Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
A Year of Talking to a Universe That Doesn’t Exist
I kept telling people: 2025 was going to be my year. Not just a good year, not just a better-than-average year, but THE year. The year I would win the big prize in the big lottery.
I told my family. I told my friends. I told my animals, all of them, even the ones who clearly weren’t listening.
I also told my boss at my day job, repeatedly, in what had become a recurring bit that was either hilarious or deeply concerning depending on your tolerance for sustained delusion. The script was always the same:
I’d call her up and say, “Well, it happened.”
“What did?” she’d ask, already knowing where this was going.
“I won the lottery. Like I said I would.”
And you could hear it in her voice, that specific cocktail of disappointment and obligatory congratulations that people reserve for news they don’t want to be true but have to acknowledge anyway. The kind of tone you use when your talented employee tells you they’re leaving for a better opportunity, or when your dog learns to open the refrigerator.
“When are you quitting?” she’d ask. “How much did you win?”
“I’m not sure on my retirement date yet,” I’d reply, pausing for maximum dramatic effect. “I won $4.”
This happened multiple times. I never got tired of it. She almost certainly did.
The Final Cosmic Conversation
But I was serious about the larger goal. As the year wound down and midnight approached on December 31st, I stepped outside and told the Universe itself, out loud, like a lunatic: “I’m gonna win the big lottery and the big prize, right Universe?”
Well, I didn’t win it.
Which proves, definitively and scientifically, that the Universe doesn’t exist.
I know what you’re thinking. “Brian, the Universe obviously exists. You’re standing in it right now. Those are stars. That’s physics happening. The cosmic background radiation doesn’t care about your feelings.”
But here’s the thing: I manifested. I put it out there. I spoke my truth to the cosmos. I did everything the self-help books and the quantum mystics and the people who misunderstand both Eastern philosophy and Western science told me to do. I aligned my vibrations. I visualized my success. I declared my intentions to the infinite void.
I. TICKLED. MY. CHAKRAS.
And the infinite void said nothing.
Because it doesn’t exist.
When Manifestation Meets Scientific Method
Or if it does exist, it’s not listening, which is functionally the same thing. A Universe that doesn’t respond to manifestation is indistinguishable from no Universe at all. This is basic scientific method. I formed a hypothesis (I will win the lottery), I conducted an experiment (telling everyone including celestial bodies about my hypothesis), and the results were clear (I did not win the lottery).
Therefore, the Universe is dead.
Not “dead” in the thermodynamic heat-death sense that physicists keep warning us about, but dead in the Nietzsche sense. Dead in the “you killed it by expecting it to care about your lottery ticket” sense. The Universe has been demoted from conscious participant in your destiny to mere backdrop. It’s not guiding you. It’s not conspiring in your favor. It’s not even paying attention. It’s just there, running on autopilot, following its precious laws of thermodynamics and entropy, completely indifferent to whether you win Mega Millions.
The people who talk about manifesting and co-creating with the Universe are modern-day prayer warriors, except instead of genuflecting in a church, they’re lighting sage and talking about energy fields. Same delusion, different vocabulary. At least the religious folks had the decency to admit they were asking for divine intervention. The Universe people think they’re doing science.
They’re not doing science.
Science doesn’t care if you win the lottery either.
The $25 That Changed Everything
But here’s where things get interesting. On the last weekend of the year, the Universe’s final chance to prove me wrong about its non-existence, I logged on to buy my weekly ticket. The online platform, in what can only be described as either divine intervention or algorithmic manipulation, made me an offer: deposit $25, get 25 free online lottery games.
Could I resist that?
Of course not. What kind of person resists free lottery games? A person who doesn’t understand basic mathematics, that’s who. And I am not that person. I understand mathematics perfectly well, which is why I know that 25 free games is basically a guaranteed path to financial independence.
So I deposited my $25 and started playing.
And then something miraculous happened: I couldn’t lose.
Every scratch. Every spin. Every reveal. Winners. All of them. I was going absolutely insane, refreshing the screen like a day trader during a market crash. When the dust settled, I’d won something like four or five thousand dollars.
The Reasonable Person I Am Not
Now, a reasonable person might have looked at this windfall and thought, “Hey, this is nice. This could pay for that thing we need. Or go into savings. Or literally anything other than what I’m about to do.”
But I am not a reasonable person. I am a person who just spent an entire year talking to a non-existent Universe.
“This still isn’t the big prize in the big game,” I announced to no one in particular. And instead of pocketing the money like someone who understands how gambling works, I went and bought more lottery tickets. Hundreds and hundreds of tickets. Powerball. Mega Millions. Cash for Life. Money for Nothing. Chicks for Free. If it had “lottery” or “instant winner” anywhere in the title, I bought it.
My logic was airtight: Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the Universe (which doesn’t exist, as we’d already established) providing me with the seed money to actually win the big lottery prize. It was giving me the resources to find victory. It made perfect sense at the time.
Marriage, Pigs, and Lottery Logic
My wife was less convinced.
“You just won $4,000,” she said, in that tone that suggests she’s already calculating how much cheaper divorce lawyers are than staying married to me. “Do you know what we could have used that money for?”
