all.

Sagittarius

Do you know the difference between meaning and importance? You’re one of those weird geniuses who can make sense out of almost anything and nonsense when order is too conflicting. You’re one of those poets who don’t need to write things down. You see an obstacle and you glimpse possibility.

But what about importance? What makes a change, a sign, or a word not just meaningful but also important? This is something that takes more time, more people, and more history to reach. Importance is emotional. When it’s not emotional, it’s material. When it’s not material it’s speculation. How long can you remain in importance before a priority changes its own mind for you?

Capricorn

What do you gain by being right? Defaulting to right and wrong is impatience’s way of handling meaning. Great effort does not guarantee correctness and being wrong does not mean that you cease to exist as you, with all of your same wonders and needs and fantasies. Sometimes, it is better to do nothing and be wrong than to do everything and be right.

Love is an education that lives in your desire. You learn best when you feel that something is important and when you know that you are important. In September, you’ll know the difference between being right and being important. Keep that difference close to your heart.

Aquarius

What if you investigated the sense of doom within you that tries so hard to tell you that one must always suffer for their ideals, Aquarius? What would happen then? How would that affect your sense of urgency or complacency? Would it reveal that they are really two sides of the same coin or that they share the same goals? Would it be that they were created to satisfy different needs?

Hardship does not buy happiness. Suffering does not always pay off. Good things do not always come to an end. This means that those who suffer rarely deserve it, Aquarius. This, you already know about. Now it’s time to tell this to that sense of doom which tries so hard to protect you from what it knows little about.

Pisces

You’re the shape that knows how to take in all the other shapes. You know how to beckon to the ones whose heads are too bumpy and you know how to lull the ones with sharp edges into easy company. You’re well practiced in acceptance. It’s almost too difficult for you to look at a situation and not see all the sides of it because you know so well how to form yourself into the shape that will best accommodate another.

And then—what if there are those who are not meant to be accepted by you? Those who behave in ways that are meant to provoke your rejection because that is what is most meaningful for both you and them? Would that be okay? Would that be bearable? And who do you become when you make enough space in you to also understand rejection to be important?

Aries

There are things that are not yours to prove. Being a good enough partner, a good enough parent, a good enough employee, a good enough artist—these are not items that you can win through hard work. They are simply words that you might string together in recognition of the wonder you produce when you live your life.

Your task in September is to complicate the words “good enough.” What does this even really mean to you? Think loosely with specificity and imagination. Get carried away. Over romanticize. Maybe being “good enough” is really the feeling that you get when you get to pretend to be a gnome living in a mushroom. Maybe it is being a pokemon who is allowed to morph back to its original baby shape.

Taurus

Oftentimes, you walk around in this world and you’re the only person who can see something or someone for what they really are—beautiful. Sometimes, you take it upon yourself to elevate or to collect this beauty. More often than not, you’re more than happy to just allow this thing to live where it does exactly how it does without your interference.

You understand exactly how to love without taking and you can enjoy this about yourself in September. There’s the pretty ring that you didn’t need to buy to appreciate, the beautiful weed that you left on the sidewalk crack, and the crush who you don’t need to pursue. All of these things are yours because you do not need to force confession where it is not necessary.

Gemini

Look at what is at your feet. These are the slippers you wear, the floorboards under your toes, and also all of the things that you have discarded like old clothing over the years. Some of these things do not suit you anymore. Others, you have forgotten. Some live like elephants that you perpetually navigate as you move around the larger than life objects in your room.

You’re moving things that are larger than your body in September. This takes planning, sometimes strategy, and more often it also takes help. Did you know that gravity is the very first type of attachment that you learn in your entire life? You learn gravity as a baby. In September, your gravity changes. Find poise, stumble, and remember that everything attachment can go through rupture and heal.

Cancer

When you take a short pleasure trip, it’s not because you need to see and taste everything at once. It’s because you’re allowing yourself the pleasure of seeing a world beyond what you are most used to without needing to scrutinize every aspect of life and order in this different place. You can taste something without knowing the ingredients. You can go down a road without needing to know how it ends.

Take a drive in September. Don’t see everything. Leave unfinished plots and business in your wake. Take a lover who you don’t also take home with you. Don’t finish a conversation before it is time. Let your ends lay until they become loose and easy. Let the universe make its own plans and just do your part halfway everyday.

Leo

I want you to do something in September. I want you to budget not with disappointment but with hope. Can you do that? Is it possible? Is it possible to feel into your needs with ease?

You’ve been working too hard. It’s like the prospect of getting paid for something is a magic spell that induces you to push yourself harder than you would ever think you need to. Money is just what pays for your rent, food, and utilities. Work only as much as you need to meet these three basic needs and not to prove yourself in any other capacity. There is value in you that is not there for just anyone to see.