Bernard O'Shea: Five things I learned from letting horoscopes guide my week
'Pisces, this is your week to finally let go of that toxic situation.'
I'm an Aries, but I kept reading for some reason. Maybe it was the fig rolls talking. Or I wanted to believe that some celestial body 93m miles away gave a toss about whether I emailed my mobile phone provider back. But the more I read, the more I realised: this wasn't advice. This was a vibe (I couldn't think of a better word, OK … dude?)
I don't know when horoscopes became part of my daily inner monologue, but I've realised I treat them the same way I treat voice notes from friends (I'm trying to start a 'no voice notes' movement — more on that next week): I may roll my eyes at them, but I absolutely listen to every word.
They've become little micro-coaches. Pocket-sized philosophies. Emotional Google Maps. And they've been doing it for decades — long before 'wellness influencers' told us to hydrate, journal, and build a vision board shaped like our higher self.
It got me thinking: are horoscopes just the original influencers?
Did the stars walk so the affirmations on Instagram could run?
So, in the name of science — or at least column-writing — I decided to live by my horoscope for a week.
We like to think of astrology as a modern indulgence. The Babylonians were at it 2,400 years ago, tracking planetary movements to predict the rise and fall of kings. Then the Greeks got involved, giving us the zodiac signs we now know and use to justify our worst behaviour.
'I'm not being difficult; I'm just an Aries with boundaries.'
But it wasn't until the 1930s that horoscopes really got their glossy breakout role. The Sunday Express published a star chart for Princess Margaret's birth, and boom — the British public was hooked. Soon, every paper had a daily astrology column, written with just enough vagueness to cover everything from heartbreak to bunions.
Fast forward to now, and we've just… rebranded it. Today's horoscopes are Co-Star apps, TikTok astro girls, and Instagram tarot pulls set to lo-fi music. They've gone from newspaper margins to full-blown lifestyle branding. If the moon is in Leo, you'll hear about it.
At their core, horoscopes have always done what modern influencers claim to do: Offer bite-sized wisdom. Give people something to believe in and suggest you buy a candle. And like all great influencers, horoscopes don't tell you what to do — they mean, hint, and gently nudge.
'It's a good day to reflect.'
'Don't overcommit today.'
'Your energy is low — be kind to yourself.'
I know what you're thinking: horoscopes aren't science. And you're right. But here's the thing — they don't have to be. Because the effect they have on us is real.
A 2020 study from the University of Toronto found that people who read daily horoscopes reported feeling more 'in control' of their emotions — even if they didn't believe in astrology.
No matter how cosmic, just checking in with a message grounded them. Horoscopes work not because the planets know your mood, but because they give you a moment to reflect. And in a world constantly screaming for your attention, anything that encourages you to take 60 seconds to ask: 'How am I actually doing?' can't be all bad. So, with that said, here are …
Five things I learned from letting horoscopes guide my week
1. Vague advice can be weirdly helpful
Yes, 'something unexpected may happen today' is basically life. But once you start your day with that kind of warning, you find yourself more tuned in. You're watching out. You're more aware of your mood, reactions, and the potential chaos of accidentally leaving your phone in a Dunnes Stores trolley (yep, did that!)
2. Horoscopes give you permission to feel things you're already feeling
Most days, my horoscope told me to 'slow down', 'reflect', or 'give myself grace'. Which, frankly, is the same thing my body's been shouting at me since 2019. But there's something about seeing it 'written in the stars' that makes it feel official.
3. Modern wellness is just astrology in designer tracksuits
Today's influencers — with their palo santo sticks and sunrise journaling — are doing what the Babylonians were doing, just with better lighting and discount codes. 'Tap into your feminine energy' and 'Mars is in Gemini' are two sides of the same vague coin.
4. It's All About Micro-Moments of Pause
Reading your stars makes you pause. They interrupt the scroll. They create a beat between thought and action. And in a week where I followed my horoscope religiously, I noticed I was slightly — just slightly — less reactive.
5. I now blame mercury retrograde for everything
Lost my keys? Mercury retrograde. Emotional for no reason? Mercury retrograde. Did something awkward in a WhatsApp group? Definitely Mercury's fault.
Do I believe horoscopes are real? No. But can they be useful? Yes.
Sometimes, we just need a gentle narrative to carry us through the day.
