Thank God Mercury is no longer retrograde!

If you think it nonsense, that’s okay. Most of the time, for me, Mercury retrograde doesn’t put a dent in my life. This time around, however (and last time), I wanted to wave my white flag and plead, “Mercy!” 

Dates of Mercury retrograde in 2021:

January 30 to February 20
May 29 to June 22
September 27 to October 17

I can’t recall any issues the first go round. If there were, they were minor enough that I didn’t notice. 

In June, when Mercury last went retrograde, my work computer abruptly died – hard drive failure. I lost everything that wasn’t saved to our server. This was right at the tail-end of the retrograde, too. No biggie really because I was heading to Costa Rica and wasn’t going to do any work that first week anyway. I don’t remember any other glitches from that time. 

This most recent retrograde has been non-stop issues. The issues started before retrograde and just kept going! Here is a list of what I remember (I may have missed some minor hiccups):

• My company had an email outage at work in early September (before retrograde) that resulted in three weeks of important emails going to my junk folder. I only discovered it last-minute (Sept 30th) and had to hurry up and enter 50+ invoices into the monthly spreadsheet I’d already created. Despite several corrections, the emails kept going to junk. It has only just now seemly resolved on its own.
• My remote connection set-up had to be reconfigured around this time, too (can’t recall why) and this put a pause in my work but it was short-lived. 
• Server outage mid-retrograde resulted in an inability to work for several days. As the server was being replaced, the internet went out and caused a delay in server replacement. It was like my computer crashed all over again – all programs had to be uploaded again and I had to wait for certain important programs because of delays.
• My remote connection suddenly stopped working again(this was last weekend). Nothing our IT guy did worked. I was forced to go into the office to get my tasks done. Only yesterday was the problem resolved. Apparently a Norton and Windows update that happened at the same time created the problem. 
• Internet outages at work all through the retrograde. Some lasting only hours, some lasting days. 

Apart from the above work issues, I also had other hiccups, also computer/technology related.

• My daughter had $20 and asked me to buy her an online expansion pack for The Sims 4 (her favorite game). I bought the pack only to discover I had to buy it via her account, not mine and she couldn’t access it. So, I ended up on the phone for a long while waiting to talk to some guy from India who I could barely understand in order to get a credit. In the end, it worked out, but not without a lot of cussing and upset. 
• My daughter wanted a Halloween costume only found online. She showed me where to buy it and when I clicked the final button it showed the wrong shipping address! Oddly, when I paid with PayPal it used an address from over 7 years ago!! The website had no way to edit or cancel the order so I had to wait on the phone for over 30 minutes to talk to a customer service rep who was brand new at her job. She kept typing in my address wrong but eventually the address was changed and the costumed arrived yesterday without issue. She is going to be Queen Elizabeth II.
• At lunch, just yesterday, when I paid I added a $2 tip only to discover on the final screen that somehow I gave a $200 tip! OMG! LOL Thankfully, it was an easy fix, but geez! This happened in the “shadow” of Mercury retrograde.

I’m not sure why this retrograde was so eventful but, where once I just shrugged off Mercury retrograde, now I’m paying closer attention. The lesson, for me, has been to take it all in stride. I was driven to frustration and even tears from some of the issues I encountered, but every time things worked out. 

Anyone else experience significant retrograde effects? Please share so I don’t feel so unfairly targeted. 😉