The Day I Decided to Trust the Stars, Sorta
Look, I’m usually the guy who rolls his eyes so hard at horoscopes, I could see my own brain. Seriously, sun signs? That’s just lazy writing. But the past few months? They’ve been rough. I’ve been scraping by, watching the savings account drain out like a busted faucet. I needed a kick, any kind of kick. So when I saw that title pop up—Aries and Pisces, money day, blah blah—I didn’t just skip it. I decided I was going to treat it like a friggin’ assignment. A practical test, just to prove it was bunk.
I figured, what’s the worst that happens? I lose twenty bucks? Been there, done that, bought the lousy t-shirt. I committed myself fully to the nonsense. I opened the stupid website, ignored the pop-up ads, and found my sign. I’m an Aries, and my business partner is a Pisces, so I figured I’d cover both bases to see if the cosmic advice conflicted. The Aries reading was completely whacked out. It said: “A small, unexpected risk, taken before noon, will unlock a door you didn’t know existed. Focus on things colored yellow.”
Setting Up the Stupid Test Parameters
I immediately scoffed, then immediately started planning. A small risk. Before noon. Yellow things. What does that even mean? I didn’t want to dump money into crypto, that’s just asking to get royally screwed. I needed something low-stakes but immediate. I looked around the apartment, and my eyes landed squarely on this old, beat-up, yellow promotional coffee mug I got years ago. It had $5 in change stuffed in it, coins I’d completely forgotten about. That was the seed money.
- Step One: The Investment. I took that $5. I decided I would buy one of those scratch-off lottery tickets that the newsagents sell. I never buy them. It felt sufficiently risky and stupid, and it was a direct expenditure before noon.
- Step Two: The Trade Hold. I looked at my brokerage account. I had a tiny slice of some total garbage stock—the kind you buy when you’re bored—that was down like 70%. I had planned to sell it off just to claim the loss for tax reasons this quarter. The horoscope said “risk it.” So I stopped myself from clicking ‘sell.’ I just held onto that sinking boat, pretending the stars knew better than my spreadsheet.
- Step Three: The Observation. As I drove to the corner store to buy the ticket, I kept my eyes peeled for anything ‘yellow’ that seemed financially significant. Nothing. Just yellow traffic signs and a beat-up school bus.
I bought the ticket, a cheap yellow sun one. I scratched it right there in the car, feeling like an absolute fool. I won… exactly two dollars. Total garbage. A net loss of three bucks. Okay, so much for the ‘unexpected risk’ payoff. I felt entirely validated in my distrust of the cosmos. The clock was hitting 11:45 AM. Test failed, move on, back to reality.
The Unexpected Turn and the Real Gain
I got back home, totally deflated, ready to delete the horoscope bookmark. That’s when my neighbor, Brenda, the one who runs the local online marketplace group, texted me out of the blue. This is where it got weird. She said, “Hey, remember that dusty old yellow desk lamp you had sitting in your storage unit from like ten years ago? I’ve got a guy from a vintage store who is obsessed with that specific mid-century junk. He’s offering three hundred dollars cash, sight unseen. Want to sell it?”
I almost dropped my phone. Three hundred dollars. For a lamp I had bought at a flea market for maybe fifteen bucks a decade ago and couldn’t even bother to throw out when I moved apartments. And guess what? The lamp was mustard yellow. Pure, ugly yellow. I looked at the time on my phone: 11:58 AM. Two minutes before the deadline the horoscope had set.
I jumped up, dragged that thing out of storage so fast I nearly broke my back, met the vintage guy in the alley, and walked away with three crisp hundred-dollar bills. Not from the stupid lottery, not from the doomed stock (which, by the way, kept dropping all day just like I predicted), but from some ancient yellow piece of junk I’d forgotten I owned.
The Takeaway: It Ain’t the Stars, It’s the Action
Did the horoscope work? I still say no, not really. It was pure coincidence that Brenda texted me right then. But here’s the thing: by forcing myself to pay hyper-attention to ‘yellow’ and ‘risk’ that morning, I was suddenly open to opportunities I usually ignore. I was actively searching for a small financial signal. If I hadn’t been walking around with my brain screaming “look for yellow money,” I probably would have dismissed Brenda’s text or just told her to deal with the lamp later. I would have missed the window.
I tracked the whole thing, from the initial reading to the ridiculous lottery loss to the lamp sale. My handwritten record showed the Aries prediction was basically correct, but only because I misinterpreted the scale of the “risk” and “yellow object.” The real takeaway wasn’t that the stars predicted the lamp sale; it’s that the act of following the directions made me see money differently. Sometimes you just need an absurd, nonsensical prompt to realize you’ve been sitting on valuable stuff.
I closed the book on that day feeling much better. I still think astrology is mostly crap, but I won’t lie: three hundred bucks for ten minutes of effort, thanks to a goofy prompt? I’ll take it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll look for things colored green.
