Digging Up Old Dirt: Why I Reread My January 2020 Virgo Horoscope
Man, sometimes life just throws you back into the mud, doesn’t it? I’ve been feeling really stuck lately, spinning my wheels on a couple of projects, and honestly, making the same stupid financial decisions I swore I’d stopped making three years ago. It’s frustrating when you know better but you still mess up. I needed a slap in the face, something that would clearly show me the pattern I was trapped in.
So, the other week, I was doing a massive digital cleanup. I was archiving old cloud folders, the kind you forget even exist. I stumbled upon a saved PDF. It was just a stupid weekly horoscope reading for Virgo, specifically the one covering the first few weeks of January 2020. I remember saving it because I was really hopeful about that year starting off strong. Little did any of us know what 2020 was actually going to be.
I almost deleted the file, figuring it was pure garbage, totally irrelevant. But then a weird idea hit me: what if I treated this trashy little PDF not as prophecy, but as a historical document? A record of my mental state and immediate external warnings right before everything went sideways globally. I decided to make it a formal practice, a retrospective review. The whole point wasn’t about whether astrology is “real”—it was about seeing if the general emotional warnings aligned with the giant mistakes I made immediately after reading them.
The Retrieval and Comparison Process
The first thing I did was print it out. I needed a physical copy to scribble on. Digital notes disappear; ink stays put. Then, I dug out my physical journals from that exact period. I keep pretty detailed logs, mostly about work stress and money movements, so I knew I had the raw data to compare against the vaguely worded “cosmic advice.”
I grabbed a stack of highlighters—red for “Nailed It,” green for “Should Have Paid Attention,” and yellow for “Absolute Nonsense.”
The reading itself was broken into three main areas: Career, Finance, and Relationships. I went through each section, sentence by sentence, cross-referencing it with what I had written in my journal about that specific week.
Career and the Warning I Blew Off
The horoscope had some classic lines about “navigating tricky professional waters” and “being wary of promises made by new associations.” Back in 2020, I thought this was boilerplate. My journal entries from that time clearly show me excited about a potential freelance pivot. I was talking to a new client—a big one—who promised a ton of future work if I took a low rate for the initial project. My journal entries show me having bad gut feelings, but overriding them because the money seemed big picture. The horoscope warned against “shiny objects” masking “structural instability.” I just charged right in.
- I took the low rate (Rookie mistake #1).
- The client ghosted me after the first project was delivered (Structural instability identified).
- I wasted three weeks of prime time chasing a bad lead.
When I compared the vague warning with the specific, documented failure, I felt a punch to the gut. It wasn’t the stars telling me I’d fail; it was me ignoring the universal signposts because I was greedy for a quick win.
Financial Review: The Lesson Learned Four Years Too Late
This section was brutal. The January 2020 reading specifically mentioned “securing your immediate foundation before investing in speculative ventures.” I remember reading that four years ago and snickering. I had just put a significant chunk of savings into a volatile market trend, convinced I was smarter than the market. My journal entries from late January 2020 are filled with notes about feeling “jittery” but “committed.”
We all know what happened right after January 2020. That investment tanked hard in March. I lost a scary amount of money, money that I really needed six months later when things locked down. The retrospective look made it clear: I didn’t need a mystic reading; I needed to listen to the common sense that the reading simply amplified. I acted purely on emotion, despite external and internal flags.
The Core Life Lessons I Extracted
The practice of reviewing this ancient, meaningless document turned into a profound exercise in accountability. It wasn’t about predictive power; it was about confirming that four years ago, I was already receiving the warnings I needed, but I was too arrogant or distracted to heed them.
I compiled a list of the recurring themes that showed up in the horoscope, and matched them against my journal notes where I had felt anxiety or doubt:
- Slow Down: Every major mistake in Q1 2020 came from rushing an important decision (money, clients). The reading stressed patience.
- Trust the Gut: The moment I felt “jittery” about a deal, I should have pulled back. The horoscope simply described that internal hesitation, but I ignored my own body’s signal.
- Foundation First: Before chasing the exciting, risky stuff, I needed to make sure the boring, essential stuff (like a proper emergency fund) was locked down.
So, why read the January 2020 horoscope now? Because I identified a pattern. I realized I was making the exact same hasty, financially risky moves in the present day (2024/2025). The past reading functioned like a mirror showing me my chronic behavioral flaws, confirmed by historical data (my journal). It forced me to stop the current rush on a new speculative investment and instead, I re-prioritized paying down some nagging debt. It was a cheap, weird way to audit myself. Sometimes the loudest lessons are buried in the most forgotten archives.
