Mercury turns retrograde three or four times a year, and for about three weeks the sky suggests review rather than launch.
The traditional advice is narrow and practical: this is a period for the re-words. Revisit, reconsider, revise, reread the contract, return the call you let go. It is not a warning that the worst will happen. It is a statement about what kind of work the moment is suited to, which is a different claim altogether.
Underneath it sits the older idea that timing is real — that a beginning has a character given by the moment it is begun in, and that some hours are better suited to setting out than others. An astrologer asked to elect a date does not ask whether you are ready. They ask what the sky is doing, and then they wait for a better window.
Which is worth borrowing on the nights when the mind runs the same scenario for the fourteenth time. Some of what is coming is already in motion and is not yours to hurry. What is yours is the choice of when to move, and that choice keeps until the window opens.