Happy Year of the OX
By Kathleen Bolton | January 26, 2009 |
By all accounts, 2009 will be challenging for everyone. Luckily, it is also the year of the Ox, which is, according to Chinese lore, the perfect sign to clean up the world’s big fat financial mess.
Eugenia Last writes in the Toronto Daily Sun:
I am here to enforce honor and fair play
To set a moral code
By becoming one with nature,
Constantly working toward my goal
To bring about harmony and good fortune.
I AM THE OX
The year of the Ox is just what’s needed to clean up any mess and clutter left by the Rat. The Ox is not as he appears and should not be underestimated or considered slow or unaware.
The Ox is the quintessential hardworking, conventional cleaner-upper who will put everything back in order and turn chaos back into reason.
There is no room for anyone looking for a free ride during an Ox year. Hard work pays and laziness does not. It’s a plain-and-simple, cut-and-dried, yes-and-no type year. It’s a year to get papers in order and your life back on track, and to do whatever it takes to budget and plan for your financial future, lessening the stress and securing your position. Tradition will be important and keeping order and making sure that everyone plays by the rules a must.
Those born in the Year of the Ox will have the extra fortitude to get through the challenges of the upcoming year. For the rest of us, it means keep on keeping on. No free lunches or quick fixes in the Year of the Ox.
Here’s a fun website that details predictions for all the signs of the Chinese Zodiac (scroll down past annoying ads) and click the link for your sign. Here’s hoping that despite the gloom, this is an auspicious year for you!
Art by inObrAs.
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
Gong xi fa cai!