Rejection-letter box of Kleenex: $2.00.
Rejection-letter ice cream, “Death Wish” size, from Cold Stone Creamery: $8.00.
Rejection-letter “Better-Writer-In-A-Box” bookstore spree: $49.96.
A (reputable) magazine finally accepting one of your articles for publication: Priceless!
Yes, folks, it’s finally happened: a real magazine is actually going to publish one of my articles. Because I’m a superstitious person, I will refrain from jinxing the deal by blabbing here which magazine, though I will tell you that it’ll be in print this fall.
I received the e-mail this morning after spending a particularly broody few days feeling like nothing good would ever come of this writing thing (I guess that “Deux Ex Machina” thing must not be just a literary device), so emotionally speaking, the news could not have come at a better time.
In the hours since reading the news, I have been floating around with what I know must be a sublimely goofy smile plastered to my face, utterly ridiculous. There have only been a few other times in my life when I wandered around all day with my feet several feet off the ground and a silly grin on my face, and most of those had to do with love or infatuation (or in some cases, being really, really drunk).
The realistic voice in my head keeps trying to shake me by the shoulders, yelling “Snap out of it! It’s just one article! It’s just one magazine! It took you three years of writing to get this one published!”
To which voice I calmly reply, “Yes, I know. It’s only one article. And yes, thank you very much, I know it’s not for The New Yorker. But it is ONE.” And it is precisely because of this event’s singularity that I am determined to bask in it, to wallow in it, to slather it onto my parched and callused ego. Who knows if there will be other opportunities? And if they do come, who’s to say that they won’t take another three years, or five, or even twenty to arrive?
I feel like my reserves of confidence had become so depleted that in this moment of plenty, I need to lay in new stores against another long, unbroken winter of scarcity. So I am gorging on happiness, feasting on self-satisfaction (and a bagel layered in celebratory swirls of Nutella, my guilty celebratory treat), building reserves of fat contentment to see me through the next dry spell.
Yes, for me, a little validation goes a loooong way; that’s okay, because it may have to. But in the meantime, ahhh. Priceless.