Horoscopes | Week of January 2-8, 2012

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The productive pluck with which you'd probably like to kick off your 2012, Aries, is somewhat subverted by the demand of social obligations. This theme has recently recurred, and will continue to, as you accept the necessarily slowed-down pace of duty that accompanies actually getting it done right. A significant part of this drawn-out task-completion process must involve hyping up your allies, assembling their committed support, keeping everyone sufficiently informed, and generally holding your team together. Each step, therefore, really consists of an amalgam of smaller conversations, communications and check-ins: You jump through a hoop, then make sure all parties are updated on the latest hoop-jump, while given the chance to offer their feedback on the next most pressing jump-awaiting hoop. For an Aries, this could easily create a pent-up sensation that (a) might last for a while but (b) is good for business. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The responsible attitude you're charged with sustaining, Taurus, ought not to vary much whether you have attained a new level of public respect or are still struggling to stay above water. Don't presume your expanding success exempts you from the nitty and the gritty, lest you undermine its continuing prosperousness by acting as if you've outgrown certain types of work. (You most certainly have not.) While your present position affords you an esteemed podium from which you can provide the guiding ideas that inspire, these ideas won't provide you anything of much worth if you expect others to enact them on your behalf. Lest you misinterpret my drift, allow me to clarify that you're now in a professional sweet-spot… one with great promise as long as you show up every day, put in the grunt-hours alongside those who should be considered 'colleagues' (even if, according to the HR department, they are 'support staff'), and draw personal value from your time in the trenches. You don't, however, 'deserve' anything just for being the magnificent you; we're all plenty magnificent. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You can participate in emotionally engaged dialogue without being emotionally indulgent, Gemini… just as you can be as forthright as possible about what's evidently right for you without taking undue pleasure in any discomfort or pain it might cause the person having a hard time hearing it. If my clock is right, you should already be past the climax-point of high sentimentality from the difficult exchanges of last year—and looking confidently toward another new chapter (even if you still suffer twinges of grief)—and have no need to stay tangled in this played-out past. Your words, therefore, ought to serve less as weapons and more as border-markers: You say whatever truth reminds the other person of the distances traversed since your now-long-ago idyll, but without rubbing anything in. This 'voice of reason' not only spares you any accumulation of karma due you from continuing hurtfulness, but beckons you in the proper direction for your own moving-on. How anyone else moves, or doesn't move, on is their business. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): 'Vulnerable' and 'boundaried' seems almost like an irresolvable contradiction in emotional stances, Cancer, but it in fact isn't. To maneuver down that narrow strait, alas, is to fully occupy what you're feeling as a distinct entity, away from the confusing influences of other people and/or before you ever consider their possible reactions… and only then to voluntarily expose it, knowing in advance that your sensitivities to everybody else always threaten to muddy the waters. Great gains can presently be derived from practicing fearless vulnerability, both to foster truer mutual understandings with important individuals and to demonstrate a personal commitment to principled forthrightness. But without the appropriate boundaries, the psychic aches you may feel on others' behalf could end up becoming improperly assumed as your own—and contaminate the emotional truth you're otherwise working to more directly express. What's really true in your heart doesn't actually change because of someone else's potential feelings on the matter. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): Now is your time to really talk to 'em, Leo… not because you want to bank a certain result, to convince them to give in or wise up, but just in the spirit of genuine open-ended informational exchange. If you have an authentic curiosity about what's going on in their lives and/or their heads, you need only devote a spacious enough segment of your schedule to the purpose of connection, and the favorable astro-climate will assist in making it worth your investment. This applies in both personal and professional arenas… though, in either case, you really must table your personal ambitions to take full advantage. You cannot know in advance what you'd potentially gain from connecting with a particular acquaintance, other than a better understanding of where your two fates intersect and overlap—but, my, how that serendipitous kernel of insight could prove to help one or the both of you. Just don't go fishing for specifics; rather, let them emerge organically while enjoying each other's company. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): There's a subtle difference between (1) speaking up loudly and proudly for your own interests and (2) excessive grandstanding, which is typically uncharacteristic of you, due to a presently heightened boldness in your demeanor. I hardly want to talk you out of being so assertive, Virgo, since the planets are so clearly favoring this development on your behalf… though still find myself moved to encourage a slight tempering, if only so that you don't waste your energy on making a bigger deal out of your opinion than the situation warrants. In other words, please trust that you're already giving off a fairly strong vibe, even before you raise your voice, belabor the point, emphasize your indignation, or offer the correction in five subtly different (though all essentially the same) ways. Dial it down just a tad, simply to save yourself that half-hour or those couple extra bursts of passion for something more personally productive. