20. Manifestation My Ass

I've got money on my mind and I STILL AIN'T GOT NO CASH.

Welcome to the Great Job Nat™ Sunday Newsletter! The freebie thinkpiecething I send out every Sunday. If you want access to an upcoming podcast and a discount on a new WRITING CLASS I’m sooo excited to announce, consider leveling up here xoxo <3 Seriously, all of you paid subscribers help keep the lights on and I love ya.

Picture something you want.

Like, a croissant? I’d love a hot croissant—

NO. Go bigger. Picture something you really want. More than anything, maybe. Set the Zillow search parameters of your life to MAX. Toggle the mansions of your dreams from Most to Least expensive. Can you imagine? Who uses that setting? Most expensive first? Be that bold.

Do you have it now, in your mind? The thing that you really want? Great!

Now what if I told you that for 10 easy payments of $999.99 you could overcome EVERYTHING that’s keeping you from that thing you want—nay, from the life you want—by joining our special Magnetic Manifestation Protocol for Women (and Fine, Some Men)!

Look: All you need to do is imagine your ideal life more clearly than you have been. It’s like play Sims in your head, but you’re the Sim, and you get to use the “rosebud!;!;!;” cheat-code that makes you infinitely rich. You can do that with your real life, with your mind. Strain your forehead muscles picturing your Better Life™ so hard, strain them like you’re Magneto or Matilda. Like you’re constipated and you’re really pushing. Give yourself a brain hemorrhoid! Give yourself a regular hemorrhoid! You’re straining so hard birthing your new life into existence!

It’s been in your control all along, you know. Your life. It’s your fault that you don’t have everything you want. Actually, wait. It’s not your fault. It’s your shadow’s fault. What’s your “shadow,” you ask? It’s the evil demon that lives inside of you and tells you you’re not worthy. It tells you you’re ugly / stupid / got a bad haircut / why did you cut it / it was so expensive / you don’t deserve to have money if you spend it this way you big dumb b*tch! It’s your shadow’s fault for holding you back. It keeps you from being the real you, who is a gold-skinned Adonis, a real Cleopatra, a Gryffindor Mufasa Chris Hemsworth wet dream. We must slay your shadow-self, we must exorcise it from you, and I say we and not you because here’s the catch:

You need our help. Again, for 10 easy payments of $999.99, we can teach you how to imagine things better. Imagine all the problems away. Life should be so much better, but right now your shadow is building a fence around you with no door, like your brother used to do to his Sims (speaking of the Sims). He was the meanest God, watching his sorry digital people-pets claw at the fence, hopeless and starving. With black marble shark eyes, he watched them freak out and poop their pants and die.

(Which was actually horrifying in a super real way.) (Your brother’s shadow might be really really dark.) (In which case he should sign up for our program, too.) (Just 10 more easy payments of $999.99 but 10% of because of your referral bonus, you’re welcome.)

But the point is — the point is, you can fix this. You can fix you. By thinking you can fix this. By paying us to teach you how to think.

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Tragedy strikes :/

I’m good at thinking things are my fault. It’s one of my best skills.

Last week, I went to a comedy show in Echo Park and returned to my car to find the back window smashed in and my backpack gone. (Curse you, Echo Park, it’s ALWAYS you.) Goodbye computer, iPad, a big ol’ notebook with all of my movie notes in it. Goodbye to some personal baubles and items that I can’t replace. All of it, stolen.

It was my fault, of course.

I never leave my backpack in the back seat, but this time I did. I had a premonition: my backpack is going to be stolen. But I still didn’t put it in the trunk. I ignored the feeling. Why?

I walked away thinking: I never leave my backpack in the back seat. This is going to be the day someone takes it. But an equally powerful voice in my head said, Nah, it’s okay, Nat. You’re always so distrusting. The backpack is obscured by some stuff, it’s hidden-ish, it’ll be okay.

It wasn’t okay.

And it was and wasn’t my fault. It mostly wasn’t. Right? Even now, I want to say it mostly was. Because that feeds into this unfortunate need for control that so many of us share in varying degrees (my grip is STRONG, I don’t know about you…). I.e. if it is my fault, then that means I have some semblance of say in my own little existence. I just played the wrong chess piece at the wrong time in this game that is Life, where decisions beget consequences, which is partially but not completely true.

Life is also sometimes just chaos, and you get decked by a loose fist.

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My best friend is really into manifestation. She’s sent me a bunch of courses. One that I almost-but-didn’t-take was called Unblock Money. Ironically, it cost $80 that I didn’t have to spare at the time.

I don’t not believe in manifestation, and I love that she sent that course to me because I know it’s her way of caring for me. Truly, I think the manifestation movement (if you want to call it that) has good bones. It seems to give people structure to think more positively about themselves, and that’s never a bad thing. Have any of you tried these manifestation courses? Trust that I respect your positive experiences. I just think that commercialized manifestation often focuses too outwardly. You fix the inside of yourself to better the outside. You speak affirmations into the open mouth of your own reflection for the sake of being more prosperous, beautiful, outwardly successful. Let me go back to my comfort zone and blame myself: maybe it’s my own issue. If given the opportunity to focus on an outer goal, I’ll let that overtake the importance of the inner work required to achieve the outer goal.

A few weeks back, when I was marathoning live-streamed Coachella performances (lol) with my friend Ali (hi, Ali), I said something about how fame seems so random, sometimes. For some people, it makes so much sense because of talent, allure, etc; but for others—how tf did they con us all into getting there? Who handed them the mic? Ali laughed in her floral way. Light and weightless, head tossed back. She said: “People live the life that they think they deserve to live. Those people got to that stage because they think they deserve it, and it doesn’t even matter if they’re right.”

I asked her if she thinks she deserves to get There. Wherever her There is. She said sometimes. She’s trying to know she deserves it.

Same here, girl. Same here.

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When everything was stolen out of my car I heave-cried in the street. I drove hysterically home with glass falling into the seat from the broken window. Tiny crystal bits. You might say my car was crying, too.

The next day, I sliced the sirloin chunk of my anger in two — half I ingested and let poison me (you idiot! leaving the backpack inside!), and half I threw into a thief-shaped void (you asshole! you desperate fucking asshole!).

And then, maybe the next day? I felt suddenly… lighter. Maybe my backpack was supposed to be taken? No. Not quite. It’s too expensive an accident to celebrate, especially with the state of my bank account. But it felt symbolic, it felt like a dare. Take a fresh start. You don’t need those old things.

I’ve been in a holding pattern, for years. Blaming myself for everything, angry at myself for not doing enough, for not “manifesting” the right things, for wasting time, for getting older.

But sometimes, baby. It ain’t your fault. Shit just happens and you get a new backpack.

…. And at least you’re still probably having a better week than Drake.

That’s all for this week, amigos. Love ya x

Nat