You’re having one of those days. Your laptop starts acting up, and you cannot send that all-important email. Your car inexplicably breaks down. You cannot get any work done, because your writing software keeps freezing, and, well, there’s one interruption and distraction after another, all saved up for the very same morning.

Admittedly, it feels good to put the blame on something. In this case, to say, “Well, Mercury is retrograde, after all.”

But what does that mean, exactly? As I understand it, several times a year, when Mercury travels near the Earth’s orbit, it appears to slow down or reverse direction. When it slides by us for about three weeks, communications, plans, travel, and technology seem to go haywire. Mercury went retrograde on Wednesday, January 21. It will stay that way through February 11.

I was having one of those kinds of days this morning. It was frustrating and exhausting. Then, I went to survey Laysan albatross nests and discovered this chick that had just hatched.

It can take a couple or three days for Laysan albatross chicks to pip their way to freedom. Now, that’s hard work. Tiring. And puts my life and my so-called frustrations into much greater perspective.

Welcome to the air-breathing world, you cute, little albatross chick.