rejection

Rejection hurts. Everyone knows this, but I don't think we're really prepared for it until it happens. It always comes with a lot of force. You can tell yourself over and over before you get socked in the gut, "This is going to hurt, this is going to hurt, but it's not going to kill you," but when the hit comes, it always surprises you.

Personal rejection is like this, of course. Professional. Romantic. That one, perhaps, hurts the most. Except, if you have any such inclinations, artistic rejection. That affects your whole, carefully guarded identity. Well...that's what rejection does in general: it defines you. It takes away your identity from you. I think what you learn to do, hopefully, with maturity, is to minimize that period. Maybe more mature people than me make it go away entirely, I don't know. I'm certainly not a paragon of maturity.

So, here's the prompt for the foregoing: I've finally started putting some effort into getting a story published. In all these years that I've been (sporadically) writing stories, I thought it was my best. Well...if it's not good enough...Ok, I won't elide the depressing thought. If it's not good enough, then I'm fooling myself about being 'a writer.' I never have been one. So, what have I been doing all these years? Pretending? Yikes. What a lot of wasted time.

But, that's the depressing thought. The redemption--rejection is the stony path to success. Maybe not even that. Getting rejected is what writers, what artists, what human beings, what men do. At least, perhaps, it will stop me from deluding myself that my half-assed efforts are good enough. Because they haven't been.