Almostgotit.com

Should you take rejection personally?  Good Lord, of course you should. You are a person, after all.

What else are you going to do, take it like a llama?

(1) Resiliance is not a moral virtue.

The amount of resilience you have is more like a hair color: It’s something you’re born with, unless you change it with chemicals.

Don’t listen when people tell you to get over it, move on, and let go. What the hell do they know? Feel what you feel. Discontent and anger are not defects, they are human. They are also very powerful tools for change, if you use them right.

(2) Success is not a moral virtue either

Success often is more like the lottery. Some people win the first time they buy a ticket, and try to convince the rest of us that winning only happens to people who believe in themselves with their whole entire hearts; other people win the lottery after buying 100 tickets, and then spend their lives urging the rest of us to keep on buying lottery tickets until it works for us, too.

The only logical conclusion to this line of thought is that people are starving in Africa  because they deserve it.  We need to stop equating vocational (and economical) success with personal virtue.

(3) … Nor does success  inevitably follow upon hard work or persistence

We also need to stop telling people that hard work and persistence will inevitably lead to vocational success. Hard work may increase the mathematical odds of success, sure, but there are no guarantees.

How unfortunate it is that we keep insisting that success comes from good character and hard work.  The American mobility myth is astonishingly persistent, despite many recent (and bipartisan) studies that debunk it.

The good news? You can stop beating yourself up, now. Being unsuccessful is not a character flaw, and there is nothing wrong with you.  Nor is there anything wrong with embracing your own experience for what it is, and moving through and past it your own way, too.   I’m sorry I can’t tell you how to succeed, nor even guarantee that you will. But on behalf of the rest of the world, please let me say: we need you just the way you are.

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Update:  Yesterday our local paper posted excerpts of my entry about the Knoxville shooting in several places on their website.  For a few hours it was Google City around here.  Therefore, I’d already written today’s entry when I was pinged by this article about anger, written by a licensed therapist, who took my point and ran with it quite beautifully.  So now you have it from a real expert!

The picture above was inspired by my friend David, who suggested the words and said “it’s all about the psychological FRAME you choose.”

The letters and stories keep pouring in, so be sure to come back on Friday when I’ll try to have a complete list, including the Worst Rejection Letter Ever (Really. It’s so delicious I want to eat it.)

Also, I need to disclose that I’ve been scooped. The Rejection Collection is a treasure house of rejection letters, rejection letter poetry, plus pages and pages of rip-roaring rants.

Rejected Again? Don’t despair. Join your fellow writers and artists to laugh in the face of rejection. It may not make you feel any better, but it’s better than banging your head against the wall.

I laughed. I cried. I discovered I may be suffering from a hitherto unknown malady called “Extreme Un-Published Syndrome” (Eups!)

Jack Handey published a wonderful series of funny Rejection letters a few years back in The New Yorker. They’re no longer viewable on TNY’s website, but I’ve linked to a copy on Does it Echo. I particularly liked this one:

Dear Sir:
If it is any consolation, we feel that if we had hired you, by now we would have been forced to let you go.
Sincerely,
Personnel Department

At the bottom of Handey’s list is a very funny reverse-rejection letter, versions of which have been ubiquitous on the internet ever since.

Coming tomorrow:  Of course you should take rejection personally!

Mikael Rudolph is a college buddy of mine. That was back in the stone age, but even then he was a fabulous mime. Come to think of it, that’s also probably when he got so good at taming rocks — but more about that in a minute.

Mikael is also a cancer survivor, having had a fairly miraculous cure of a tumor that appeared in a rather undignified location, and as a result is currently writing a play called (ahem) Cancer, My Ass. 

You may not have heard of Mikael, but I bet you’ve heard of the world’s most famous mime,Marcel Marceau. Marceau once said of Mikael that  ”In this style… he is a master. Absolutely. It could not have been done any better.”

I KNOW.  Wow, right? 

But mimes don’t get no respect, and Mikael wanted me to share what he CLAIMS to be a possibly-fictional tale of his disastrous journey to Chicago to audition for an “America’s Got Talent” casting director. 

REJECTION. Oh, if only he had bouncing breasts, was married to someone who bites the heads off of live bats, or had apprenticed with Donald Trump. 

