Mercury is shifting into retrograde today until February 18th..(A time where you should not attempt to start anything brand new) A time to finish old projects and relationships..
Peace, love, and light,
Amber "V" Moonstone

This article can be viewed at the following url address:

http://www.astrologyweekly.com/astrology-articles/mercury-retrograde.php

Mercury retrograde
January 28 - February 19, 2008

Here we go again... Mercury goes retrograde once again. It happens 3 times a year and it lasts for about 3 weeks. This time is from January 28 to February 19, 2008. Next, from May 27 to June 19, 2008. And then from September 24 to October 15, 2008.

Stationing degrees: 09Sco04 and 23Lib21. Watch carefully how the stationing of Mercury at these degrees influences your natal chart in order to understand the personalized impact on your life.

This is an important period, and we should be aware of the effects associated with this astrological influence. Since it is so often, we must learn what it means and how to take advantage of it.
Astronomical background

There is no real backwards movement of Mercury; it's just that we see it this way from Earth, because of the combined movement of the Earth and Mercury around the Sun. However, astrologically this is very relevant.
General influence of Mercury retrograde

Mercury rules over the mind's processes, studying, communication, businesses, travels and the like. When Mercury reverses its direction, all these areas are affected as well.

The mind turns naturally inwards and people tend to analyze more the own thoughts and follow the common thinking patterns, rather then be curious and eager of new intellectual experiences or challenges. This helps the meditation or the thorough lonely long-term study of a specific matter, but it affects the study of new subjects, the communication with the others, the attention oriented outwards.

Businesses, travels and communications tend to experience delays and different problems. Computers and other processes that work with information may experience crashes, unexpected failures.

Don't enroll to courses, don't buy expensive Mercurian items (books, cars, mobile phones etc.), don't sign important contracts and do not marry.
What is this Mercury retrograde period good for?

It is definitely a very good period for some actions. No time is completely bad for anything, there is a reason in everything happens.

The key is the reversed direction of movement: take any known Mercurian action, reverse its flow, consider the keywords "re-doing something", "double-checking", "finish the old projects" and there you are, you've found the good side of Mercury retrograde.

For instance, you may want to read again a book you particularly liked, a subject you studied before, meet and discuss with old friends you haven't met for a long time, travel to places you've already been to before.

This is an excellent time to work on old projects that never got to be finished. So, think about the things you started and never finalized.

Next, you might wish to prevent any bad things to happen to you: so double-check your agenda, call your business partners to confirm that everything goes as planned, have everything ready before the deadline and leave some extra time for unexpected events. Make copies of your important files and documents, save your work more often.

The other solution is to go on vacation or at least slow down the pace of your projects. You will find that going slowly during the Mercury retrograde period will spare you many efforts of redoing the same action that wasn't performed right the first time.

Above all, be generous and compassionate: you are already aware about the influence of this period, but the others aren't aware of it or there may be uncontrollable events. That's why you should have more diligence with the others and give them some more time. It'll be your mental health that you'll be sparing actually.