I got a rejection today.

It was a short and very sweet note, but it still had within it that one stinging, final word. 

"No."

I didn't really mind it.  That much.

________

Many years ago, I started writing poems.  I would write silly things and perhaps deep things and meaningful (to me) things the same way some choose to put hook and yarn together and crochet an evening away.  I would do it while watching TV sometimes.  And I thought that, you know, perhaps an attempt here or there was starting to sound pretty good.

So I let my rubber meet the road and I started submitting a few.  Not too many, but enough to say I did it.

Some people replied and said a polite, "thank you, but no thank you," no reason given, although some included a word of encouragement; but most letters were curt. 

Some let the silence be the beacon to guide their answer.

But then there is the third kind of rejection, which I find to be the most cutting and the one that feels like a bucket of ice-cold knives– the kind that, the more you try to shake it off, the deeper it seems to drive the ice cold shame that makes you feel like a fool for trying: the "helpful" rejection.

The one that doesn't stop at telling you that you were found lacking, but either attempts to couch it in passive aggressive politeness (… "the tone is just not quite our fit at the present time…") or merely hints at the fact that the person at the other end wants you to know that he or she deems you're trying hard but it's really just not going to cut it.

Ouch.

I never could figure out how to get over that one.  I think I just balled them all up and amused myself with a self-on-self pickup "loserball" game. I'm tempted to say that I just blocked those painful memories altogether.

I have not tried to do that again.

________

More than once in this space, I have wondered how people deal with rejection; specifically, I remember wondering what it might be like to deal with rejection as an intrinsic part of your job description.  And yet, it seems that it's nearly impossible to get anywhere or to get anyone to notice you unless you develop thick skin and toughen up to the rejections, big and small, that you will likely encounter on your way to letting people know your wares.  It's the risk you take that eventually brings you a payoff, whatever that may be (admittedly, a nice payoff for me would be more appreciative readers).

As I write this, I also realize the irony of how many of you may be put off by my sudden up-tick in writing, and how this may cause you to stop coming here or unsubscribing from my feed.  And how some of you may have already unsubscribed because one of my return posts happened to reference Aunt Flo broadly, and not much else.  Sorry about that.

And now I am actually laughing and feeling just a little bit better, knowing that for every person who votes away from this place that is a piece of me with their clicks, there are many of you (over one hundred such souls, according to Feedburner) who think this is worthy of your time and of your readership.  

Thank you. 

What do you say, we play some pickup paperball  sometime?

(Incidentally, I owe someone chocolate.  I am off to find a randomizer so I can get a winner by the end of the week!)

25 Sep This entry was published on September 25, 2009 at 12:22 am. It’s filed under Toward Nirvana, Zen Sarcasm and tagged lemonade, lemons, realization, rejection, writing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.