There is an awkwardness to starting. 

6:07 pm

Walking into this year, I had a particular kind of expectation. One of those things you don’t realize you have until you notice it’s different. Looking back realizing it isn’t at all what I thought I had in mind. Relatively new to the world of astrology, numerology, mythology, and the Lunar New Year.  I just assumed that none of it really belonged to me. One thing I know for sure is that, walking into the last laps of 2026, I have a more evolved understanding of not only who I am, but also what I care enough to show up awkwardly trying at. 

So let’s start with exactly here and now. Let’s start with what it is that is here and that I see now more clearly: the value of zero. The good and slow steady truth of what never seemed like much, but holds the weight of all future momentum. The quiet knowing, the simple notice, the truth of holding space. It’s most comfortable to begin with the part of it that is easily mine. I am a 30-year-old woman; for 5 more days, I am 30. Then, when the week ends, I will be 31. What I expected to be the start of my 30’s has felt a lot more like just being 30. I have come to an understanding that being thirty really took the whole year. To start the life I will continue to walk and to lay to rest the younger me. I know it sounds silly, but I have faith you understand on some level what I mean. 

This year of 2026 has felt very similar to me. I expected the fire horse, year of 1(ten), to be a fast movement into what will be. Turns out there is a lot of acknowledging the space of what is or what won’t be. Saturn and Neptune stepped into a new cycle of the zodiac together. Primal fire: both the structure keeper and the liminal otherworldly, both taking the first step hand in hand into the first sign of the zodiac. Aries, the fire of self, rebirth, beginning. Baskets of collaboration among the slow and far away planets. Fire, rebirth, baskets, beginnings. It all seemed to point to ambitious, tenacious youth. 

.. and there has been some. No shortage of powerful new knowings, soul contracts, and shifts. I think what my human brain forgot to remember when considering what to expect from the start of new timelines. Is the vast amount of space that it takes to turn a ship, to move a needle, to change your destiny. Big life-changing choices happen all at once and with so much space, it seems time has nothing to do with it at all. Not in the way I thought I knew time before now. In some ways, patience has been my biggest ally in the year of fresh starts and fire initiations. 

So I see now what I couldn’t have known before. That 30 takes a whole year and that the 30’s will come later. That starting takes its time and requires a bravery alongside uncertainty. That this year, to me, was the flame of a horse with the weight of a zero. That planting a seed might take a whole year of nurturing what looks to someone else as a patch of dirt. That running takes time for holding, nursing, rocking, waiting, allowing, showing up, and if you’re willing, it takes walking. That next year will come and that our whole life will take every day of its time. Because this year we took the chance to notice, to witness, to speak, to pause, to stop, to turn, to try. There will be plenty of time for running, dont forget to show up even simply for the choice that takes all of right now. Decide with all of what you have available and trust all of what feels real in you. The knowing comes later. The growing comes soon. But this year we buried the seed and planted our intentions. Next year, if we get lucky, maybe next year the best of us sprout together. Hand in hand, in the communities that comfort our true nature. The spaces we made time for. The self we are born into. Not forced, but survived, thrived, and newly alive.

Blessed be, all well wishes on your journey, and mine.

Always all of what’s meant to be,

Mars.

7:17pm 

9/20/2026