This Is How Mercury Retroshade Could Mess With Your New Year’s Eve Plans

If Mercury retrograde has been particularly hard on you these past couple weeks, well, I have some unfortunate news: After retrograde ends, we'll enter a more than two-week period called Mercury retroshade, and it's got the potential to eff up your life just as much as retrograde. Considering those two-plus weeks will overlap with the start of 2018, you may be wondering how Mercury retroshade will affect New Year's Eve.

Our current retrograde, which began Dec. 3 and will end on Dec. 22, is supposed to be extra tough on folks born under Sagittarius, Gemini, Capricorn, and Virgo, but retrograde can affect all the signs, and plenty of astrologers say it can be seriously disruptive. Mercury retrograde, for folks not in the know, is a period when the planet Mercury appears to move in the opposite direction, going from west to east instead of east to west. But as Mother Nature Network points out, this motion is an illusion. Mercury isn't actually moving backward; it's simply orbiting the sun more slowly than Earth, so its movement seems to have changed.

So Mercury retrograde may be illusory in nature, and there may be no scientific studies to prove its disruption, but astrologists still peg retrograde as a force to be reckoned with. And retroshade, unfortunately, is simply a continuation of retrograde's influence, so planning your New Year's Eve should be done with some caution.

With retroshade, Mercury's influence will linger until Jan. 10, according to Cafe Astrology. And even though retrograde will be "over," we should still take the same precautions we do during its full effect. In astrology, Mercury has a big sway over travel and communication, so when the planet is awry, it tends to show in these areas, astrologists say. That means if you're planning to go out New Year's Eve, and especially if you're planning to travel significantly, you should have backup plans to back up your backup plans.

Karen A. Kay, writing for Daily Horoscope, explained that during retrograde and its surrounding shade, we should avoid giving in to spontaneous travel plans — no last-minute flights or road trips. So if you get a party invite on New Year's Eve, consider sticking with your original plans. We should also stay within our safe zones, Kay added, and be cautious when meeting new people. While showing up to a stranger's New Year's Eve party probably won't net you a Cloverfield-level disaster (though at this point that honestly wouldn't be too surprising), you may find yourself in less-than-good company.

Both Kay and AstroStyle note there are often problems with technology during retrograde and retroshade, so keep an eye on your phone, and back up the important stuff. If you snap the perfect midnight shot of you kissing your sweetheart(s) on New Year's Eve, send that sucker off to the cloud asap.

And finally, the amount of alcohol bound to be present on New Year's Eve will likely exacerbate the communication problems Mercury retrograde is infamous for causing. According to Conscious Reminder, people are likely to be crankier during retrograde and retroshade anyway, so adding alcohol to the mix can cause those unusually hot tempers to flare.

Plus, retrograde can pump up miscommunications, so what may start as a minor disagreement can become a huge deal, and it may not become apparent what went wrong until retroshade has passed.

And that's the silver lining, AstroStyle points out. Retrograde may massively screw with our lives, but in the end it can reveal some truths we didn't want to face. Like, maybe those miscommunication issues with your coworkers or parents are signs of future problems to come. Or maybe that party you skipped made you realize that group of friends wasn't your bag anyway. During the latter half of retroshade, you're able to dive in and make bold changes, AstroStyle says.

That's perfectly timed for New Year's Eve, which means you can take the lessons you learned from retrograde and apply them to solutions — or maybe even resolutions — as you go into 2018 and burst out of Mercury retrograde's dark cocoon like the shining butterfly we all deserve to be after surviving the hellscape of 2017.