September 9

Who you are

You count what is actually there rather than what the paperwork claims. Money, effort, time, promises kept and not kept. You will not round a number in your own favour, and you notice at once when somebody else has. This makes you valuable and slightly uncomfortable to have around, particularly in meetings that were going pleasantly right up until you spoke.

The reason it lands is that you say it without drama. No sighing, no speech about standards, just the gap and then the first step towards fixing it, in that order. You do not need anybody to feel terrible first. And when the corrected figure is worse than you expected, you accept it and move, instead of arguing with the situation about what it should have been.

Your gifts

• Unsentimental accuracy. You would rather have the true figure today than a comfortable one for another year.
• Slow leaks spotted. You see the small losses in a budget, a team, or a marriage long before they become holes.
• Bad news delivered well. You state the problem and start on the answer without making anybody grovel.

Your shadow

You audit the people you love. They can feel the running total of what they have given and not given, and they cannot see the ledger in order to argue with it. Meanwhile your own column is brutal. Every failure counted at full value, every good thing marked down, and you call the result being realistic about yourself.

Your soul work

Count yourself the way you count everything else, at true value, including the things you forgot you were owed. And show people the tally before you act on it. Kept private it becomes a verdict. Said out loud it becomes a conversation somebody can answer.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The sixth sign carries the gift of precision in service, and the lifelong lesson that perfection was never the assignment.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

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