Mars in Virgo

The new bookcase came with instructions, and you ignored them, because you had already worked out a better order to do it in.

The house of work

The old astrologers gave each planet a house where it was happiest, its joy, and Mars rejoiced in the sixth: the house of work, service and the body, day to day. The sixth is also the natural house of Virgo. So here Mars is in its element in one sense at least. Your drive goes into the task at hand, done properly, and there is a deep satisfaction for you in a job finished with nothing left to fix.

Precision

You work carefully and you work hard. The loose screw, the missing step, the corner someone cut: you spot each one, and you can’t leave it alone. You would rather do a small thing perfectly than a large thing roughly. Skills that take patience suit you: repair, surgery, editing, cooking, craft, anything where the difference between good and excellent is a millimetre.

Your body likes a routine. Regular exercise, regular meals and a tidy space keep your temper even.

Fighting with facts

You rarely shout. When you fight, you fight with evidence, and you win because you have done the reading. You can take apart a bad argument point by point, calmly, and leave the other person no room. That precision is a gift in a dispute and a blade in a quarrel with someone you love.

Never quite done

The trouble is that nothing is ever quite finished. You see the flaw no one else can see, and you work on past the point of use. Criticism comes out of you before kindness does, and you can nag, hover and redo other people’s work until they stop offering to help. Anger turns inward too, and you can wear yourself out on your own mistakes.

What you want from a lover is care in the details: the thing remembered, the small service done without fuss.

The shelves you put up in your twenties are still perfectly level, and whoever lives with them has long since stopped noticing how rare that is.