So, Mars is in Aries. We know this. It’s been there for a while, and this transit is proceeding pretty much how I expected. What I didn’t expect is how much energy I would have, and that I’d have very little control over how I spend it.

That’s a “dunce-cap” moment for me, to be perfectly honest. Mars is activated for me this year, and it’s a pretty important planet given I have my Sun, Mercury, and Venus all in Aries in my chart. So, yeah, I should of seen this coming.

And yes, I know, astrologers talking about their own charts is a cringey-cliche, but whatever. This is my blog and I’ll do what I want.

Anyway, Mars energy is not subtle, nor is it sustainable in the long term. It’s explosive, hot, and burns out quick—the ultimate example of “biting off more than you can chew.”

I’ve had a number of projects on my plate for a while, and a number of others I’ve been meaning to tackle. Specifics don’t matter here, and you’ll probably find out about a couple of them soon enough anyway. What does matter, is that since Mars’s ingress into Aries, I’ve been working non-stop.

Until I drop, that is.

Here’s how my average day has been going.

1. Wake up anywhere between three and five in the morning because my body is done with sleep. I appear to have no say over this.
2. Stumble out of my room, struggle to get a cup of coffee in the right orifice, and wait until both of my eyes are open. I appear to be allowed no more than an hour for this.
3. Do my normal, morning rituals. This includes increasingly-desperate attempts to meditate and not think about the bazillion things I want or need to do.
4. Start working on those bazillion things. This is a full-tilt frenzy where I’m multitasking housework with magic and writing.
5. Sometime between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon, I collapse on the couch, with a brain that feels like I’ve run it through a juicer, and a body which feels like I was beaten half-to-death by an angry orangutan named Stanley.
6. Wait for bedtime, so I can go to sleep, and repeat from step one.

This is obviously not ideal. There’s no middle ground here between “angry, lunatic frenzy of productivity” and “burnt out husk.”

That’s Mars energy, experienced over a long transit. It’s not a sustained marathon, but rather a set of all-or-nothing sprints punctuated by exhaustion.

And then there was the retrograde.

Back in June, I wrote that a Mars retrograde tends to go one of two ways. It either mellows out a bit (well, “mellow” for an angry malefic), or it behaves like a car dong ninety without a steering wheel. I also wrote that, in my opinion, we really weren’t going to know for sure which to expect until Mars hit its station on September 9th.

So. Yeah. It’s pretty clear now. We’ve got the out-of-control-car Mars retrograde.

I’m pretty sure you can pick out the major events going on which this transit forecasted, but as for my own little world? I appear to have lost nearly all say in which of my bazillion projects is going to get attention.

Now, when I wake up, I have this weird sort of feeling of lethargy-meets-mania which is almost impossible to put into words. It’s like I’ll sit there and say “Hmm, should I work on this?” And I’ll feel like I just want to go back to bed. So then I think about the next thing on my list and, nope, not that either.

This will keep happening until I land on some random project, seemingly no more interesting than any of the others, and suddenly I’ve got fifty thousand volts running through my body and I take off.

This. Is. Beyond. Frustrating.

I tried to sort of “go with the flow” for a day or two, and just let my brain work on whatever it had the energy for at that moment, but that’s obviously not a feasible solution. Ultimately, I’ve had to scrap a bunch of plans (at least temporarily) and focus only on a handful of things which I consider “immediate needs.”

It’s been a fight, but I’ve managed to beat my brain into submission. It now knows it’s got about three things on it’s to-do list, and it stays on the leash until it does them.

I’m still exhausted by noon every day, but at least I’m maintaining focus again.

So how’s your Mars retrograde going?