The Universe’s Message to Me: Stop Everything You Do, but Especially Stop Writing

I’m not paranoid, the Universe really is out to silence me.

Over the last 22 years, I have picked up on the subtle and sometimes not so subtle message to quit doing everything I do.

The messages get stronger and stronger until I quit whatever activity it is that “the Universe” is demanding I quit.

I could understand the Universe if it made this demand once or twice for an activity I was obsessed with, however over the course of my life, I have received this message telling me to quit for over 30 activities!

Naturally, when I quit one activity, I fill the void with another. This works for a while until the Universe seems to once again get irritated that I am “doing” anything. I’m starting to wonder if the Universe just wants me to disappear as any activity I pursue eventually runs into a block signaling to me that it has had enough of me taking part in that activity.

What inspired me to write about the Universe’s crappy attitude towards my life’s activities is its response to my most recent hobby.

The Universe just moments ago signaled to me that it wants me to stop playing Cash Frenzy, a casino simulation app I recently installed on my phone. I just started playing 3 months ago.

Cash Frenzy is like visiting Las Vegas but more fun because most of the time you don’t have to spend any real money. At least that was the case until today. My free ride came to a frustrating and decisive end this morning.

Over the course of 3 months, I had accumulated the ungodly sum of 320 billion coins. I carefully and prudently played the game. I neither bet too much nor too little as I slowly build up my cash hoard.

I built my cash stash up from the 100 million free coins they give you for downloading the app up to 320 billion coins I had in my account this morning. I spent $3.98 of my own real money over the last 3 months to help me along the way.

In 3 hours, I not only lost all of my hard earned 320 billion coins, but I also frustratingly threw in another $40 of my own real money in a desperate attempt to stop the carnage as my little empire crumbled into nothingness. The Universe must’ve made its decision last night while I slept. It was through with me wasting my time playing this game so it sent me this clear message: Quit playing this stupid game. NOW.

Payday was just two days ago.

I don’t plan on forking over the rest of my income to sustain my little digital kingdom. Although it has been the focus of much of my time (too much time according to the Universe) these past 3 months, I still plan on paying my mortgage in a couple of days. I had no choice but to bite the bullet, quit playing, and delete the app.

{Update: 12 hours after deleting the app and leaving a 1-star review at the Apple app store, I redownloaded the app. I’m addicted, what did you expect? To make a long story short, I went on the wildest winning streak. Within the hour, I went from the measly 100 million coins I had left in my account up to over 200 billion coins, recovering most of my losses.

I don’t think for a second that this was all due to some vague concept we call “luck.” This was the company’s response to my review and complaint. During my “recovery” as soon as I was about to fall back below 25 billion coins, my lucky streak reignited. Strange coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences, but I feel guilty enough that I should delete my 1-star review from the Apple store.}

This has left a void in my life which I am currently filling by writing about my experience.

Writing, unfortunately, is an activity the Universe has already frowned upon many, many times in my life. You’d think I would have learned that lesson by now.

Writing is #1 on the Universe’s list of things I do that it dislikes.

It should have thought of that before it caused the collapse of my little Cash Frenzy empire.

The Universe has shown its disapproval of my writing in a variety of ways. I heard the first message loud and clear 22 years ago when I worked in a psychiatrist’s office. I had a notebook I kept at work where I would write down the little thoughts I had throughout the day. Over 4 months, these musings had grown to 10 handwritten pages.

Many of the notes I made were broadly related to mental disorders and the human condition. This is where my thoughts would naturally be considering the theme of mental disorders was the topic of nearly every conversation at the psychiatrist’s office.

I didn’t write the name of any patients. I didn’t write any specifics about any particular patient’s case as far as I’m concerned. I did write that one patient experienced a “hallucination” of a battle occurring over the Earth between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

I found the story of this “hallucination” interesting since I had a similar dream before and it reminded me of the Biblical vision of the end times recorded in the Book of Daniel. It also sounded like a scene from Star Wars, so considering the broad nature of the idea, I didn’t think I was violating the patient’s privacy by writing the concept down.

As you can see for yourself, there is no violation of HIPPA regulations in the paragraph above paraphrasing this patient’s “hallucination.” I even changed the gender specific pronoun I used in my first draft while editing this piece.

My employer, the psychiatrist, disagreed. I was terminated for, in his words, “incompatibility with corporate culture” whatever that means.

Apparently while working for a psychiatrist, there is no other explanation possible for a patient’s experience other than his explanation.

In fact, when working for a psychiatrist there is little room given for disagreement on any issue big or small. Psychiatrists are the gods of their own little universes. They have no trouble making that message clear.

What I didn’t know at the time when he called me into his office was how he knew what I had written down. Later, I realized that I must have left my notebook out on my desk when I went to lunch without thinking anything of it.

Technically, it’s also not a violation of privacy for an employer to rummage through his employee’s desk and look through his personal belongings when those belongings are at the place of employment. I was in my 20s at the time and paranoid thoughts like my employer rummaging through my desk while I was at lunch was a possibility that never crossed my mind.

Ironically, the psychiatrist’s own paranoid delusions led him to do just that, finding my notebook. He was fuming mad when I returned from lunch and terminated me that day. I had no idea what I had done to earn his anger.

When I went back to my desk to clear out my belongings, I couldn’t’ find my notebook. I asked around the office, but no one had seen it, ever. When I asked my boss he said tersely, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He went on to question whether I was losing my grip on reality for thinking I had a personal notebook at work in the first place. That’s crazy, he implied. What kind of person in their right mind would do such as thing?

