Man, life throws you curveballs. About eighteen months ago, I was just spinning my wheels, totally stuck in a rut. My main project had hit a brick wall, my bike broke down right before a big trip, and frankly, I was just bored stiff of looking at my four walls. You know how it is. You start looking for answers in stupid places. I wasn’t looking for a therapist; I was looking for a cheap little thrill or maybe just an excuse to blame the universe for my lousy mood.
I was doom-scrolling late one Tuesday night, trying to figure out why I kept seeing all these bizarre ads for tactical survival gear, when I landed on some random entertainment site. And there he was. Patrick Arundell. Big, friendly face, right next to the header “Your Daily Virgo Forecast.” I’m a Virgo. I’ve always kind of side-eyed that whole astrology thing, thinking it was just fluff for folks who didn’t want to make their own choices. But I was stuck, right? So, I clicked it. Read the thing. It was vague, sure, but it felt… specific enough to be hilarious if it was wrong.
That’s when the idea hit me. I’m a data guy at heart, even if the data is just notes on my sourdough starter. I figured, why not treat this like a real project? I needed a distraction, and analyzing some guy’s daily horoscope predictions for my sign seemed about as productive as anything else I was doing.
The Setup: Six Months of Hardcore Tracking
I snagged an old, unused A5 notebook—the kind with the slightly yellowed paper. I swore I’d use it for budgeting, but whatever. For six solid months, every single morning, before I even boiled the water for my coffee, I opened up Patrick Arundell’s prediction for the day and wrote it down. I wrote the full block of text. This wasn’t some quick check; this was a serious commitment to something utterly ridiculous.
Then, the fun part: tracking the outcome. I knew I couldn’t just mark “Yes” or “No.” His stuff is too ambiguous for that. So I broke it down into chunks, what he usually focused on:
- The Grind (Work/Career): Any mentions of projects, colleagues, bosses, or general ambition.
- The Loot (Money/Material): Talk about cash flow, small finds, unexpected expenses, or purchases.
- The Feels (Personal/Emotional): Stuff about relationships, inner peace, arguments, or health.
I used a simple three-color pen system: Green for a “Definite Match,” Yellow for a “Maybe, if I squint a lot,” and Red for a “Nope, total bunk.”
Living by the Stars, Sort Of
The first few weeks were a disaster. It was mostly red. He’d say “Be open to exciting new ventures,” and I’d spend eight hours debugging a piece of code I wrote three years ago. Total miss. But then the weird stuff started happening, the stuff that makes you scratch your head and look around suspiciously.
One Monday, the forecast specifically warned about “avoiding unnecessary travel and expecting minor communication hiccups.” I had planned to drive across town for a specialized part for my bike. I decided, just for the record, to put it off until Tuesday. I saw the news that evening—major pile-up on the main road I would have taken. Did he know? No, probably not, but damn, that was a solid Green Match in the notebook.
Another time, he focused on “unexpected joy regarding something you’d given up on.” I marked it yellow, thinking it was probably just fluffy nonsense. Three days later, a random package showed up at my door. It was a vinyl record I’d ordered six months ago from some obscure European seller, given up for lost, and completely forgotten about. I got my money back ages ago, and suddenly, boom, it’s there. That immediately flipped to a strong Green Match. It was specific enough that it wasn’t just finding a penny on the floor.
I noticed his “Feels” section was usually the highest matching one, but that’s because those predictions are crafted by someone who understands human nature, I think. Saying “A feeling of dissatisfaction may linger” on a Tuesday afternoon is a safe bet for most people, especially post-lunch. But even there, he sometimes hit something too specific. One day, he said, “An old grievance resurfaces, demanding resolution.” Later that day, my long-lost cousin tried to add me on social media after years of weird silence and a family feud. That was a big enough shocker to warrant a Green.
The Final Tally: The Real Lesson
So, six months later, I closed the notebook. I didn’t get rich. I didn’t meet the love of my life (still just the cat). My life didn’t suddenly become perfect or predictable. But when I went back and tallied up the columns—all those Reds, all those Yellows—the total number of solid Green Matches was surprisingly high. Not 90%, not even 70%, but high enough that it made me think twice.
But here’s the kicker, the real takeaway from this whole bizarre experiment: The accuracy didn’t matter as much as the focus it gave me. When he said, “Be cautious with spending,” I naturally looked for my wallet and thought about purchases before I made them. When he said, “An opportunity may present itself,” I was consciously listening for new ideas or checking emails more diligently. The forecast, accurate or not, made me actively search for the events he described. It wasn’t him predicting my life; it was me adjusting my lens to match his prediction.
Whether Patrick Arundell is a genius astrologer or just a good writer who understands human psychology is up for debate. But for those six months, his forecasts turned a boring slump into a game, and sometimes, that active searching made things happen that I would have ignored otherwise. It was a weird mental tool, not a crystal ball.
So, is he accurate? For me, subjectively, tracking the weird little coincidences that happened in my life, I’d say he’s accurate just often enough to keep you guessing, and that’s probably the whole point
