JupiterASC,
I just started looking deeper into all the astrology back in September and have been doing a lot of reading about retrogrades. I was noticing all the articles people were writing about Mercury retrogrades and they all seemed to be more negative than positive about it. Being new to it all, I knew Mercury was a Gemini planet so I focused a lot more researching Mercury. I was facing an important decision back between September and October and read that plans and travel might be delayed or it might not be a good time to make travel plans, so I ended up cancelling them to look into it more. I started going over things that had been happening through this last year and where the Mercury retrogrades fit into the key points in the year and I found that all the positive points happened while Mercury was in its retrograde cycle (from the pre-shadow to the post-shadow periods) and all the negative points were happening between Mercuy retro cycles. So it seems to me that Mercury retrogrades work in my favor and it's kinda refreshing to know I'm on the right track with it because it was really starting to bug me about the negativity I was reading about concerning retrogrades. I'm sure for some people it can be negative, but it just seemed like there was more focus put into the negative than a balance of positive.
I'm still learning how to read my chart, but Mercury was direct in Gemini, so I'm thinking this might be part of why the Mercury retrograde works in my favor. Mars and Neptune were both retrograde in my chart as well as ceres, juno and pallas. I don't know how the last 3 fit into all that yet.I decided to stick with the major planets first. I have found some aspect patterns formed with those three and a Grand Trine with the moon, mars and chiron...and a kite with mercury in opposition of mars.There's some pretty cool reading here so far for sure.