Chapter 271: All Good Things

Today marks the second day of my attempting to rededicate myself to practicing “The Secret,” and general positive thinking, and I think it has gone pretty well thus far. As I mentioned in yesterday’s video blog, I put “The Secret” to use in a very small way yesterday and it actually worked for me. I shouldn’t be surprised, of course, because as I have discussed before in this blog I have made “The Secret” work in my life in very big ways in the past. One of the biggest examples of my putting “The Secret” to use in the past was when I met Mandy Moore. For those who don’t know, Mandy Moore is one of my favorite artists of all-time and is the only artist or celebrity with the distinction of being called my “idol.” Even Lady Gaga, who I may have referred to as idol-like to me in the past, doesn’t fall into the category that Mandy Moore does. I’m not sure I could really explain the reasoning behind my feeling such a strong connection to Mandy Moore as an artist, beyond the fact that her singing style is so similar to my own and she is just about the same age as I am and I feel like I have kind of developed as an artist in a very similar way to how she has alongside her. Again, I don’t really know how to explain it but since she first came out I have been a huge fan of hers and have looked to her for inspiration. In particular, back in the end of 2006 and beginning of 2007 when she released her album, “Wild Hope,” (my favorite album of all-time,) I was really obsessed with her work and simply couldn’t get enough of her. I first started practicing “The Secret” in the spring of 2007 and the very first thing that I decided to try using “The Secret” on was getting a specific cell phone I was obsessed with at the time, the Motorola Q, and getting tickets to see Kelly Clarkson on the tour she was planning for that summer. It was only a matter of a couple of weeks before I had both the Motorola Q and a pair of Kelly Clarkson tickets in my hand. However, it was that Spring that Mandy Moore released “Wild Hope” and I kept saying how much I wished that she would go on tour, even though she rarely ever had in the past due to her film career, as well as the fact that her music career had never really taken off well enough to demand a full-blown tour. So, she had really only ever done one-off shows and things of that nature. In fact, I just confirmed via Wikipedia that, aside from opening for the Backstreet Boys before she had even released an album, she has only toured once in her career. When did that tour take place? Summer 2007. You see, after Kelly Clarkson’s album “My December” was released in the spring of 2007, it did not sell very well at all and there was a lot of scandal surrounding the album due to issues between Kelly and her label. One major result of those issues with her label was the fact that there was very little promotion for “My December” and part of these promotional cuts was the cancellation of the “My December Tour,” according to various sources. I was very upset to hear that this tour was cancelled but I wasn’t entirely surprised by it. I remember distinctly the moment I discussed it with my Mom, who had bought me the Kelly Clarkson tickets, that the only thing that could make up for not seeing Kelly Clarkson that summer would be seeing Mandy Moore. Now, you have to understand, with her history of not touring and nothing having been announced at this point, as well as the fact that “Wild Hope” didn’t sell extremely well, it seemed like there wasn’t actually a snowball’s chance in hell that this would happen. Still, I focused my attention on it and about a month later it turned out that while “Wild Hope” didn’t sell Britney Spears type numbers or anything but it had wound uo being the most successful record Mandy had ever released… and suddenly there was a tour announcement, which included dates in both St. Petersberg and Orlando. So, it took me no time to snatch up tickets to both shows and I couldn’t have been more excited about it. I told myself as soon as I bought the tickets that somehow I was going to wind up meeting her. So, once tickets were purchased I shifted my focus to that. The concerts didn’t take place until the first week of September, so I had a good deal of time to focus on that. In the few weeks prior to the concerts I saw an opportunity that I had to take – there was a contest running through the website Buzznet where you had to write an essay about your worst breakup story and the winning essay, chosen by Mandy herself, would be awarded with backstage passes and a meet and greet. So, I entered an essay for the Orlando show, because they didn’t do a meet and greet for St. Petersberg for some reason, and awaited a response. The week of the shows finally arrived and I still hadn’t heard anything but I didn’t allow myself to be discouraged. The St. Petersberg show was on a Tuesday night and the Orlando show was on the Friday night of that week, I assume because Mandy grew up in the area and wanted to take some time to see family while she was here, so after attending the St. Petersberg show, where I was in the very front row against the barriers and kind of wound up getting a good deal of attention from Mandy on stage, I thought that couldn’t have been it – it was awesome that she was noticing me from the stage but that wasn’t what I had asked for. After the show that night, I checked my email again and didn’t find any response from Buzznet about the contest for Orlando, so I decided to write an email to the person who was running/organizing the contest, a woman from Mandy’s camp named Katie, simply to inquire about whether or not a winner had been selected. I woke up the following afternoon, (I worked at Borders at the time and kept that kind of schedule,) and immediately checked my email for some sort of response and, lo and behold, I had received one! Before opening the email and finding out what it said, I took a minute or two to really focus on my goal of meeting Mandy, then I opened it to actually read. Katie informed me that a winner had been selected but that this person hadn’t responded to their contact within 24 hours, which was a requirement of the contest, and that my essay had been the second choice – therefore, I was the winner! I still consider meeting Mandy Moore one of the greatest moments of my life so far not only because I got to speak with and meet one of my biggest inspirations as an artist but because it was really something that I made happen for myself through sheer will and determination.

