The end is slowly coming into frame.
I’m within two months of completing the manuscript of my memoir-in-essays, a blended hybrid of memoir and cultural criticism. My editor, agent, and I are beginning to talk title and cover. For the last six months, I’ve been in a relative bubble of creation, and now, the business of the book is beginning to creep back in.
So of course, I’m thinking about the astrology of it all.
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There’s a Full Moon in Capricorn tomorrow, June 24 at 2:40p ET. This full moon, which occurs at 3 degrees, comes the same week as the Summer Solstice, the same week that Mercury stations direct. It officially closes out the first eclipse season of 2021, ushering us into a different moon cycle. Which is to say: there’s a lot going on.
This moon also asks, what did you begin, initiate, or seed around the New Moon in Capricorn (January 13, 2021)? What have you committed to during these past six months? Capricorn, that foremost leader of the earth signs, is all about the long-haul.
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Me, I quit my job during that Capricorn New Moon. And let me tell you: as a deeply security-oriented Capricorn sun/moon, I am not the kind of person who just up and quits a six-figure job unless I have a good reason.
I got my book deal back in September 2020, just as Mars stationed retrograde in Aries. My plan was to stay at my job for the next few years, through my second book at least. I thought I could do it all. But then, between September 2020 and January 2021, I wrote approximately one essay for my book.
One. Out of a proposed eight. Which were due within the year.
I had always thought I could be the person who wrote a book while having a day job — my work ethic is pretty damn good. But my day job was working as the Director of Content for a major astrology app that was about to launch at the end of the year. The days were long. The team was whip smart and wildly dedicated, but lean. And when I commit to something, I commit. It gets all of me. (My grew-up-working-class, Midwest ass always has my ex-military father’s voice in my head telling me, show your worth show your worth show your worth.)
I’d worked for tech companies before — even for an astrology app before — and I knew that post-launch wasn’t going to get any easier on my schedule, on my energy, on my constantly tapped creative levels. And honestly, I am not particularly good at multi-tasking. Not one of my strengths. This proclivity toward intense focus over a dispersal of curiosity goes back so far that I even went to a college where I took just one class at a time — going to one class for two to four hours a day, every day of the week, for a month, and then onto the next class the next month. (This is also, incidentally, why I consider myself monogamous.)
The tl;dr is this: I left my job around the Capricorn New Moon because I had also made a commitment to myself and to this book, which was years in the making. I had made a commitment to my creative work. I had literally signed a deal with a publisher, and that deal had a deadline. But it was also one I desperately wanted to meet. I wanted to challenge myself to see what strange jewels lived inside of me, as Elizabeth Gilbert might say.
In the six months since leaving, I’ve written five essay-chapters, which currently vary in length from 6000 to upwards of 15000 words — some of which are still in need of an ungodly amount of revision, but some of which are in pretty decent shape moving forward, can you believe? (I can’t.)
The book would not be where it is today without the decision I’d made six months ago. I would not be where I am now creatively, having grown so much (still having so far to go, but god almighty having come so far), if I had not done the thing that scared me the most.
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Sometimes, astrology, like art, reflects life in more literal ways than we would like.
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You don’t have to have given up a job in order to, say, finish a book under contract (I have plenty of author friends who didn’t), but since the topic is full moons, I do think it’s important to say one thing: The idea that you can “have it all,” whatever having it all means to you, is a rather unhelpful lie.
If full moons are, in fact, for completing, perhaps this is one idea we can release ourselves from?
Why it’s necessary to remember that we cannot (in fact, probably should not) have “done it all” during full moons: The language around full moons can sometimes inadvertently invoke a kind of capitalist guilt, because the language is often “what are you completing?” in a way that is production-oriented, especially when the Capricorn archetype is involved. It is not so often broken down into the more concrete, bite-sized arcs that life more often arrives in.
Me? I couldn’t have a demanding job — even a six-figure one that provided all the creature comforts my still-working class inner child salivated at — and write the creatively challenging, heartfelt book I wanted to be capable of. Something had to give.
We don’t usually see the big arcs when we’re in them. And also? Not everything is a big arc. Not everything has to be.
(We’ve all been living in history for this last year and god, hasn’t it been debilitating?)
There are only so many hours in a day for your creative work, for your daily labor that secures your income, for your emotional energy for relationship maintenance with your friends and your family and your children and your lovers, for the work you put into your health and physical upkeep, for your rest and your eating and your hygiene, for the routine chores of living. Unless you have a certain amount of money or wealth to hire help and outsource responsibilities, there is a rather severe limitation on what “having it all” can mean for you, contextually.
This is a reality that the New Age language around manifesting, divorced from context and a grounded spiritual practice, often ignores — to our collective detriment.
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This full moon, honor what the last six months have brought you, but don’t be afraid to reflect on what has worked, what you’ve lost, what has been deferred, and perhaps especially what has surprised you. Cut yourself some slack while you reassess your progress and especially your priorities here at the mid-year mark. No moon cycle arrives out of context, and remember: this is also our first moon cycle outside of a truly exhausting eclipse season that was co-present with Mercury Rx.
You’re allowed to take a beat.
Writing Prompt Horoscopes for the Full Moon in Capricorn
What did you begin on or around January 13, 2021 that now feels like it’s culminating, like you’re turning a corner? Or did you begin something that has since required a major pivot?
What long-term structures and systems in your life have required reworking these last six months? How has this helped you feel more secure or stable? What challenges have you addressed?
How have the events of this year changed, shifted, or otherwise shaped your writing goals for the future?
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