This article appeared in the Success & Failure issue of The Mockingbird magazine.

Dear God,

I’ve heard it said that karma’s a bitch. And from my personal experience I know this to be true. After all, there must be a reason why I just got the worst haircut of my life mere hours before I’m supposed to go on my first-ever date.

And then there was that time recently when I was craving McDonald’s for breakfast but I took so long getting my butt out of bed that I arrived at the drive thru at 10:32 to find the menu displaying Big Macs instead of my precious sausage McMuffin.

All this is happening because I lied on my resume, right Lord? Okay, maybe I lied twice on my resume. The truth is that I am not a master at Excel, nor do I have good time management skills. I use Excel like it’s graph paper and don’t know the first thing about cells or formulas. On top of it all, I did not get the job I applied for. They emailed me back with the generic, “Thank you for your application, but we are looking for someone with more experience.”

It has to be the karma — right, Lord? Because aside from that, I am indeed a person perfectly positioned to succeed, or at least that is what my self-help books say.

I need an explanation for why some things don’t go my way and others do. And if karma isn’t the reason, then Jesus, it would seem as if I have no control over anything that happens to me, and that doesn’t seem fair at all.

So, Lord, I’ve decided that from now on I’m only welcoming good karma and feng shui into my life. From now on I’m going to be a good person. I won’t lie on my resume again, I promise.

But next time I might also delete that one job I had for only four months because I know that doesn’t look good for me. Omission isn’t quite the same thing as lying, is it? Maybe I can work on my time management, too. Tomorrow I’ll shoot to arrive at the drive-thru right at 10:30, not a minute after, and if their menu happens to have changed already, I’ll simply remind the workers that I made it on time, that the customer is always right, and that I just want my gosh darn $2.29 McMuffin.

Good news, Lord! I just received another email. It said, “Due to an unusually small pool of applicants we would like to give you a second interview. Please disregard our previous email.” Did you see that? I got a second interview all thanks to the good karma that I manifested. I couldn’t have done it without my promise to you, God, to be a better person.

I guess this bodes well for my date tonight. Not sure what we are going to talk about, but at least I won’t have to tell him that my job application was rejected outright. On the other hand, Lord, I still have to deal with these wretched tendrils of hair across my forehead, which the internet calls bangs. This is going to take a lot of bobby pins, hairspray, and probably some tears. Either that or I’ll be forced to wear a hat for three months straight.

Christ, have mercy.

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