There were some pretty big things that I made happen in this same way after this, like meeting another of my long-time favorite artists, Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional, or fulfilling a lifelong dream with my best friend by seeing “The Return Of The Spice Girls” tour. I know these all seem kind of trivial but they are all amongst my very favorite memories. Looking at that period in my life now, when I was really practicing “The Secret” hard core, I do kind of feel like I used it in more materialistic ways more often than not at the time. Well, I wouldn’t call it materialistic, really. I guess I just used it in more fleeting ways. At the same time, though, beyond the big things like that I also put it to use in my day-to-day life and experienced the biggest change I had ever experienced in my life – I was actually happy. Seriously, in 2007 I was 24 years old and I can honestly say that it was the first time in my entire life where I felt genuinely happy all around. I honestly wonder if I didn’t suffer from clinical depression in my younger years without ever actually having it diagnosed because happiness was always an extremely brief, fleeting feeling for me prior to 2007. I have, in many ways, managed to maintain it since 2007 but never completely like it was for that yearlong period from Spring 07 to Spring 08. Something happened in the spring of 2008 that really threw me off and I have never been able to get back to that place since then. I think it mainly had to do with a very negative friendship I had at the time, in which I kind of allowed that person’s negativity to overthrow my positivity. Positivity, unfortunately, is much easier to lose than negativity. Still, I have every intention of getting it back and I think I have made a really good start to it these past two days. Yesterday’s goal was a very simple one but one that wasn’t all that likely to be fulfilled. I haven’t wanted to talk about it yet and I still don’t really. Basically, my focus for yesterday was to make a little face time with this person that I have stumbled upon recently who is of a certain type of interest to me, and it’s really stupid, but it happened. If I weren’t using “The Secret” again, I would say that the way that it happened was completely by chance but I know that this isn’t a true statement – it happened because I willed it to and put that frequency out to the Universe and the Universe responded accordingly, as it always does. The Universe will always give you exactly what it is you put out to it – I can’t imagine how I managed to forget about that before. It is so clear anytime you put it to use. It is Universal truth, as far as I am concerned and I intend to use it to my advantage to the fullest at this point. My focus this evening is on getting a good night’s sleep tonight because I managed to fall asleep for an hour or so a little earlier this afternoon. Normally, I would be cursing myself for that because I would assume that would cause me to not be able to sleep tonight, however I am not worried about it right now – I will get a good night’s sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning feeling great. This whole renewed practice of “The Secret” is really exciting for me. I have always said that the Universe is working in my favor and talked about how much I know that there are great things meant for me in the future – well, I can make absolutely certain that this is true by utilizing “The Secret” and actually MAKING these great things happen for me. I can’t remember the last time I have felt so positive about the world or the course that my life is meant to take… I would assume it was sometime back in 2007, though. In the meantime, though, I need to go get ready for my Mom to come home. We are going to go pick up dinner from Gyros and Seafood and run a couple of errands, and she will be home very shortly. It should be a good night and I will get a good night’s sleep and wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed and ready to face the day of work. I expect all good things, so there is not really a chance for anything else as far as I am concerned. Goodnight.