Mercury goes retrograde today. Put down the pitchfork.
Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio today and runs backward until mid-November. Before the group chat blames it for every dropped call, here's what I actually do with these three weeks:
Back up your phone. (You should anyway. Mercury is just the reminder.)
Re-read texts before sending, especially anything written after 11pm.
Lean into the re- words: review, revise, reconnect. Old friends tend to resurface. Let them.
Bonus: Venus has been retrograde since early October, so it's a lovely season for an honest conversation and a terrible one for an impulse tattoo. Not that I'd know anything about that.
Horary chart vs. my car keys
Lost my keys this morning. Did what any reasonable data analyst would do: cast a horary chart for the exact minute I asked 'where are my keys?'
The significator was in a water sign, in an angular house, near the cusp of the fourth. Traditional reading: somewhere low, damp, inside the home, close to where I started looking.
They were in the bathroom. In the laundry basket. In the pocket of yesterday's jeans. Low, damp-adjacent, home, and about two meters from where I first panicked.
I know, I know. Confirmation bias, n=1. I'm logging it in the spreadsheet anyway. 14 hits, 3 misses this year.
Electional chart for a job application
Picked an electional window to send my application today: Moon applying to a trine with Jupiter, nothing lurking in the 12th, and Mercury stationing retrograde any minute now, so it was today or never (pitchforks down, I'm being thorough). Lit an orange jar candle on my desk where I could see it, wrote the job title on a bay leaf, and hit send at 10:42 exactly.
Is this an elaborate way to stop procrastinating? Yes. Did I finally send it? Also yes.
Saturn return, second pass: a field report
Quick context for anyone new: about every 29 years Saturn comes back to the spot it held when you were born. Mine is in early Aries, and Saturn has been crossing it this year in three passes: once in the spring, once now on the retrograde, and once more early next year.
I used to roll my eyes at this. I'm a data analyst; I like things I can graph. But I've kept notes since March, and here's what the pattern looks like so far.
Pass one was the eviction notice. Not literal (well, a little literal; my landlord sold the building). Everything that had been 'fine for now' stopped being fine.
Pass two, this one, is the audit. Saturn doesn't punish, it reconciles the books. I've had more honest conversations in six weeks than in the previous five years. I told my dad I was proud of him. I quit the volunteer committee I'd been quietly resenting since 2023. I started therapy, which I had been 'about to start' for three years.
What I didn't expect: it isn't all heavy. There's a strange relief in finally doing the thing you knew you had to do. Like setting down a box you forgot you were carrying.
If you're 28 to 30 and everything feels stress-tested, you're not failing. You're being asked what's load-bearing. Keep what is. Thank the rest and let it go.
I'll report back after pass three.
A paperweight for my Saturn return
New desk accessory: a piece of smoky quartz. Not because a chart told me to. I checked four different 'zodiac stone' lists and they disagreed on literally every sign, which as a data analyst I find very funny.
I bought it because it's heavy, dark, and a bit cloudy in the middle, which is an accurate summary of being twenty-nine.
It sits next to my transit calendar. When I get dramatic about Saturn, I pick it up and remember: Saturn isn't punishing anyone. It's asking what you're building and whether it will hold weight. So does a paperweight, really.