January Lennyscopes

Melissa Broder's existential predictions for this month.

horoscope graphic
(Image credit: (Nicole Licht))

CAPRICORN(December 22 to January 19)

Anything you worry about this month, big or small, tangible or intangible, existential or superficial, I want you to say to yourself, "Stop. I am not allowed to worry about this until Sunday at 3 p.m." Then, on Sunday at 3 p.m. (or whichever time you choose — only once a week though!), force yourself to worry for 20 minutes straight. Really get into it. Worry the shit out of yourself. But when the 20 minutes are up, no more, c'est fin, that's it 'til next week.

AQUARIUS(January 20 to February 18)

I don't even remember what I told you to do last month or the month before, and it doesn't matter. The point is you are getting out of your schema and dismantling your hold on reality (which you enjoy dismantling once you finally let go) when you listen to the voice of a stranger on the Internet. We all need little reminders that our selves, our problems, our achievements, and the world are not static, as our minds often perceive them to be. Consider this yours.

PISCES(February 19 to March 20)

Heyyyyy, happy New Year! OK, actually, there is no such thing as New Year's. You can start any year, day, minute, or life over anytime you want. Like, tomorrow is New Year's, and in three weeks it will be New Year's again. So I'm not going to give you any crazy astrological prediction for 2016, as much as you want foreshadowing of your love, career, health, and money. The way we can start over every year, day, minute, and life is by being only in the present. 

ARIES(March 21 to April 19)

No one can tell you what to do. You won't listen anyway. You aren't even asking. And sometimes we have to do the thing that is "wrong" for us over and over until we bottom out on it and are forced to change. In this way, perhaps it is the right thing, because it leads us to a better situation. When one door closes, another one doesn't always open. Sometimes we have to kick down the door and be forcibly removed to finally be set free. I mean this metaphorically. Don't destroy any property. 

TAURUS(April 20 to May 20)

This is a good time for you. You're going to have some fears, as we all do when embarking on new experiences, but the fears don't mean that anything is wrong with what you are doing. These aren't intuition-based fears but ego-based ones. A quick way to tell the difference between intuition and ego is that intuition-based warnings are quiet, calm, not in a rush. They don't use language. It's just a knowing. Ego fears are all language. They are like, "Oh, hell no. Run!"

GEMINI(May 21 to June 20)

Whatever you have lost in the past year (or think you have lost) has opened up a space for a new chapter in your life to begin right now. Maybe you're like, "I don't want a new chapter." Maybe you're like, "Things were fine as they were." It does suck that we don't get to choose sometimes when a new chapter starts, but it's happening, I'm confirming that for you. Now you get to choose whether you will ride with it and experience all the goodness it has to offer (and there is always goodness) or resist it and let the goodness fall unfelt.

CANCER(June 21 to July 22)

Hope is often better than the thing we are hoping for. Like, it doesn't even really matter if the thing you are hoping for happens. It's the getting to be with yourself in a state of suspended animation that is the real treasure. Let yourself feel intoxicated by the possibilities. It's such a rarity for you to be so excited. The world may end before anything happens, but at least you'll go out high.

LEO(July 23 to August 22)

You're totally doing what you weren't sure you could do. You're doing it really well. And as you've begun to do it really well, you've gotten a little worried that other things you used to do well (or less well) are going to fall by the wayside. It's time to get over that shit. You may return to those things, or you may not. It doesn't matter. We don't get to do everything well at the same time. A person who could do everything well at the same time would probably be kind of annoying. Would you even want to hang out with a person like that?

VIRGO(August 23 to September 22)

OK, so, you've begun to worry less about shit that is beyond your control. Like, you don't know how it is happening, but something inside you is changing. If you were an iPhone battery of chill, you used to be 3 percent chill and now you are between 7 and 22 percent chill at any given time. It's still scary for you to be chill about things you can't control. Like, you're chill for a second, and then you're like, "Oh no, what if I'm not supposed to be chill?" Then you worry about that. This is me giving you reinforcement that it is so good for you, Virgo, to be chill. Take chill where you can get it. You have my solidarity in chill.

LIBRA(September 23 to October 22)

This is just a reminder that every time you are truly honest with someone — a friend, an adviser — about the truth of your life, you always feel transformed. I know that you know this intellectually and sort of from memory, but I also know that sometimes it feels like a pain in the ass to "break the seal" of intimacy, so to speak. This month, I want you to break the shit out of that seal. Like, I want you to reveal yourself to your loved ones and those you trust more than you ever have. It's going to give you power.

SCORPIO(October 23 to November 21)

Envy hurts. It's one of the worst feelings. Often, we can envy a particular component of someone's life, but we take it out of context. It's like: I want these aspects of my life juxtaposed with these aspects of this person's life. But the universe is mysterious and intertwined as fuck. We don't get to have one aspect of someone else's life without having all the things that suck about it too. And in every life, a little suck must fall. So if everyone put their problems on a table and got to pick a set, you would probably just want yours back. The same inherently goes for "good things" too.

SAGITTARIUS(November 22 to December 21)

One of the reasons you are on Earth is to remind people that things are good, that "It's all good," as they say. Sometimes you like to explore the underbelly of life as well, to question the nature and quantity of goodness, and that's fine. But you can literally create goodness if you want. Like, even if you don't see it around you for a spell, you can generate it and share that. It's not mystical or New Age or laws of attraction or whatev. It's a few totally weird acts of kindness per day — acts that surprise you as you do them. The most fun is when you do them for strangers. Maybe be a kindness freak this month? Like, do some bizarre fucking nice shit.

Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including the forthcoming Last Sext (Tin House 2016), as well as So Sad Today, a book of essays out in March from Grand Central.

From: Lenny