New Moon in Pisces: Can We Do This Later, Please?

As I’m writing this, the New Moon in Pisces is a few hours away, and I can feel it.

I feel tired and spacey. I’m having a hard time focusing on things—except when I hyperfocus so intensely that coming out of it is difficult. I’m making a lot of spelling mistakes, and I want nothing more than to close my laptop and hang out with my friends.

As far as the astrological timing goes, tuning out or socializing would be an excellent thing to do, but it’s not the time.

If I quit work early for the day, I wouldn’t be able to socialize because the people I would socialize with are still at work. Even though reading a novel by myself feels like an excellent Plan B, when I listen to my deep self (as opposed to my mood self), I know that I want to take advantage of the last few hours before the weekend, so I can really relax into the weekend and have fun.

I’m getting ready to teach my next workshop—Uranus, YUS!—and I set aside today to work on it. I’m excited about this class. I really want to see it out in the world, but the lunar tide is flowing against me.

It’s just the tide. It isn’t personal.

The first thing I did when I realized that this transit was happening at a bad time for me was feel guilty. Nursing guilt is the last thing you should do when you don’t like a transit.

Astrological transits are not mandates. They are tides.

The tide doesn’t care if you want to swim. If you are on the beach when the tide comes in, you will swim whether you want to or not. The tide is powerful, and it runs on its own schedule. There’s a reason the phrase “time and tide wait for no man” is so cliche it’s in the dictionary.

Bad things happen. If you’re good enough at predictive astrology, you might even be able to predict when bad things are going to happen, but just knowing what time it is doesn’t obligate you to do anything.

You don’t even have to learn anything.

The tide doesn’t care if you swim or run away. It just is.

You don’t have to like it.

When I was a kid, I was an avid ocean swimmer. The beaches my parents took us to had big North Atlantic waves that were taller than my father. As soon as I was strong enough, my parents let me try my luck with the surf. I spent a lot of time tumbling head over heels and landing on my face on the beach.

Eventually, I learned how to work with the currents. I learned when a wave was safe to jump over, and when I should turn my body toward the shore and allow the wave to carry me in. I learned that the secret to avoiding being toppled by a wave is often to dive straight into it.

When I realized how the transit was making me feel, I put away my guilt.

It isn’t personal, I told myself. It doesn’t mean you have to like it.

I closed my eyes for a minute and felt the energy of the moment. I felt the energy of Pisces like a buoyant brain fog broken by an alien laser beam trying to pull me up into the sky.

Pisces is a really weird sign to me. I don’t have any planets there in my natal chart, and any transits there happen in the house of death, to my experience of the sign is a bizarre blend of transcendence, loss, and pain.

There are transits that will tear open healing wounds if you let them, just like there are ocean currents that will pull you under and drown you. For me, giving in and completely surrendering to Pisces is as wise as surrendering to undertow.

I swim against the tide, even though it’s hard.

When I was a teenager, my family went on a vacation to Virginia Beach. By that time, I was a confident swimmer with lifeguard training. The waves were rough, but I swam with the current with the confidence of a dolphin.

My favorite place in the water was the place right before the waves broke where the swells were high, but I bobbed over them without the risk of being washed ashore. I loved to ride the waves, treading water, with an eye behind me to make sure I wasn’t caught unaware by a sleeper wave. The waves at this beach were predictable, so I was mostly able to relax and ride.

Then, I kicked something hard.

When you are in grave danger, your body often reacts faster than your brain can form words.

The water where I was swimming was at least ten feet deep, and my foot had hit something that felt like sand. I knew what animals swim in the ocean and have skin that feels like sand. I knew because I’d once touched the back of a baby shark at an aquarium.

I had just kicked a shark.

By the time I realized what I’d done, I was swimming for the shore. The tide was against me. The water was being sucked back to form the body of the next wave. It felt like the ocean itself wanted me to be dragged out to sea.

It didn’t matter. I had to get to shore, even though it was hard.

Sometimes, you need to dive into the wave to get past it.

There are times when you can’t do the things you’re supposed to do to take advantage of a transit. You have an important meeting when the moon is void of course, or you have to buy a car when Mercury is retrograde.

It doesn’t mean that you’re foolish or doomed. It just means that your life and the clock don’t agree.

There are times to lie back and let the water carry you, and there are times to swim against the tide.

Sometimes, you have the ability to do a little bit of both.

While I was sitting with the energy of the moment, I got an idea for this post. Writing a blog post wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I had worked my ass off to make sure I wouldn’t need to today, but writing a blog post today means that I’ll be able to dive into my Uranus class with both feet when the moon is in Aries on Monday.

Sometimes, the best way to get through a wave is to dive right into it.