Fuckups

I may be a pretty good astrologer and oracle, but I'm also human and (mostly) have a normal life, and I'm not without my failings, so today I'm sharing a few ways I've screwed up over the years, since you can learn from my mistakes rather than repeating them.

Getting timing wrong: when I first started as an astrologer, I didn't know about precession, or accounting for the fact that the solar system is in motion. You have to do a little math to figure out when other people's transits will become exact, and exact transits = events. So I would almost always talk about situations that hadn't become apparent yet. I still do it, honestly, because you never know exactly when a certain energy is going to hit, but back when I was starting out, I'd be talking about "dealing with chaos" (Uranus transit) to someone who had no idea what I was talking about, then they were in a car accident two weeks later, and inside my head I'd go "aaaah, there it is....oh fuck, oops."

Assuming you can outsmart the sky: Reader, once you understand what energy is doing, you often would prefer that it stop doing the thing that it's doing. Pluto and Neptune transits can last YEARS, plural, and in some cases a decade, depending on a given chart configuration. What I mean: if you have a cluster of planets around a certain point in your chart, an outer planet transit may not be done making noise until it has hit all of those points. So after a couple of years of an outer planet transit like this, you start to engage in wishful thinking. "YES I get it, now you can stop, can't you, sky? Sky?" I've done this a lot. I thought in some cases that a Saturn transit might cancel out a Neptune transit ("they're opposites, right?") or if I just embraced the energy in one area of my life, it would stop sucking all the joy out of another area. I tried bargaining. I tried willingly giving things up to see if I could keep other things. (I tried everything I could think of, really.) Eventually I gave up and just made the most out of whatever wasn't currently on metaphorical fire. If this sounds like it sucked, it did.

Which brings me to my next point: recruiting someone to tell me what I wanted to hear. If you're into the intuitive side of life, generally speaking, you can shop around looking for a second opinion amongst other astrologers, tarot readers, psychics, etc. However. Shopping around for a better opinion doesn't magically improve your life. If you're mid-Pluto or mid-Neptune transit and desperate for someone to tell you something good, you can throw a rock and hit 10 people who would be fine with taking your money to tell you what you want to hear. But the reality will be that you're in the midst of a big personal transformation, and sometimes transformation is painful.

Projecting doom into someone else's chart. If you're into astrology and you are trying to learn using the charts of (willing!) friends and family members--which I do recommend, by the way--DO NOT freak them out if or when you see a Pluto transit coming for one of their planets if they're not asking for your input. Do not tell them all the bad things that might happen as an "oh, by the way, just to warn you..." Do not monitor them like a pot of water you're trying to boil. What's true is that bad things might happen, but the person might also find ways to be really empowered. It's far more stressful to be worried all the time about certain doom, so you wind up taking everything that happens as a sign that doom has arrived, when that's probably not the case. Most people I've seen go through outer planet transits don't say too much for a while. Eventually shit hits the fan, and if they ask you about it, you can say "ah, yes, you seem to be experiencing ___." But unless you are ACTUALLY psychic and know what's going to happen and why, shut your damn mouth.  If they come to you and *ask explicitly*, that's a whole different situation. But do not freak people out unnecessarily. It's not ethical or nice, and no one will want to hang out with you if you tell them bad shit's about to happen all the time.

Predicting death.  I haven’t done this but here’s why it’s on the list: It’s possible to an extent to see someone dealing with death or grief, but you don’t necessarily know what the death or grief will be about, so DO NOT PUT THAT SHIT OUT THERE. I had a solar return last year that looked a lot like dealing with death, but the only thing that died was my car. Lots of other shit *changed,* for sure, but no one died. Even with COVID in the mix! So I knew it could be a possibility this past year and I’m *ME* and it didn’t happen. So absolutely do not do this.

Reading everything to the negative. This is how I've fucked up for myself. I can read charts and I possess observational skills, and I can see that life is never 100% bad for anyone. The north node is always somewhere, Jupiter is always somewhere, nice aspects are always being made somewhere. But it's really easy to look at what's not going right and focus on that to the exclusion of everything else. We're all human, and we want certain things, and sometimes, for whatever reason, life goes "nope, not for you." Sometimes it's temporary, sometimes it's forever. Like, I want to be best friends with Freddie Gibbs, but he likes cocaine a lot and I don't, plus I assume I'm a terrible rapper (never tried), and we have other obvious lifestyle differences (NPR will never hit me up to do a Tiny Desk concert. Ever.). So we're probably not going to be best friends. I could feel sad about that, or I could look for other best friends. And that's an intentionally dumb example. People tend to get REALLY invested and really upset about the things that they want and can't have. I'm one of them. And...you can ALWAYS find a reason in your chart to avoid going after what you want. Don't do this. Unless what you want has an active restraining order against you. Then do not go after it. (Sorry Freddie! I just love you so much…)

XO,J