But here: judge for yourself, and don’t miss the pet rock.

Yesterday morning, two miles away from my house, a man named Jim Adkisson burst into a church and started shooting people.  Today we found out that Mr. Adkisson has not been able to find a job, and that he’d hoped to die in the shooting, too.

Last Friday, another man named Randy Pausch  did die, after first inspiring an entire nation with his positive approach to life even as he was battling terminal cancer. 

I do not presume to know why these two men reacted so differently to the adversity they faced.  We *can not know* why some people are so much more resilient than others, nor what battles other people may still be fighting. 

Most of the time, I can turn my own anger about my many, MANY rejections into humor — Malcolm Gladwell asserts that all comedy is based on anger! — and for the rest of week I’ll (almost always) be hilarious.  Promise.

But let’s take the topic itself seriously. Telling a hurting, rejected person that he needs to stop feeling what he feels and feel something else instead (”stop wallowing,” etc.) is like rejecting that person all over again. We are a seriously repressed people, and we repress each other, too. I think most of us are afraid that being angry and upset, or even showing that we are angry and upset, metaphorically may be the same as killing people in a church.  It is not.

Over the weekend, I received another rejection letter.  It was typed on nice 20 lb bond, too — perfect for the crumple-and-lob that many of us serial rejectees depend upon.

Thing is, I never actually applied for this particular job.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Institution that Shall Not be Named. Where they’ll even reject you when you aren’t applying for their fucking jobs.

And thus I now grant myself (and you) an ENTIRE WEEK to rant about rejection letters, or rejection in general.  And then we’re going to move on to something else. Deal?

So let the fun begin!

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A note to my daughter, who occasionally reads my blog, and who so tenderly placed this unopened letter on my bed for me to find, face down because even she could tell what it was:  One of the best reasons not to swear, honey, is so that you can save these words for when you really need them.  But.  If you ever use this word in front of Grandma,  I shall send you to boarding school.
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Related Posts:
Rejection letters should not be emailed
I have not failed: I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work
There’s a bean stuck in my tiara

Not sure what’s going on with all the “Server Error” messages that have been happening on this blog lately, but a couple of readers have weighed in so I now know it’s Not Just Me.  This site is hosted on GoDaddy (’cause they’re cheap!), but I’ve heard GoDaddy and WordPress don’t always get along.    I would appreciate hearing from my readers about any errors they get, along with the time of error, type of browser they’re using, etc…  leave a comment, or send an email to almostgotit(at)gmail.com.

I *have* been having trouble convincing GoDaddy that it’s Not Just Me.

Earlier this week, I somehow stumbled upon a whole run of country-cottage type blogs,  each with a massive, chintz-filled header at top and packed with photos below.  

And, um, soundtracks.

All of these bloggers seem currently to be making their own magazine covers  which they post on their blogs, featuring luscious photos of wide verandas, sweet white wicker, quaint pink roses, and whatever else those blissful homemakers- without- mattresses- mouldering- in- their- back- yards can conjure up. 

I tracked down their online photo toy because I wanted to make a country magazine cover, too.  But I don’t seem to have the right photos. 

Okay. I mean I don’t seem to have the right life, in which those kinds of photos happen.

I did find this bucolic photo we took inside an old stone barn in a cottage farm in England — pretty darn quaint, I’d say — but something funny happened with the photo-cropping.   It seemed appropriate, though, so I just went with it.

I am really conflicted here. I would love to have a beautiful, giant farm house.  And those women’s photos (and magazine covers) were truly stunning.  But I happened to have my speakers turned on when I clicked on several of them, and — I’m so sorry — I giggled until the milk (almost) came out of my nose.

So I made another one, and I have to say, I think this piece communicates something that is so much more authentically *me*. What do you think?

Big Huge Labs has lots of other fun photo toys to play with, too, and you can be sure I’ll be using more of them in future posts.  Just don’t expect any chintz.

1. There is nothing wrong with you. Weaknesses are important clues to your strengths.
2. You find success when you find the right fit. You need to match your unique characteristics to situations that reward those qualities.
3. Your weaknesses make you different. They make you a freak and it’s good to be a freak.

So says David Rendall in his online manifesto, The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness.    

How do I love this man? Let me count the ways.