OCTOBER
You don’t know what’s good for you, Virgo. That’s a pretty hefty accusation to dish out at the top of a lengthy piece of advice, but since subtlety is often lost on you, I thought I’d set the stage more plainly this month.
Your inability to know what’s good for you transcends what is technically good for a person. For example: reading is famously good (increases empathy, varies one’s experiences, prevents one’s eyes from only looking at the weird blue tone Netflix uses for everything) but the way you’re currently reading (joylessly racing through as many books as possible to reach your embarrassingly approachable reading goal for the year) distresses you so acutely that all of reading’s positive outcomes are eclipsed. Instead of empathy for others, you only feel self pity that you didn’t take your (again, very easy to achieve) reading goal more seriously.
Many of the stars have suggested that this lack of self knowledge is what will lead you to purchase a chess board this month. Every decade or so when you remember chess exists, you consider taking this on as a new personality. Since I have seen your natural personality many times, I can of course understand your instinct to pretend to have another one every now and then, but these false fronts can only hold for so long.
The last time you decided to become Someone Who Plays Chess, you were twenty, and rapidly falling in love with someone every person you knew strongly suggested you avoid falling in love with.1 He played chess every Sunday night with a group of friends and online in the days between. Moments after he revealed this to you, you created an account on chess.com (@pawnlithgow) and bullied the Sunday night chess circle into making room for one more.
During the dozens of chess games that followed, you failed to notice that you were very bad at chess. You were an opponent no one could celebrate beating because it was too easy, but you mistook their calm, post-win demeanor for acknowledgement of a close race.
Though you’ve spent a lifetime collecting a staggering volume of evidence to the contrary, you have long considered yourself to be an excellent chess player. In fact, your chess confidence is so high that on your way back from purchasing your first chess board, you’ll worry that your husband won’t want to play chess with you because of your intimidating natural talent.
This fear subsides when he wins the inaugural game. At first, you’ll tell yourself that your loss is fine—a relief even! After all, maybe if your husband wins a few games, he’ll get that classic Chess Thirst (the way you do once per decade!) and want to play as often as you do.
Unfortunately, his Chess Thirst never comes, but I suspect this has more to do with the way you invite him to play (by hissing schach, the German word for chess, at a consistent rhythm, increasing in volume and belligerence until he acquiesces).
As your husband settles into tolerating your once a decade favorite pastime, you become more and more fixated. You create a scorecard and decree that every game be documented for the rest of your lives. You gush about how it will be a cute relationship memento, but really you’re just looking forward to having tangible proof supporting your assumption that you are—despite all available evidence—actually amazing at chess.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the future for you Virgo, but I can tell you that by November you won’t have won a single game of chess. Not one. The scorecard will be full of marks, but they will all be under your husband’s name—none under your own.
Like all your chess opponents across time, winning against you appears to mean very little to your husband. In fact, it’s clear from his wincing expression that he’d prefer for you to win a game of chess every now and then. The hardest part of playing you in chess is the way you respond to losing. You don’t take it well, Virgo.
You were taught to play chess on a Simpsons chess board, so after certain crushing losses you perform lengthy monologues about how you aren’t accustomed to playing with such soulless pieces. According to you, the only way to understand the value of the queen is for her to be Marge Simpson.
Here you go again, Virgo. You can’t let a game be a game, you can’t let reading be reading. You have to pervert every enjoyably expansive activity into a process in which you quantify your failings and then punish yourself for those failings. Though I do think there’s some potential growth in the fact that you’ve finally noticed that losing every single chess game you’ve ever played may mean you are not that good at chess, there’s really nothing wrong with enjoying an activity you’re terrible at.
I guess what I’m saying is that your ex boyfriend was right—you really are too negative. I’m kidding!!!! But seriously, maybe it’s possible there are certain categories of living which do not need to be under your constant self scrutiny. It’s difficult for a mind like yours to picture, but some people just spend time doing things that feel good to them. They don’t make lists within lists within lists—whereas you, for example, once drafted a list of your friends so you could “stay organized.”
Even though you basically hate her, this month I suggest you consider taking your acupuncturist’s advice and be a little more spontaneous. She was talking about exercise when she made that suggestion (she recommended you take up dancing and you solemnly told her from beneath your many needles that you’d “rather die”), but perhaps it could do you some good in another area of your life like, say, recreation.
Thank you to all the dear google formers for your wisdom last month! This was one of my favorite batches of responses ever. But also I’m sorry all those people yelled at you guys. We are innocent! If you want to say hi, the google form for this month is here. If you want to watch me try to be online, my instagram is here. Thank you for reading!
He’s since become a men’s rights activist. I know that probably sounds like I’m kidding, but I’m not. Someone you were in love with for several years is now a men’s right activist!!!!
"joylessly racing through as many books as possible to reach your embarrassingly approachable reading goal for the year" OUCH
also I love that only Marge Simpson as queen provides your chess game with the soul it needs