Something to make us feel like we're part of a bigger pattern — even if the pattern is mostly nonsense. So, if you see me sitting in the car, quietly muttering: 'It's a day for rest and self-compassion', I'm not being lazy; I'm just taking advice from the planetary system.
Read More
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
Home Q&A: Should we ever mop or wash our walls?
Question Should we ever mop or wash our walls? Answer Last week, I was contacted by a distressed reader from Douglas, who had washed and thereby ruined large areas of her lovely dark super-flat matt paintwork. When I first heard about the Cleantok madness of interior wall mopping, I thought it was a prank. The trend is credited to home hacker and TikTok queen of clean Carolina McCauley (@ when she posted about her regular wall mopping with Tide detergent powder in water, in the summer of 2023. Since then, people have gone up the walls, and it's become something of a cult practice for enthused householders across the world, who include full wall washing as a biannual or even monthly practice. Swiping dust, webs, and dirt off the surface of the walls is something anyone would regularly do, and with a vinyl silk painted wall, rubbing and well-considered scrubbing of stains and splatters is a regular chore in kitchens and bathrooms. However, when it comes to entirely 'washing' down walls? Well, social media has shown householders soaking their walls down, delivering soupy, dark buckets of muck using long mops or even a dripping sponge. This is a bad idea in most cases, and I would question its veracity. Spray the cloth or a mop if you have to work over walls and skirting. With the exception of tiling or in the case of a major domestic incident, most of us do not need to 'wash' our interior paintwork — probably ever. You cannot 'freshen' up paintwork that's oxidised by washing it over — it must be repainted. First of all, never attempt to completely wash down super-flat matt painted walls or any wallpaper. If you do, you will enjoy a cloudy, horrific fresco that will never return to its exquisite perfection. Wallpaper will most certainly lift at the seams and can develop small tears, even wipe-friendly varieties. Carry on, and you will most probably have to redecorate the room. Secondly, interior walls often carry accompanying furniture and electrical outlets. The last thing we want is quantities of water actually running down the paintwork into wiring and into tiny gaps where it could make raw timber swell. Getting behind uneven skirting boards, onto carpeting, splattering unsealed surfaces — imagine the vandalising mess you could create. If you want to remove superficial dust or clean walls down before painting, for example, think barely damp wiping, not wet washing. Outside walls can be washed, even power-washed if you don't have a slightly brittle render like brick or exterior insulation (the Wrap). Indoors, take it easy. One dull afternoon when the hamster on the wheel in my brain was winging along, I decided to test out the bucket-of-muck results shown by urgent influencers for myself. I still restrained myself to barely wet wipes on my pure-white vinyl soft sheen, the sort of cleaning I would do to my solid wood floors and intended to dry in just a few minutes. There's no break in the paintwork likely to allow moisture into and under any paintwork to the plaster, something that could lead to bubbling, flaking and even the introduction of mould spots. Once we are sure we are dealing with a wall we can wipe safely, we need the right tools with adequate reach. The key thing is not to over-wet the walls, so don't jump to some influencers' happy-clappy technique that includes any large slops of liquid, no matter what's in it. Articulated mops are regularly used for cleansing walls on Clean-tok. Many feature dedicated bucket and wringer sets that press water out of a micro-fibre pad like the Joymoop (€48 on Immersing a pad, you can sup up a heck of a lot of solution. Instead, start with any clean, flat, soft mop with an articulated head. Dampen this non-scuffing, clean pad with a light spray of water shaken up with a dash of dish soap. I used this latter approach, carrying out a full, delicate dry-dust before spraying a flat pad mop. I cleaned the pad with one tight rinse and wrung it out before proceeding from one wall to the next. As with all high cleaning, work downward as if painting the wall with a roller, and don't smack the head of the mop or any brush roughly on the surface. Stroke it lovingly and don't scrub too hard, as this can and will alter the texture of many paint finishes. Ensure the skirting is clean, and throw a clean dust sheet over any carpeting, as nudging it, you can pick up dust and hair and conduct it back up the wall. I broke out my smallest step ladder, as it was just enough to allow me to get 250cm up the wall without strain, and to maintain a reasonable pressure and consistent contact. The results? Well, I do live in the wilds, I don't have an open fire, and I don't smoke, so perhaps that meant my walls were