I told you last week about my Mercury mishaps this time around.

There have been more…

I’m off to Sydney this weekend for a 60th birthday party. I’m staying down into next week in order to show my face in the office, but hubby is coming home on Monday. When I booked his return flight I forgot that our daughter had changed her work hours so that she could fly to Sydney on Wednesday – as such she won’t be able to pick him up from the airport.

A minor issue, but a hassle never the less.

Then there was the time when I booked my boss on a flight to Brisbane for a meeting and both of us forgot that his calendar would be on Sydney time while Brisbane has no daylight savings (don’t get me started).

I don’t normally get impacted by Mercury retrograde. I do everything that I’m supposed to do and usually sail through unscathed. Not this time.

Having said that, nothing has happened that we haven’t been able to fix – albeit with some rework…another Mercury word.

One thing I’ve found Mercury retrograde is fabulous for is bright ideas. Perhaps it’s because Mercury for me is in Pisces and retrograde natally in the 12th house, but the best creative ideas I’ve had have happened when Mercury is retrograde.

This time around was no different. I’ve had a novel jump into my head that I want to write now. As in right now. The problem is I’m already editing one and drafting another so I’m mustering some discipline from somewhere and merely writing copious notes in the hope that it will still be a shiny bright idea when I can get onto it (hopefully) in February.

I read something in a cookbook today that really described not just Mercury retrograde, but the retrograde motion of each of the planets. It was in Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles which is, incidentally, an amazing Christmas/seasonal cookbook.

“For all it’s bare twigs and pale, watery sunshine, winter is very much alive. Underneath the fallen leaves, things are happening at a rate of knots; new life burgeons. Bulbs are sprouting, buds are bursting through grey bark, new shoots push their way to the surface. Many plants require vernalisation, a prolonged patch of low temperatures, in order to grow… (I sometimes feel I do, too.) A secret world quietly doing what it does this year. A study in renewal, rebirth, new life.”

When planets are retrograde their energy is turned inward. Despite the frustration we often feel, we need that space and that slowing down too.

Anyways, Mercury will be direct Friday morning (my time).

In other news, with a New Moon just around the corner, we’re now in the balsamic phase of the Moon. The energy associated with this is one of rest, recharge, and finishing.

As you get ready to set your intentions for the New Moon in Sagittarius, take a look back at the mini-goals you set for the last cycle. Sometimes it helps to symbolically clean the slate by either actually finishing something or tidying something – even if it is just a drawer or your desk.