Rejection
I recently got the ominous rejection email from the Bridport Prize competition. One of those BCC mails from Kate saying:
Unfortunately, this time, your work hasn’t made it further in the competition. We know it takes courage to put your words out into the world and whilst this isn’t the news you were hoping for, there are positives to focus on.
And then saying how awesome it is that I submitted it by deadline and all that jazz asking me not to give up. Another rejection, another disappointment in my writing abilities, another sign that maybe I was being enthusiastic in vane.
When I submitted it, it did feel unfinished and I promised myself to go back to the text and rewrite it and submit it somewhere else if it doesn’t get published.
These days I had an idea for another self-fiction story, it was very vivid and made sense at that point, but now it is fading away.
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The everyday life, the hustle, resenting a part time job that requires few of my skills, looking for other jobs permanently. Finding side translation hustles or other suspicious AI related jobs. What am I really looking for? What is this quest?
I feel like a Super Mario character. I hated those games, I never finished them and always quit when some hardships came up. Am I a quitter pretending I am not interested in the game?
My yearly article that I write for a magazine in Hungary also didn’t get published. Confront the editor? Or just quietly shut that door with bitter resentment?
I know I will get back to writing eventually, that is is a calling that I cannot negate. I can try to push it down, but it comes back periodically. It is there, permanently.
I might not have a lot of talent, it is hard to admit and face it, but I am willing to continue. If not valuable for others, at least a way of gaining more insight to myself.
I am really suspicious of myself. Recently finished watching the Netflix series “Gypsy”. For me the main theme of it is lying to ourselves and others. One of the hardest things to unveil. Maybe even impossible to unveil without a therapist or another wise person of some sorts to guide you. Even if I can pinpoint where I am lying to myself, I am not willing to expose myself. Not to mention all the other things that I am blind to.