reasonably clean, but aside from some crunchy old spiders, I really didn't get much obvious dirt off the walls that showed up in the rinse water. This makes me question the dramatic results of wall cleaning on social media. Did they muck up the water for clicks and clout? No matter what anyone tells you, wet mopping walls is a mistake, writes Kya deLongchamps. Generally, all you need to do to clean painted walls, plaster finishes, and tiling is to sweep them down lightly and carry out careful spot cleans with a non-abrasive cloth or small sponge. Sugar soap dissolved in water or bought as a spray is suitable for completely cleaning a filthy wall before redecorating. Follow the directions on the bottle to the letter. Magic eraser products are not intended for matt paint, so don't lean in or you will create a mark that can only be fixed by repainting. If the paint has been there for more than 18 months, it's likely to have been altered by oxidation and UV light, and touching up will create highly visible repairs. Make a paste of baking soda and water and use this to remove stubborn stains, wiping off with clean water and a dab of a clean, soft cotton cloth. A little white vinegar will cut through most greasy stains, but again, remove the mixture completely when you're happy. Using any product, even a natural mixture, find a discreet area, say behind furnishings and spot-test, as the paint may react in unexpected ways.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Róisín Ingle: I roar at my daughter so loudly for not wearing a bike helmet, a passerby asks her if she is okay
Feckin' açai bowls. Or acky bowls as our relatives in the North call them, because in fairness you'd never know how to pronounce the word if you hadn't heard it spoken out loud. At this stage my daughters are made up of one-third açai bowl, one-third iced coffee and one-third matcha (green drinks young people queue for in town that taste like grass). I mean, I assume they taste like grass. I'm not actually going to be caught drinking one of them. I'm 53. Feckin' matcha. Feckin' açai bowls. I don't understand the appeal of these things. I'm still not totally sure what an açai bowl is to be honest. These are the distances that must grow between you and your teenage children. Like the new words. They say 'whelp' and 'bro' and 'mate'. I blame TikTok . I blame Love Island . It's as it should be. The language is morphing. The trends are trending. Some young men walk past our house. One of them says 'sorry, dear' stepping to the side of the pavement. I wonder who he's talking to. He's talking to me. I am 'dear'. Oh dear. [ I have a secret urge to throw a good portion of my young children's 'art' in the bin Opens in new window ] Our daughters' bikes were left outside all winter. Rain fell. Then more rain. We hadn't bothered with a cover and now the bikes aren't fit for the road. Poor bikes, I think when I look at them. Chains rusting from lack of use. Locked to railings in our tiny front yard, going nowhere fast. I want them to be cyclists. To make good use of the brand new bike lanes that emerged after years of interminable roadworks that clogged up our north inner-city arteries. Two wheels good. They walk, they are not as averse to walking as their mother, thank goodness. They take buses. But on the bike. On the bike, girls, you won't know yourselves. READ MORE I give up trying to persuade them. I'm as bereft about this as I was about the fact that they don't seem to want to read books any more. It breaks my heart a bit even though I know what they do is none of my business. A friend gave me a framed picture of Khalil Gibran's poem when they were born 16 years ago, which begins 'your children are not your children ... you may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts'. I know, I know. And yet I mourn the books they'll never read. They will learn about life in other ways. It is okay. All will be well. But feckin' açai bowls. The bikes are wrecked. The books I buy gather dust. Then something miraculous happens. My daughters declare this to be The Summer of Reading. I come home and see them lounging on the sofa, not a screen in sight, only a big thick book. Rachel's Holiday. My heart skips a beat. Then they decide, sing hosannas, it will also be the Summer of Cycling. We bring the bikes to the brilliant men in Penny Farthing Cycles and they fix them up. We buy a cover. No more rust. It is one of those gorgeous sunny days, dripping with light. We have cycling plans. And then. A massive row. In the middle of a busy street. I want one daughter to wear a helmet and she isn't having any of it. She cycles away from me and I roar at her. I mean I roar. A passerby asks her if she is okay, if she needs help, that's how loud I roar. I am ashamed. I am out of order. Stricken. She's gone. A flurry of texts. Eventually she relents. She cycles to meet me and she gets an iced coffee (feckin' iced coffee) while I drink my Americano. We're at the Russell Street Bakery near Croke Park where such are the delectable ham and cheese croissants, that a group of burly builders tell me they've become addicted to them, the way some builders are addicted to chicken fillet rolls. The bakery is beside a branch of the charity Fighting Words. My daughter doesn't see the irony, not yet, but I do. I apologise. She forgives. She says even with the roaring she still wants to spend this sunny day with me. I'm moved almost to tears. Dublin Port's Tolka Estuary Greenway has views of the Clontarf seafront and Bull Island. We get helmets. We get the day back. We pick up picnic supplies in the bakery, we pick up her sister and we all cycle to the Dublin Port Tolka Estuary Greenway. You get there through the East Point Business Park. The greenway has been here for ages but we're only doing it now for the first time. 