Oh, The Secret, you underhanded bitch of a book. You told me that the desires I put out into the universe would be returned to me. Not unexpectedly, you were wrong about this. Extraordinarily wrong. Dead wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I did not win $500 in McDonald’s Monopoly. That was just a small test of the universe’s awesome power. It failed.

But still, I held out hope. Why? Because I wanted to believe in you. I wanted to have faith that, if I just wanted badly enough, I would receive. I wanted to believe this, not so much about the Monopoly money, but about the biggie – The Disney Fellowship.

I did not get the Disney Fellowship. I could not have possibly wanted this more. The writing samples that I sent to Disney, in the form of my bio, my statement of interest, and, most importantly, my screenplay were not just good. They were really, really good. I worked on each piece of the packet until my fingers were bruised from typing and my eyes were glazed from revising. What they received was the absolute best that I can do. While I am often quick to criticize my own work, I will also say that the screenplay I sent them was a truly worthy composition. I tried my best, I worked incredibly hard, and I hoped. I stated my desires aloud to the universe. But did the universe return to me a Disney fellowship? No, the universe returned to me a form letter about how many praiseworthy entries they received this year and how they were sorry to inform me…

And now, there is a man who wants to have sex with me. This doesn’t make him particularly special. He’s just more blatant than most. And when I woke up this morning, my apartment had no heat… for the second time in a month.

So, now I can officially call The Secret’s bluff.

See, the catch-22 that The Secret utilizes to easily relieve the universe of responsibility for any bad thing that might come into your life is that you don’t have to want something for the universe to deliver it to you. You just have to think about it. The universe does not hear negating terms, so says The Secret. So, if you think, “Wow, I hope this plane doesn’t crash,” and then it does, you have brought it on yourself, because the universe hears only plane and crash and gives you what it thinks you want. The universe is quite presumptuous, and, apparently, rather stupid.

But this time, the universe is just screwing with me, because I can say, with absolute certainty, that I have not put out into the universe “man sex” or “freezing to death in my own home”. Not only are these two things that I definitely do NOT want in my life, but these are two things that I don’t even think about. I don’t worry about them, I don’t ponder them, I don’t even carry inklings of them at the back of my mind. These are pointless topics for me. I did not think these in to existence.

So, The Secret, bite me you Machiavellian self-help manual. I’m going back to Zen Tarot and my Magic 8-Ball.