Do you hear the theme song to the movie Jaws when aMercury Retrograde is around the corner?  Here is how to handle a 2018 Mercury Retrograde. Tips for Surviving a 2018 Mercury Retrograde If you’re familiar with the term, “Mercury retrograde,” odds are you don’t have good feelings about it. “Oh, no, not again!” is the usual reaction to learning that one is coming up. Take heart! It doesn’t mean the sky is falling. Mercury retrograde is not a freak occurrence, much less the end of the world. It’s a regular phenomenon that happens three or four times a year. We can’t stop it, but we can understand and work with it. Read on for how. What does it mean? First, the technicalities: Mercury is retrograde when it’s traveling backward. That’s an optical illusion, of course, and happens when the planet’s orbital speed changes in comparison to the earth’s. It’s the planetary equivalent of speeding up on a highway, passing a car and seeing it fall far behind after you in the rearview mirror. How this works: When Mercury is moving in reverse, the areas of life it governs do not play by the usual rules. Anything related to communication and travel requires extra attention. This includes phones, computers and electronic devices, the mail (remember that?), cars, public transportation, and commutes. The need for that extra attention often comes from things not working properly. Our information flow is always a casualty. Messages go astray. Misunderstandings, confusion, half-truths, and deception are rampant. Both sides of a conversation may use the same words, but the words may not have the same meaning at all. Or expectations and assumptions may differ. (Real-life example: an organization awarding a book contract on a Mercury retrograde and terminating it two retrograde cycles later because the authors and...

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