I left without my notebook, confused. I wasn’t about to protest the loss of 10 pages of my wandering philosophical musings with the immediate implied threat of losing all my civil rights being forcefully hospitalized for “losing my grip on reality.”

I pictured myself screaming in desperation handcuffed to a hospital bed while being injected with tranquilizers against my will to stop me from ranting about a supposed missing notebook. I made a mental note to never work for a psychiatrist again. That’s too much power for any employer to have.

I stopped writing altogether for the next 10 years.

I didn’t appreciate my ideas, my research, my hard work, and my theories being unceremoniously tossed into the trash to protect a psychiatrist’s insecure, pompous and narrow minded worldview.

I later recalled overhearing a conversation he had with another doctor. He said that he had a daughter at Princeton and a son at Harvard, so it didn’t matter to him how low he needed to sink to protect his business. Thinking about it now, maybe the Universe should have told me to call in sick on that day.

10 years of abstinence from writing came to an end when I went to graduate school. I panicked when my class was given our first writing assignment. As soon as I reengaged my writing gene, the floodgates poured open.

I couldn’t limit myself to writing just for school. I started writing for myself as well. I started writing about the events in my life. I started writing short stories. I just kept writing. I couldn’t stop myself.

Over the last 9 years since I started writing again, the Universe has expressed its disapproval in a variety of ways.

Just two years ago, it crashed my hard drive, erasing the first 300 articles I wrote on Medium. Several hundred pages went up in digital smoke overnight.

Coincidentally, I had just taken the articles off Medium storing them on my hard drive just days before it crashed. If the message it sent through my psychiatrist employer wasn’t strong enough, this one was undeniable:

“STOP WRITING! Or I, the Universe, will be forced to obliterate every word you have ever written.”

I’m unsure if it is acceptable for me to use quotes when paraphrasing the Universe, but you get the idea. At an average of 3 single-spaced pages in Microsoft Word, I lost approximately 1,000 pages, about 2,000 pages double-spaced. That would have been a pretty good start towards my first book if the Universe wasn’t so spiteful towards my written work.

The strangest signal the Universe has sent telling me in the clearest way possible that it wants me to stop writing involved pens.

For the entire year of 2019, I couldn’t find a pen that I was able to use more than once. Every time I wrote down anything with a pen, the next time I went to use the same pen, it wouldn’t work. Over the course of the year, I must’ve gone through 40–50 pens.

It was inexplicable. It was impossible, I must’ve thought 35–40 times. I never told anyone. What could I say? What would they say? I’d guess most people would just burst out laughing in disbelief. No one would ever believe me. Heck, I didn’t believe me. What was happening between me and my relationship with writing utensils was impossible.

I hope the Universe has given up and dropped its opposition to me writing.

I can’t be sure. At times, I am told that I write brilliantly. Not always, but sometimes. However, I have seen some evidence that the Universe still disapproves.

I get very little attention to my contributions on Medium. Most of my articles get less than 10 views. I I imagine you are all redirected towards another activity if you think about clicking on one of my articles. I can picture your phone ringing, your dog barking at the mailman, etc. The Universe has at its disposal an infinite variety of ways it can invoke to lead you away from my written work.

I feel for the editors at Medium and Illumination who are “required” or who volunteered to read incoming work.

The Universe must have to work extra hard to stop these people from reading my writing. Hopefully, it hasn’t been too painful or costly for any of them. I apologize for any suffering you’ve had to endure because of my continuing stubbornness. I refuse to let the Universe win.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the Universe has signaled its disapproval of at least 30 different activities I’ve done over the years. I started off writing this piece with the idea that I would write about all of those 30 topics.

However, writing about writing seems to have taken up much more space and time than I originally considered. I have already spent over an hour on this story. I also spent four hours on the headline.

One may think that those number should be reversed, spending four hours writing the story and one hour on the headline, but that’s not true. Research it yourself. You’ll find that spending more time on your headline is actually more important than the content of your story if you want people to actually click on and read what you’ve written.

Considering those 5 hours and that the most I can reasonably expect to make from this is about $4, that’s 80 cents per hour. The Universe is clearly once again communicating that writing is a waste of my time.

Since I brought it up, I would feel I short-changed my readers if I didn’t mention the other activities that the Universe has signaled its disapproval to me.

A dozen of the activities from my list of 30 include going to the dentist, getting a colonoscopy, using Door dash, shopping on Amazon, paying rent, using dating apps, owning a phone, having electricity, going to church, working for a living, watching YouTube and thinking.

The last one, the Universe’s seeming request that I stop thinking is one I’ve never been able to fulfill. I’ve tried. It can’t be done. You try to stop thinking.

Never mind, I hear that most people successfully stopped thinking in elementary school. I guess I’m just not as experienced and skilled at stopping my brain compared to many others. It’s been a burden in my life that I lack this ability that other people seem to accomplish with apparent ease.

Wow. That was kind of a cruel and heartless thing to say.

I now see why the Universe thinks I should stop writing. Either it wants people to believe I’m nicer than I actually am or it’s trying to save me from future injury from an upset reader of my work. I hadn’t considered either of those possibilities. The Universe was never very forthcoming about its reasoning before today.

Thank you for your attention. I feel I should apologize for any pain I may have inadvertently caused you through forcing my thoughts to become manifest through my selfish and stubborn insistence that I express them through the written word.

It’s hard to fight the Universe.

I am now considering the idea that I should quit writing under a new light. Perhaps I should also reconsider its suggestion that I quit thinking too.

Statistically speaking, there must be a few of you who are experienced in this area. Any advice you could give regarding how to do that, other than the obvious choices of a guillotine or a frontal lobotomy, would be greatly appreciated.