Mercury retrograde report

First and foremost: Mercury retrograde ends late Wednesday/early Thursday, so you can breathe a deep sigh of relief later this week and watch things straighten themselves out after Labor Day, because Mercury picks up speed alarmingly fast after retrogrades, and speed = functioning "normally."

The best Mercury retrograde story I have is from my father, who lost the key to his rental car in a national park and had to deal with towing and re-keying and a car rental company way more than he would have preferred. Additionally, he's a great example of the following: you are not supposed to travel new places during Mercury retrogrades. You can go wherever you want if you've been there before (though your luggage may get lost), just not new places. My parents traveled separately on their recent trip to the western part of the country: my mom was born out there and has obviously been there plenty, and she flew out first to meet some friends. My dad joined her there, and upon his arrival, their trip turned into a shitshow of travel snafus. My dad's newly-rented car had its Check Engine light come on almost immediately, so my parents went going from Budget Rental Car office to Budget Rental Car office looking for a new car, the key to which my father subsequently lost in the national park. Then, because I would like to again state that my dad loves old things (and going places slowly), my parents took a train home, and hung out with an Amish family on said train. If you can top any of that, please drop me a line.

Personally, I got some bad news that I previously missed: Mercury was trine my moon and I heard it from my sister, and if that isn't textbook astrology I don't know what is (Mercury = siblings, moon = shit you care about, trine = fast/easy). Then last week I kept taking the wrong phone with me places (one phone is for my day job): I missed a slew of texts because I picked the wrong phone one day, and then the next day I picked the other phone and missed time-sensitive texts on the phone I didn't have. The simple fact is that it's annoying to carry two phones all the time, and I rationalized to myself "I'll be gone for two, maybe three hours. What could I possibly miss?" (plenty, dum-dum). Then, I tried getting my (actual) phone serviced at the Apple Store, entered my account password incorrectly, and triggered a security lock, preventing anything else from happening after that. The energy I bring to most of this is a shrug, and a "welp, I screwed that up." Mercury isn't my chart ruler. If you're Gemini or Virgo rising (and therefore Mercury IS your chart ruler), usually you feel more profoundly out of sorts during Mercury retrogrades, which includes dumb injuries and personal debacles, but the rest of us are just mildly inconvenienced or making the wrong choices about whether to take our phones places (and then scurrying back to the building we were just in, apologizing profusely for making someone wait for us for an hour because we had the wrong phone and missed texts, even though we didn’t ask for them to wait, but they did 🤦‍♀️).

You're supposed to rethink stuff during Mercury retrogrades, and we have a few days left of it, so make the most of the energy, even if it's annoying to refrain from doing new things. I personally put myself on a time out, because I'm waiting for a few energies to shift simultaneously, and I know it's only a matter of time before I start climbing the walls and being a menace to myself, so I'm burning a few vacation days and reducing the amount of trouble I can cause. Plus, when Mercury's really slow (now), I usually get fewer emails. I probably just jinxed myself.

Finally: I heard the following refrain from multiple people, multiple times: it's the beginning of the school year, and many schools did not send out beginning-of-year messaging in a cohesive way that parents are accustomed to, so the school year began with consternation and question marks for some. If you're a teacher and reading this, I'm sure it wasn't you, but I'm just saying the question mark of "is my kid signed up for aftercare?? They took my deposit??" lingered in the minds of some people I speak to regularly. I'm sure it'll all get straightened out by the end of the week.

I didn’t post any videos in the past week, but there’s plenty of content over on Youtube if you miss my dumb voice. It’s easier for me to show stuff via video so if you’re wanting to learn, hopefully it’s a good starting point. Tell your friends 😉