The shower, the glitch, and the day reality broke…

They say reality behaves differently when someone is looking… It’s Release Day! 🎉

If you’re reading this…

You’re probably a subscriber. But maybe you followed the breadcrumbs from my website or social media. Which means you’ve probably experienced a glitch in the matrix… or are at least curious about mine.

Glitching the Matrix is a work of fiction. But the spark for it? That was very, very real.

I’ve experienced at least half of the weird things described in the book.

(NOTE: There’s a minor spoiler coming up for something that happens on the first page and in Chapter 2. If you really don’t like spoilers, skip this story and tell me your own glitching story instead. You can always come back and read my story after you’ve finished the book. [Jump to the next safe section.] If you’re good with a little preview…)

The shower, the glitch, and the day reality broke

Take the shower scene, for instance.

Most people go on autopilot in the morning, but that’s usually when the universe decides to show its hand.

I’ve lived in my current house for over a decade. The shower in the master bath has a round handle with a little arrow that points up when it’s off. Twisting it just a fraction of an inch to the right has always turned on boiling hot water with limp water pressure. The water would then get colder but with better pressure the more you turn the handle to the right.

Until… one day… a few months ago… it didn’t.

I remember turning the handle to the right and the water being frigid. I checked the water in the sink to see if the hot water was working. Hmm. It was. It flowed nice and hot out of the tap. I checked the shower faucet again.

Still freezing.

I turned the shower handle to the right some more, thinking It doesn’t make sense, since it’s always hot right away and only gets colder (but with better pressure) the more I turn the handle, but maybe I just didn’t turn it on enough.

I turned the handle all the way to the right until I could not turn the handle any more. The water stayed freezing—and then it shut off.

What the—?

That had never happened before, either. Roaring cold water, that’s what I always found at the right-most position of the shower handle—not no water at all.

So I turned the handle to the left again—because what else was there to do? The water stayed a nice pressure. But it also stayed cold. And the handle was reaching its off point. I twisted until the little arrow was pointing straight up…

But the water kept roaring…

And I kept twisting, until the little arrow was pointing to about ten o’clock.

The water turned hot, gloriously hot, and with wonderfully powerful water pressure.

I stepped in and enjoyed my upgrade, wondering how could this have happened.

I got out, expecting something to go wrong. But it didn’t. The water wouldn’t turn off until the little arrow was pointing down, but it did turn off. And it didn’t leak.

The next glitch mentioned in the book is also one I’ve experienced a few times. But I’ll let you read that one for yourself…

The thing about these moments is that we’re trained to ignore them.

We call it a “plumbing fluke” or a “lapse in memory.” We move on because the alternative—that reality isn’t as solid as we think—is too much to handle.

But Karen doesn’t move on. In Glitching the Matrix, Karen takes that same curiosity I felt in my bathroom and turns it into an a fun obsession—that turns dangerous. She stops waiting for the universe to show its hand and she starts demanding answers. What if you don’t just wait for reality to glitch… what if you make it glitch?

Writing this book was my way of “poking” at these undeniable phenomena—the synchronicities, the déjà vu, and the shower handles that reorient themselves.

I want to know: What is your story?

To celebrate today’s release, I’m hanging out in the comments all day. Tell me the one thing that has happened to you that you’ve never been able to explain—or forget. The thing that made you think, The matrix just glitched.

I’ll be responding to every single one.