'It's like being on holidays,' my daughter says. Dappled light through the forest entrance. The estuary sparkling, butterflies crossing our path, birds flitting through wildflowers. The history of Dublin's docks laid out before us. We give out about our city. We wonder why we can't have nice things. But this is the nicest of nice things. [ Why has it taken so long to develop a greenway for Dublin Bay? Opens in new window ] We eat our picnic looking out at the bay, listening to the birds, feeling lucky. Much later, after the recoupling on Love Island, mate, we return to the greenway with their father. It's after 10pm. The moon is big and yellow. The lights from Clontarf dance on the water, the roosting birds louder now. The four of us have the place to ourselves. The swish of our bikes, the call of the birds. All will be well.
The Irish Sun
2 days ago
- The Irish Sun
My neighbour's garden is so overgrown my fence has collapsed – her laziness has already cost me £150
A FRUSTRATED woman has moaned about her next-door-neighbour's 'disgusting' garden. Not only is the garden so overgrown that it's an eyesore from Michaela Packer's window, but according to this annoyed woman, who is from the UK, the 2 An angry woman has shown off her neighbour's overgrown garden Credit: TikTok / @michaelapacker2 2 According to Michaela Packer, not only is the woman next door ignoring her, but it's also caused her £150 of damage to her fences too Credit: TikTok / @michaelapacker2 And that's not all, as well as her neighbour ignoring her, also, as a result of the damage done to her fences, she has had to fork out £150 to fix them. Clearly very irritated by the situation, Michaela took to social media to show off her But Michaela's clip has caused a reaction she may not have expected - as rather than agreeing and complaining about the mess, many people encouraged Michaela to 'mind her business' and 'help' her neighbour clean up the overgrown space. Posting online, Michaela gave her followers a close-up look at the garden next door to hers, as she said: 'I have been round, knocked on this lady's door several times and have had no response. Read more neighbour rows 'I often see her out, so I don't know why she's not answering the door to me. 'I feel that the Michaela acknowledged that she has tried her 'hardest' to knock on the door and get a decent response, but she has had 'nothing.' She then snapped and claimed: 'She's got no mental health issues, she's a young woman with a child, she has a partner, so there is no excuse at all. Most read in Fabulous 'I've had to fork out £150 for new fencing on the front, so me putting this video up is just showing that someone can live like this, just due to pure laziness.' The TikTok clip, which was posted under the username @ Neighbourly Feud: Woman Furious as Former Neighbours Destroy Fences (1) Not only this, but it's also amassed 1,783 likes, 1986 comments and 152 shares. But social media users were gobsmacked by Michaela's reaction to her One person said: 'So glad I don't live next door to you.' Another added: 'How do you know that she does not have mental health? I think you should go clean it for her because maybe she has a lot going on in her life TikTok user A third commented: "Neighbours need to mind their own business tbh.' Meanwhile, someone else questioned: 'Why don't you offer to help her?' Whilst another advised: 'I think you should go clean it for her because maybe she has a lot going on in her life.' At the same time, one user observed: 'Looks like a nice Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme - Sun Club The Top Five Reasons Neighbours Squabble One study by Compare the Market revealed the top reason British neighbour's argue Broken fences - top of the board was broken fences and whose responsibility it was to fix it Parking: one of the leading drivers of neighbour disputes, with 54.1 per cent of people having issues with people parking in front of their house, parking bay or driveway Trees - complaints about a neighbour's tree cracking your garden path was also common with nearly half of participants finding it frustrating Bin wars - outdoor bin etiquette continues to ignite the most furious debates between neighbours Nosy Neighbours - some people have their eyes and ears at the ready to have a peek causing problems for others
