January 12

Who you are

You have a plain relationship with facts. If the number is bad you say the number. If you do not know, you say that instead of producing something plausible. It makes you less impressive in a first meeting than the people who talk well, and considerably more valuable by the third month, when their version has started to need maintenance and yours has not.

There is nothing decorative about how you operate. You turn up on the day you said, at the time you said, having done the thing you said. Over years this accumulates into something people rely on without ever discussing it. Your name in a room means a particular kind of guarantee, and you got that the only way it can be got, which is slowly.

Your gifts

• Accuracy. You describe situations as they are, including the parts that make you look worse.
• Reliability. Your commitments never need chasing.
• Low drama. You get through difficult stretches without turning them into an event.

Your shadow

Plainness slides into flatness. You underplay your own work so consistently that people take you at your discount, and then you resent them for the estimate you handed them. You mistake all warmth for flattery and all enthusiasm for exaggeration, so you offer neither, and the people closest to you go long stretches without hearing that they matter.

Your soul work

Your work is learning that praise is not the same as lying. Tell people what you actually think of them while they are alive to hear it. Say the good number out loud too. Understating the truth is still, technically, a way of getting it wrong.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The tenth sign is the mountain goat with a fish tail: ambition with depth beneath it. Capricorn carries mastery, and the lesson of what summits are for.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

Check a friend's day, or your partner's, and send it to them.