Man, 2016. What a year, right? For me, it was a year of some weird, quiet little project I kinda stumbled into. See, I had this friend, Sarah. She’s a Pisces, born in March, classic kind of artistic, deep thinker type. And late 2015, she was going through it. Real rough patch. Job stuff, relationship drama, the whole nine yards. I wanted to help, but you know how it is, sometimes you just gotta watch your friends figure things out. But I wanted to feel like I was doing something to keep an eye out for her, or at least understand her headspace better.
So, one night, probably scrolling online when I should have been sleeping, I saw one of those “Pisces Woman Monthly Horoscope 2016: Your Key to a Good Year!” headlines. And something just clicked. Not like I suddenly believed in all that stuff hook, line, and sinker, but I thought, “Hey, what if I just… tracked this?” Not for her to see, not to tell her, but just for me. A personal little experiment. A way to feel like I was paying extra attention, you know?
I started by just bookmarking a few different astrology sites. Then, as 2016 rolled around, every end of the month, or maybe the first few days of the new month, I’d go and pull up the Pisces woman horoscope for that coming month. I wasn’t super picky; I’d usually check three different sites. One was pretty standard, one was a bit more poetic, and one seemed to focus a lot on career and money, which Sarah was obviously worried about. I wasn’t going all scientific; I just wanted to get a general vibe. I even started a little folder on my computer, saving screenshots, and then later, I actually started printing them out. Yeah, I had a little physical folder with “Pisces Horoscope 2016” written sloppily on it. Pretty wild, right?
My “process” was super simple. I’d read through each of them for the month. Then I’d kind of mentally check it against what I knew Sarah was up to, or what she’d mentioned was bothering her.
For instance, let’s talk about February 2016. I remember one site said something about “unexpected romantic encounters” and “a period of delightful new connections.” Another one was vague, talked about “deepening personal bonds.” Sarah, at the time, was still reeling from a breakup. But then, midway through February, she actually met someone new, completely out of the blue, at a coffee shop. Nothing serious immediately, but it was a genuine spark. I remember reading that horoscope again and thinking, “Well, damn. Maybe there’s something to this. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that feels significant because I’m looking for it.”
Then there were months where it was just… completely off. Like, one horoscope predicted a “surge in creative energy” and “new artistic endeavors” for April. Sarah spent April basically glued to her desk, working overtime on a super boring corporate project, feeling utterly drained. Not a paint stroke or a verse of poetry in sight. I just scribbled “NOPE” next to that one in my notes. It wasn’t about judging the horoscope; it was more like documenting the discrepancies, if that makes sense. It became a way for me to track her year, not through her eyes directly, but through this weird astrological lens, and then compare it to reality as I knew it.
I never told Sarah I was doing this. It felt a little bit like spying, or just plain weird. What would I even say? “Hey, I’m secretly tracking your life through cosmic predictions”? Nah, too creepy. But it did make me pay closer attention to her when we talked. If a horoscope for a certain month mentioned “financial challenges” or “a need for self-care,” I’d instinctively listen a bit more carefully when she talked about her budget or how tired she was. It made me a more attentive friend, in a way. Not because I believed the horoscope was telling her future, but because it was priming me to notice certain themes in her life.
What I really learned from this whole goofy “practice” wasn’t about the stars or planets. It was more about interpretation and human resilience. Horoscopes, many of them, are broad. They have to be. “Opportunities for growth,” “a challenging period,” “time for reflection”—these can apply to almost anyone, anywhere, any time. What mattered was how Sarah actually dealt with what came her way. When things got tough, she buckled down. When good things happened, she embraced them. The horoscopes were just a filter, a way for me to think about her journey, not the actual roadmap for it.
By the end of 2016, Sarah was in a much better place. She’d made some big decisions, moved apartments, even started a new side project that was genuinely creative. Had the horoscopes predicted every twist and turn? Absolutely not. But my little folder, full of scribbled notes and printed predictions, reminded me that sometimes, the “key to a good year” isn’t about knowing what’s coming, but about how you respond, and maybe, for me, how you quietly care for the people around you, even in silly, roundabout ways.
