Horoscopes: Friday, January 22, 2021

ARIES (March 21-April 19). It’s not that some are worthy of your attention and others aren’t, but you can only give your attention to one at a time. Now, there is the matter of fitting the right offering to the one who can extract value from it.        

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). You would like to hear that you are the best at something, and you don’t even care if it’s true or not. Maybe it will become true in time, but right now the chiming sound of those melodious words is gift enough.        

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Great work in its early stages looks a lot like a mess, a blunder or a confusing pile of disparate elements. There are no failures, and no successes either -- only prototypes of varying effectiveness in serving the original purpose.        

CANCER (June 22-July 22). It’s as though you have a committee inside of you, and you will do what the majority vote tells you to do. If there are conflicting ideas, expect inaction. You’re hard to convince, even when you’re the one doing the convincing.        

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). Your instincts are dead-on. When you trust someone, you’re open to their surprises. And when you don’t trust someone, there is no reason to be involved at all.        

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There’s no need to wonder about whether what you’re giving today is good enough. You sense what others are missing and fill in the blanks for them. What could be more elegant than this?        

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). The current cosmic alignment activates your play mode. You might even find yourself performing for your phone -- harmless enough, as long as you realize that there’s something irreversible about hitting “send.”        

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). The fortuitous arrangement has not been forthcoming. What gives? You don’t like their offer. They don’t respond to yours. It’s all a signal to broaden the search terms.         

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). This weird bit is true: “Failing” at a new task is far more satisfying than succeeding at a task you’ve already mastered. The quotations are used because it’s very possible that “failure” is just an early version of success.        

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Others may be happy when you take the known road, but you’re not in charge of the happiness of others, you’re in charge of your own happiness, which is more likely to unfold when you take the other one.        

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). Sometimes, you need space, and other times you need closeness. You appreciate the one who understands the limits of intense engagements and follows up intensity with sweetness and distance.               

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Your empathy is a talent for sure, but it can also be overwhelming to feel so much for others when you cannot do anything about those feelings. Whatever you can do to be communicative and persuasive will help.        

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (Jan. 22). You’ll manage others like a boss, and you’ll delegate like a psychic. The most impressive part is that you do this outside of a work context. Maybe it’s a weird thing to celebrate, but you cannot argue this impressive fact of your talent -- people love being ordered around by you. The windfall comes in August. Pisces and Aries adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 8, 5, 12, 28 and 17.