“We certainly couldn’t get the inground pool with that amount,” I replied, deploying the kind of ironclad logic that has sustained our marriage through seventeen years of similar conversations. “Besides, we’d have to get a really strong diving board for the pig.”
She did not find this compelling.
What I didn’t tell her, because I value my life and our marriage, is that winning the big lottery wasn’t really about the pool. Or the money. Or financial independence.
It was about David Bromstad.
Friday Night Date Night with David Bromstad
Every Friday night, my wife refers to as “date night,” which sounds romantic until you realize it’s because I’m in a committed viewing relationship with HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home. Specifically with its host, David Bromstad, a sexy, beautiful man so aggressively charming and enthusiastic about real estate that my caboose would fully derail, jump the tracks, cartwheel through a nearby farmer’s market, and set up permanent residence in whatever fabulous property David was showing that week.
The man gushes. That’s his whole thing. He gushes over architectural details and color schemes and the way natural light hits a kitchen island, and every time he does it, I think: “That could be me. He could be gushing over me. Over my lottery win. Over my completely reasonable decision to buy a seven-bedroom beachfront property when I live alone with the pig.”
I’ve watched enough episodes to know exactly how it would go. David would pull up to our farm, probably in something convertible and turquoise, looking like a man who was personally designed by a focus group of people who find joy attractive, and he’d say, “So you won HOW much?” And I’d say something humble but also impressive, and he’d throw his hands up and go, “Shut! Up!” with that perfect mix of disbelief and genuine excitement that makes you feel like you just did something extraordinarily special by selecting the correct numbers on a random Tuesday.
The Dream of Being on My Lottery Dream Home
Then we’d look at houses. Terrible houses. Houses with weird layouts and questionable design choices. And David would find something positive to say about each one, because that’s what he does. He’s an optimist. A believer. The kind of person who thinks the Universe might actually exist and care about your kitchen backsplash.
And then, at the end, when I’d selected my dream home, he’d hug me. And it would be captured on camera. And I could make my wife watch it every Friday night for the rest of our marriage.
“This is our date night,” I’d say.
“That’s not what date night means,” she’d reply.
But she’d watch it anyway. Because that’s love.
So no, I wasn’t going to pocket the $4,000. I was investing it. In my future. In my dreams. In the very real possibility of making David Bromstad say my name on national television while standing in front of a house with a pool that definitely has a reinforced diving board suitable for livestock.
The Beautiful Space Where Gamblers Live
So I was already gone, already in that beautiful space where gamblers live, the space where the house edge doesn’t exist, where patterns emerge from randomness, where $25 turns into $4,000 turns into everything. I kept buying tickets, investing my “winnings,” not even calculating how much I was actually spending because it wasn’t my money anyway. It was the Universe’s money. The non-existent Universe’s money that I’d won with my initial $25.
Guess what?
I didn’t win the big lottery prize in the big lottery game.
The Universe, in its infinite non-existence, had gotten the last laugh.
Or maybe the first laugh, depending on whether you believe in linear time, which I’m starting to think is also a construct that doesn’t exist. Much like the Universe. Much like my $4,000. Much like my chances of ever being on My Lottery Dream Home.
Commitment to the Bit
But at least I can say I spent the last weekend of 2025 exactly as I’d promised: trying to win the big prize in the big game. The fact that I ended up hypothetically several thousand dollars poorer than when I started only proves that I was committed to the bit.
And really, isn’t commitment what manifestation is all about?
The Universe didn’t respond to that question either.
Because it doesn’t exist.
2026: The Year I Finally Win the Big Lottery
Although.
I should mention that just yesterday, I won $10 in Mega Millions.
Which isn’t the big prize, obviously. But it’s something. It’s a sign. The kind of sign that the non-existent Universe sends to people who understand how these things work.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the Universe does exist. Maybe it was just testing my faith, like some kind of cosmic quality assurance department making sure I was really committed before sending the big payout. Before sending me to David Bromstad.
The Universe let me down in 2025. But that’s fine. That was just a practice year.
So I’m telling people again: 2026 is going to be my year.
I’m going to win the big prize in the big lottery.
I’ve already started telling my animals.
The Universe is listening.
David Bromstad is waiting.
My boss is going to love this.
My wife has accepted that Friday nights are still spoken for.
Key Takeaways
- The author humorously asserts that he will win the big lottery in 2025, despite only winning small amounts.
- He experiences a series of conversations about his lottery ambitions, leading to the conclusion that the Universe is indifferent.
- After winning $4,000 from a lottery promotion, he irrationally invests it all back into buying more lottery tickets.
- The article reflects on the nature of manifestation and the belief in a responsive Universe while humorously critiquing modern self-help concepts.
- Ultimately, the author remains optimistic about winning the big lottery in 2026, asserting that he’s already started telling his animals.
Related Links
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His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos. He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- When God Closes a Door, He Needs to Go Get Some Paprika - March 5, 2026
- Monkey Testicles, Missing Documents, and the Eternal Quest to Stay on Top - March 3, 2026
- Under the Blood Worm Moon, Nobody Has to Learn Anything - March 3, 2026
