I am not hyper into astrology. I am an Aries (and proud), and of course those tumblr posts seen a bit back about the signs I love to read. But I also do have my feet firmly enough on the ground to understand that the position of some planets when you happened to be born cannot explain every aspect of your personality and relationships. It's funny to say you don't get along with someone because they're a Gemini, and entertaining to look up your horoscope every so often and read the generalized account of how the stars will determine your fate for the next week, but I have never not made important decisions or avoided particular people because of my sign or horoscope. I just figured some of it was a cool coincidence, but for the most part it was hooky.

Until this past week.

I used a website to put together my birth chart. Super easy, just needed to know when and where I was born and the site took care of everything else. After copy and pasting the webpage into a document format, I was left with eleven pages of biography, bits and pieces of my personality that should be attributed to different planetary alignments in a variety of houses. It started general enough, but the more I read, the more convinced I became that this astrology stuff has more to back it up than a hippie chick who looked at the way the stars made her feel and decided that was how they made everyone feel. For example, because Saturn is in Aries for me, I am "bothered by a 'me-first' attitude in others, but must learn that 'me-first' is sometimes necessary, in moderation," a struggle that I've had as far back as I can remember being conscious of the "me-first" attitude at all. In the back of my mind, of course, I still had doubts. Everyone is probably bothered by generalized attitudes and outlines of unfavorable personality traits, everyone probably has some variation of empathy and creativity in their lives like I was seeing in my chart.

I continued attempting to brush off the startlingly accurate tidbits, until I arrived at the end of the page, where it asked me to enter in the same information of a romantic partner to check for compatibility. I figured I had already dove in to the adventure, I might as well finish it. The results were stunning. Without divulging too much of my interpersonal relationships to the wide web, I just want to encourage people to get charted. Honestly, you will be taken aback at how precise the stars and planets can be; you will not believe how incredible having this tool around is.

I'm not saying that I have become a true astrologist, or that from now forward I will be religiously checking my horoscope to make the best use of my time, work, relationships and money. However, the next time someone tells me they don't believe in this, I will sit them down and have them charted. I definitely think and believe there is something going on with the planets after this experience. I encourage everyone to have it done, yes, even if just to laugh at it.