God, I Feel So Cosmically Relieved

I check my horoscope at least three different places a day. Compulsive, I know. I also drink about nine shots of espresso a day. I'm vibrating my way through cosmos as we speak. I'm sure that one habit has something to do with the other, but I can't quite see the connection.

The 'scopes are all pretty vanilla -- nothing too involved here. All I know is that I'm a Gemini with a Gemini rising, born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon. I'm fascinating and all fucked up, astrologically speaking. Excite has a pretty good setup, and I love the little graph they give you for your day -- it's got your romance, career, and personal energy all mapped out on a little bar graph. I can never figure out what the personal bar is for. What could be more personal than who I love and the way I contort my soul to get paid?

I digress. Must be the espresso residuals. Those crazy people that drink the coffee brewed from beans pulled out of monkey shit only do that because they don't know the street value of my bloodstream.

These horoscopes, I find them comforting somehow. I don't put a huge amount of faith in them, but hey, it wouldn't have been around this long if it didn't kinda work, right? They're comfortable lenses to see my day through, a good track to sorta see if I can adhere to.

The only scope that really matters, though, my desert-island can't live without it horoscope, is whatever one is published in the Washington Post. By that, I mean that any horoscope that is published in the Washington Post will be the ultimate filter that I apply to my life on a daily basis. I read Sydney Omarr for years until he went on to the great crystal farm in the sky, and now Holiday Mathis has earned my trust.

Here's my horoscope from yesterday:

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Is it wrong to desire status? No -- as long as you realize it won't make you any happier. Having more status, you will impress others, but you probably won't care. Happiness happens at all levels of the status continuum.

I found those so, so deeply relieving. The fact is, I'm a bit status-obsessed. Not for other people, but for myself. I'm obsessed with my blog traffic, my readers, how far I can go with this blog and my work projects. I've spent so long writing for an audience, craving the approval of as many total strangers to feed my great green greedy dragon of an ego that now I don't completely understand how to turn it off. Every click, every eyeball, every unique visitor is a tiny massage to a sore self-confidence, a little reminder that someone out there has seen my series of complex rain dances behind this glowing screen and they might have even clapped.

This says to me that while it's not all pointless, this striving and craving and scrapping for audience, there is so much more. And man, I needed to hear that.

I'm reasonably happy with my life right now -- I like my job, love my family, and I'm surrounded by great friends. For the first time in my life I don't have to choose between food and fun. Sure, there's stuff I'd like to change. But to know that realistically speaking, this is as good as it gets -- I kinda like it. I find that relaxing.

Or rather, I find it as relaxing as someone who needs a caffeine fix at 1 am finds anything...

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 12:35 AM