The Dumb Project: Tracking Cosmic Relationship Chaos
You might be wondering why on earth I decided to pull up a horoscope summary from way back in April 2018. Seriously, who drags up old cosmic advice? Well, let me tell you, it wasn’t because I suddenly became a starry-eyed believer. It started because of a really stupid argument I had with my neighbor, Tony, about free will versus destiny. Tony is one of those guys who lives and dies by his daily charts, and I needed hard proof that this stuff was just generalized nonsense.
I committed myself to a dumb practice: finding a hyper-specific, relationship-focused prediction for a specific month and then tracking real-life outcomes for people I knew who fit the profile. Why Virgo? Because Tony is a Virgo, and I wanted to rub it in his face when the prediction was totally wrong. April 2018 was chosen because I remember that time being generally volatile for everyone, so it felt like good, messy data ground.
My first step was the initial hunt and capture. I spent a whole afternoon scrolling through old archives, specifically digging for the “best” or most detailed summary. I finally landed on a popular astrology site’s relationship section for Virgo, April 2018. It was the usual vague advice, but the summary I locked onto was really dramatic. It basically screamed: “Expect communication breakdowns, necessary endings, and the feeling that you need to purge toxic connections.” Pretty intense stuff, right?
Setting Up the Data Points (The Hard Part)
I realized I couldn’t just track Tony. One person is an anomaly, not a data set. So, I roped in four unsuspecting Virgos—my sister (Sept 1st), an old college friend named Maria (Sept 18th), a colleague from my side hustle, and, of course, Tony (Sept 10th). I had to be sneaky about it, too. I couldn’t just ask, “Hey, how toxic were your relationships in April 2018?”
The practice required me to create a crude, retroactive relationship log. I went back through my old texts, calendar entries, and shared photos, trying to piece together the emotional timeline for each of these four guinea pigs during March, April, and May 2018. I defined “relationship turmoil” using a very low bar, including:
- Any significant argument I knew about.
- Sudden reduction in contact with a primary partner or close friend.
- Any actual ‘clean slate’ events (breakup, major firing, moving house due to conflict).
I spent about three nights assembling this matrix. I didn’t care about quality, just quantity. I wanted to see if the “purge toxic connections” vibe actually hit them all at once, synchronizing their relationship disasters.
The Tracking and The Real-World Mess
What I found was, frankly, a total mess, which is exactly what I expected, but it was still funny to see it unfold. The horoscope said chaos, but reality was far more nuanced.
Tony: He did actually have a big fight with his landlord and ended up moving out rapidly in early May 2018. So, a “necessary ending” related to someone he had a relationship with (landlord). Tony immediately claimed this proved the horoscope was right. Classic Tony.
My sister: April 2018 was completely silent for her relationship-wise. She was stressed about work, but her home life was totally boring and stable. The cosmic prediction missed her entirely. Her biggest stressor was trying to fix a leaky faucet, not purging toxicity.
Maria: This was the interesting one. Maria was actually planning her engagement party during that month. She wasn’t purging toxic people; she was consolidating a lifelong commitment. However, she did mention later that she had a huge, knockdown fight with her maid of honor right before the party—a communication breakdown leading to temporary relationship turmoil. So, partial hit?
The Colleague: This poor guy got absolutely hammered. He and his long-term girlfriend officially pulled the plug on their relationship in the last week of March, and April was purely the fallout and the physical process of separating their belongings. He truly embodied the “purge toxic connections” summary, but the process started before the prediction’s window, which kind of broke my data model.
Final Takeaway: The Practice Concluded
I closed the project log after compiling these highly unprofessional notes. Did the horoscope summary accurately predict what happened to my small group of Virgos in April 2018? Absolutely not in a consistent, meaningful way. One person was stable, one was getting engaged (though fighting), one was dealing with lingering fallout from March, and only Tony provided a neat little example that fit the summary.
The whole exercise taught me that these summaries are broad enough to capture almost any human conflict happening at any time. When you are looking for “relationship problems,” you will always find them. Every month has relationship turmoil. My “practice” successfully documented the reality that life is just inherently messy, and you don’t need stars to tell you that someone you know is going to have a bad month. I never showed the detailed log to Tony, by the way. I just told him his chart was garbage and walked away, which honestly, was a much more satisfying end to the whole stupid affair.
