Rejection

How much rejection do you deal with in your entire life? And at what point to you move away from the camp of sadness, i.e. Camp-I’m-Not-Good-Enough, and turn rejection into one of those inflatable punching bag things. Take a rejection and bounce right back?

I ask the void for two reasons.

Firstly, I have decided that this is my blog of existential questioning and complaining.

And secondly, because today I have received two rejections. One of a professional nature, and another from my creative pursuits.

I still vividly remember trying to join the Army Reserves many years ago, and receiving a letter saying “Thanks, but because your spine is fucked we won’t take you.”

In hindsight, it’s a silly thing, one that has not detracted from my life in any measurable way. But the rejection itself still stung. And that is the way I felt today too.

The professional sting is due to imagining how my life would change with success, then being drawn into the idea that any outcome other than success results in feelings of being trapped in my current situation.

Was that cryptic? Maybe… but either way, it’s silly. Nothing changes, I still need to continue to persevere. So I will.

The creative sting I will discuss more freely.

I wrote another flash fiction story, one about a goblin. I really liked it. And I think I liked it most of all because of the opening line.

“Hargax was a Goblin both in name and activity as he gnawed through the bones of his boiled fish.”

It’s clunky and it only makes sense if you immediately pick up on the A Goblin/A gobbling joke (joke is being generous. Terrible pun?) Otherwise it’s confusing and it jeopardises the rest of the story.

Now to the rejection, it didn’t get called out. And as I write this down I realise how absurd it is that I think it’s good enough to be in the top 30 of over 1000 entries. But I have no idea if I'm close or way off the mark. Maybe my stories just don’t hit the right notes for the judges. Or maybe I’m nowhere near as good as I think I am.

As I said, I enjoyed it, and if there is one person out there that will also enjoy this dumb little story, they can find it HERE.

My next entry will be about the Dunning-Kruger effect, because I find the concept very intriguing and relevant to a lot of human pursuits, including my own.

Now on to other news, (it’s not news, it’s just things that have happened). I finished Patrick Rothfuss’ ‘The Wise Man’s Fear’. It was phenomenal, and now I understand why people are whining about him writing the third book. However I’m not a dick and I won’t get shitty at someone for not cracking out the finale to his magnum opus in a timely fashion.

After that I read The Martian by Andy Weir. Joining the rest of society in that book. It was different from anything else I’d read from a framing perspective, but I think it’s just because I've not read much. Like most forms of entertainment I participate in. I thought it was pretty good!

I also read Kurt Vonnegut’s classic ‘Slaughterhouse Five’, a weird time travelling account of the bombing of Dresden. It was depressing. Mostly because I'd come off the back of finishing the Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series on the Pacific Theatre of WW2. It contained some incredibly graphic first hand accounts of Japanese cities being firebombed and a mention of Dresden too. Heavy shit.

Next book on the list is the short story ‘Legion: Eyes of the Beholder’ by Brandon Sanderson. I’m a couple of chapters in, it’s a story of an individual who has multiple characters in their head, they manifest in the MCs vision and no one else can see them.

I really like Sanderson’s short story ‘Snapshot’, so I figure I'll enjoy this one too.

That’s enough rambling from me. If you’ve got some unique ways of dealing with rejection, let me know!

Look after yourself and the ones you love, until next time.