I sent a query on a project and was promptly rejected.
I took it harder seeing the email in my inbox than I did actually reading the rejection. I knew what was in it in that same, ethereal sense of how you "know" that the traffic going home is going to suck or that you "know" that the plumber's bill is going to be way higher than you can afford. It was the knowledge of bad news, a sense of foreboding that hope only serves to worsen.
Unsurprisingly, I was depressed most of the day. It's kind of silly that I was depressed about news I hadn't technically received yet, but that was the case. Here's the saddest (?) part: I couldn't see myself opening that email and seeing a request for additional text. Like, the possibility that he could say, "Hey, this sounds like fun. Send me more!" couldn't be generated in my mind. The possibility of a "Yes" seemed so remote that my brain couldn't galvanize my emotions. How would I respond? "Oh. Okay, no problem"? As if, no big deal, an agent is partially interested in my work?
That's the thing that gets me so despondent about my writing career (that and, likely, a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes me closer to Eeyore than Pooh): Bridging my life from this reality to one filled with the financial uncertainty, potential creative droughts (like yesterday's embarrassment of procrastination that prevented me from writing an essay), and such a deviation from the life I'm living is an imaginative leap that I can't quite compass. And that's strange, since I've long (rightly or wrongly...probably the latter) prided myself on my imagination.
Having just finished rereading (almost all my interactions with Shakespeare are technically rereadings) Macbeth, I begin to worry about ambition. Not only with the nightmare that is our reality in post-8 November, but I wonder how deeply I can apply Macbethean warnings to my own life. Likening the secular scriptures of Shakespeare to my own life, am I not ambitious enough to get what I desire? Is that a good thing? Every character worth reading about is motivated to do something worthwhile, and so I wonder if that should apply to me?
Even as I write this, I can imagine well-intentioned well-wishers washing away my worries. I appreciate that effort, but reassurances that "it'll all work out" tend not to give me much hope or help. The demons that most afflict me are housed in my head, and there's not a lot that others can do to exorcise them.
Having an essay title "On Rejection" could run one of two ways: Optimistic ("I may be knocked down, but that doesn't mean I won't quit!") and pessimistic ("This hurt more than it probably should have and I'm really down about it. Stupid stupidness.") but I feel like I'm somewhere in between. I'll submit again, but I don't know why I will.
And that, perhaps, is what makes life so hard: Continuing when you don't really know why.
I took it harder seeing the email in my inbox than I did actually reading the rejection. I knew what was in it in that same, ethereal sense of how you "know" that the traffic going home is going to suck or that you "know" that the plumber's bill is going to be way higher than you can afford. It was the knowledge of bad news, a sense of foreboding that hope only serves to worsen.
Unsurprisingly, I was depressed most of the day. It's kind of silly that I was depressed about news I hadn't technically received yet, but that was the case. Here's the saddest (?) part: I couldn't see myself opening that email and seeing a request for additional text. Like, the possibility that he could say, "Hey, this sounds like fun. Send me more!" couldn't be generated in my mind. The possibility of a "Yes" seemed so remote that my brain couldn't galvanize my emotions. How would I respond? "Oh. Okay, no problem"? As if, no big deal, an agent is partially interested in my work?
That's the thing that gets me so despondent about my writing career (that and, likely, a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes me closer to Eeyore than Pooh): Bridging my life from this reality to one filled with the financial uncertainty, potential creative droughts (like yesterday's embarrassment of procrastination that prevented me from writing an essay), and such a deviation from the life I'm living is an imaginative leap that I can't quite compass. And that's strange, since I've long (rightly or wrongly...probably the latter) prided myself on my imagination.
Having just finished rereading (almost all my interactions with Shakespeare are technically rereadings) Macbeth, I begin to worry about ambition. Not only with the nightmare that is our reality in post-8 November, but I wonder how deeply I can apply Macbethean warnings to my own life. Likening the secular scriptures of Shakespeare to my own life, am I not ambitious enough to get what I desire? Is that a good thing? Every character worth reading about is motivated to do something worthwhile, and so I wonder if that should apply to me?
Even as I write this, I can imagine well-intentioned well-wishers washing away my worries. I appreciate that effort, but reassurances that "it'll all work out" tend not to give me much hope or help. The demons that most afflict me are housed in my head, and there's not a lot that others can do to exorcise them.
Having an essay title "On Rejection" could run one of two ways: Optimistic ("I may be knocked down, but that doesn't mean I won't quit!") and pessimistic ("This hurt more than it probably should have and I'm really down about it. Stupid stupidness.") but I feel like I'm somewhere in between. I'll submit again, but I don't know why I will.
And that, perhaps, is what makes life so hard: Continuing when you don't really know why.
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