Mercury is in Retrograde

It’s a thing. Look it up. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Did you find it? It’s a thing! And it EXPLAINS a lot!

I’m in mourning, actually. Any cheerful jauntiness is purely coincidental, I assure you. In truth, I am in mourning. It’s a sad story.

That boat, up there in the header. That’s the Gentry Eagle, in her day (1988) the fastest yacht in the world. In. The. World.

I’m not a yachting geek, but this is my writer’s story, right here:

It’s, like, 2009. I am supremely underemployed, having ridden the company of which I was part owner into the grave and it being the very heart of the Great Recession. I’m strolling around Ventura Harbor one day, wondering what to do, what to do, and spot this crazy looking spacecraft of a megayacht docked right there, by the boatyard.

Intrigued, I do my homework and my research and write an article on her sad story and shop it to a number of boating magazines. No bites. I publish it myself on Yahoo. Those were different days…

Zoom out to 2011, I get an email from the publisher of a magazine right here in Ventura. He spotted my article (don’t ask me how) and wishes to publish it, as it’s local. He pays me $250, edits it, and now I’m a published writer.

Zoom out to 2012, I’m in a job interview for a staff position as a technical writer for a major manufacturer. What does my interviewer do but pull out that very magazine and open it right to my article and asks “is this you?”

Zoom out to 2022, I’m happily writing and producing videos for the very same manufacturer. A writer’s story, indeed.

But, but, but I’m in mourning, because my beloved Gentry Eagle, for that was her name, now looks like this:

Broken, shattered, discarded, and demolished. It breaks my heart even to write it. Although I owe this boat my career, I found it difficult to come up with the $2m asking price. And now look at her. Rats.

And, as you now know, Mercury is in retrograde. Your local astrologer will tell you that this means that times are a little crazy.