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Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Rejected, DejectedIs there anything as non-physically gut-hurty as getting a rejection letter in the mail? For any reason?
It's so painful. It's like someone breaking up with you, but remotely, so that you don't even get a chance to rebut or protest, much less any chance for closure. Whatever you were hoping might happen is now never going to happen, and you didn't even realize how much you were hoping for it until you found out the potential didn't exist.
The moment you see the letter, you know. Whatever you were doing the hours before, retroactively it gave you no pleasure. Because you got rejected. Someone said you weren't good enough. And they didn't even tell you to your face. By the time you got the letter, the person who sent it was riding around town in a BMW, with no thought of you on his mind. He's partying on his yacht with his pretty blonde girlfriend, and he already forgot your name. And you just have to take it, and move on.
Ouch.
If you're lucky, you will stop being sad and start getting mad. "I'll show him," you'll say. And, if you're lucky, you really will. You will move on and do something so awesome, the person who rejected you will wish he hadn't. And you'll have your closure, if you even remember his name by then.
But you won't remember his name, because by then, he won't matter anymore. If you're lucky, that's the way it'll all go down. Good luck.
New Adventures
I forgot to tell y'all that I had two new adventures last weekend. One: I had clothing altered, for the very first time. That doesn't sound like a big deal, maybe, to people who get stuff altered all the time. But to me, it was. I was even kind of nervous about it, as I stood in line for a dressing room and watched the man pinch and chalk up everyone else's clothes.
But now I'm a pro. Now, I could easily go into any tailor's and have something else altered in the future. Who knows -- I might even become one of those annoying obsessives who has her pants taken in and taken out, over and over, back and forth, until the tailor finally tells me, "They look fine. There's nothing I can do. Please go home now."
(There was only one woman like that at the tailor's I went to last weekend. She took it pretty well. She accepted his advice and went home.)
Adventure Two: Shawarmas.
Oh my gosh, seriously -- why didn't one of y'all tell me how good shawarmas were? Y'all need to tell me these things in advance. I ate a chicken one last Saturday for the first time, and it tasted so right. And now I can't stop thinking about it. The phantom taste of the garlicky sauce comes over me, late in the afternoon, and I say to my boyfriend, "Oh, Jesus, I have to get a shawarma."
And he says, "There's no shawarma place around here, baby."
And I say, "Why not?"
I scream, "WHY NOT?!?"
Also, the place we went last weekend had something called Rose Drink, in one of those old-time lemonade/fruit punch/Orange Bang dispensers. I tasted it, and it seemed to be rose water mixed with food coloring and sugar. It was good. If they'd offered a sugar-free option, I'd have drank a gallon of it. But they didn't, so I was safe. Safe from another sudden addiction.
More Stuff Later
TTYL, y'all. I have a lot more stuff to tell you, but I don't want to overwhelm you now.
Oh, wait. Here's one more thing.
This morning, I was carpooling to work with my boyfriend, and I was reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and enjoying it more than I'd expected to.
(See, when I'd first started it, I'd thought, "Oh, god. Not another super-passive Japanese man narrator!" And I was right -- that's exactly the kind of narrator he turned out to be. But the other characters are interesting, so they've kept me from throwing the book aside for another.)
So I'm telling my boyfriend, aloud, what I just told y'all parenthetically in the paragraph above. And then, Eddie Grant comes on the radio, singing "Electric Avenue." And I say, "Aw, hell yeah," and I sing a few lines of that before going back to my book.
And then I get to this crucial part of the book, and I turn to my boyfriend and say, "I knew his wife was cheating on him from the beginning. He found out she was, then he started thinking that she ran away with her lover. But there was some stuff earlier about her brother being sort of incestuously perverted, and I'm starting to think the brother kidnapped her."
My boyfriend shakes his head. "You're talking about the book, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Because I was about to say, 'Damn, you sure know a lot about Eddie Grant.'"
And I laughed heartily at that. But then I thought, shouldn't I know more about Eddie Grant than I do?
"I'm gonna look Eddie Grant up on Wikipedia," I said.
And I did. God, I love Wikipedia.
FIN.
Labels: books, pop culture, venting
12:19 PM #Comments:
You know what really, really sucks about a rejection letter is that it comes to you in an envelope with your own handwriting on it, thereby making you complicit in breaking your heart.# posted by
Amy D : 3:18 PM
Sorry about the rejection, Gwen. You're too good for them anyway! Rejections in writing suck because you can torture yourself rereading and parsing them endlessly, like I do.
I've been on a Wikipedia rampage lately. I've been using it to look up obscure Canadian entertainers/celebrities who crossed my mind while on vacation last week (when I had no internet access). Love, love, love Wikipedia. I will be clicking on the Eddie Grant link you've thoughtfully provided in ten seconds.
Maggie
# posted by
: 9:24 PM
Hi Gwen,
I had a file of rejection letters around here some where, but I can't find it, so I must have thrown them out.
Hmm, I guess I can got forgetful about getting rejected, as much as the one's who rejected my writing did.
Janice~
# posted by
Janice : 2:08 AM
In the opera world, we call rejection letters "PFOs." It stands for "please fuck off." Usage: "Yeah, I got my PFO from Armpit Opera today. It wasn't even signed."
# posted by
Maven : 12:52 PM
Amy: Yes! I hate those kinds, too. Every time I get one, I stare at the address and think, "Why does this handwriting look so familiar?" Then... ouch!
Maggie: And you will see that I misspelled Eddy. :)
I've been wiki'ing like crazy, too. Did y'all see the Wired article about companies and politicians "contributing" to Wikipedia? Was also on NPR this morning:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12823729
Janice: That's good. That means you're extra trauma-resistant, right?
Maven: Hilarious! Oh, and I envy you for being in the opera world, no matter how many PFOs you get.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:48 AM
In Oxford, England, shawarmas are Doner Kebabs, and they are the best things ever. Especially fresh off the stand, half (or all) drunk from really good British beer. I think I probably miss the kebab stands in England more than anything else :)
-Anneliese
# posted by
: 12:41 PM
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