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Without trying to sap your motivation too detrimentally, Libra, I want to be frank about the dragging duration of a certain limbo that could characterize the first chunk of your '12… not an full-on incessant inertness, thankfully, yet with enough gaps and lags to leave you worrying if the lack of immediately obvious advancement is due to something you're doing wrong. (Nip that worry in the bud right now; it's a fruitless one.) Bearing that in mind, then, you might as well take whatever easy pleasures present themselves… and dismiss any fears about not spending enough effort on the longer-term, more serious stuff (considering that, with or without effort spent on it, it won't be 'leaping forward' anytime soon). Give yourself a major several-months-long break on the developmental pushing. Skate around the right-nows. Luxuriate in the not-sures. Whatever's happening today provides enough reason to smile in appreciation; the far-off second-half of the year might as well be an entirely other universe. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Two distinct strains of horoscopic advice interpenetrate each other in this week's edition, Scorpio. One goads you to be freer and easier in your interpersonal exchanges, sharing new shades of confessional material with certain individuals who, as a result, you'd get to know much better. The other reminds you to reserve something precious for yourself: an emotional breakthrough in its infancy, more a private victory than another signal of your complexity for luring others' interest. How to marry the two? Perhaps the most integrative strategy would acknowledge that the 'emotional breakthrough' I referenced as the latter strain is still very much in its early developmental stages—it hasn't yet formed into a coherent statement which would explain where you'll be off to next, and therefore is not ready for sharing. That leaves, for the former strain's freer-and-easier expression, all that's already happened to you (and already explicitly shaped you into the person you are right now) as ample fodder for exchange. Use what's confidently in your past as the means for increasing present intimacies, while holding what's presently unclear as a future contribution. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): While 'practical' still counts for something (see your prior horoscope for further details), consider that the behavior which best suits those ends, Sagittarius, involves a nonchalant gathering of others' good graces. Though there's a go-getter churning around inside you, your unusually narrow laser-focus on the goal concentrates your energy in a manner likely to spook those around you who (a) aren't as sure of where they are headed and (2) thus may be threatened by your singular purposefulness. So, from that perspective, a smidgeon of intentional beating-around-the-bush is perhaps the most practical thing you could engage in… particularly when it's better not to set off anybody else's alarms, in order to preserve your own interests, and the best way to do that calls for a lot of eager inquiries into their lives, their families-and-friends' lives, the upcoming weather forecast and/or what was on TV last night. Frivolous chit-chat just may be your week's most profitable move. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): By week's end, Capricorn, you will be at last ready to release the information that's been swirling around in your head for several weeks now. Whether this is of a family-, career-, romance-, or personal-self-expression-related nature is not itself of concern… just the basic fact of you having thought yourself to a new spot over this last span of time, and are now in the position of needing to let any other relevant parties in on this status-update. Considering you have not arrived at this overnight, but have presumably been chewing on it for quite a while, you ought to feel fairly confident you aren't overstretching the reach of your conclusion to places you aren't duly entitled. (You're hardly flighty or flippant.) It's merely a matter of making it official, unveiling the public face of a previously internal-only reality, imparting announcements that can't be taken back, etc.… you get the picture. Up the stakes, and put yourself on the line. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Resist the temptation to comment on touchy situations, Aquarius, when it more likely behooves you to reserve your opinion to yourself. The last thing you need is to spoil an otherwise favorable moment by becoming unnecessarily embroiled in a collision of mindsets that's neither urgent nor directly relevant to you. This holds especially true in any context where you know you shouldn't be talking behind someone's back, publicly criticizing a friend or colleague, and/or taking an all-too-convenient moral high-ground that wouldn't be so convenient if it were your ass on the line. Don't you have other stuff to occupy your brain with? Aren't there personal creative plans to engineer… or at least private emotional compulsions to pick at? Keep your nose out of the doo-doo, please. Venus desperately wants to make life slightly easier than usual for you, but she can't do much to hold you back if you insist on touching the hot stove. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Battles of will over the small shit may indeed be an entertaining preoccupation, Pisces, but they're unlikely to significantly alter the overall course that's already been etching itself into existence for a while now. Yes, I am unapologetically proposing that you actually draw a certain amount of entertainment from quibbling about god-knows-what with You-Know-Who… even as you claim to be driven crazy by it. Action, of any sort, is more stimulating than the lack thereof, can't we both agree? Yet, no matter how forcefully or ferociously you attempt to alleviate obvious differences in temperament or taste in the short-term, any immediate resolution on these issues will not fast-forward you into a future in which it becomes crystal-clear (1) what it is you two are doing together and (2) where, if anywhere, it's all leading. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, cramming that time full with test-cases and microcosm-instances of the dynamic won't make it pass faster… just in more entertaining a fashion. Happy 2012! To find out more about your year ahead, click here.