I hate Daylight Savings.
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Or a scrambler. Or some kind of forcefield around me that blocks radio waves. Or [insert scientific explanation here]. Because apparently telephone calls do not reach me. People must not be calling me back because they cannot call me back. If they do, the messages are eaten by the black hole that surrounds my body. And everyone knows that once you step into a black hole, you fall endlessly in nothingness and can't get out.
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I am this close [ ] to giving up.
To measure the space of what I have left could break me or keep me afloat. That space could be a millimeter of patience, or enough to keep me going until I die.
I am being cryptic.
In simpler words, I received two rejections today. One of me; one of my novel. A double whammy for the weekend.
I don’t think it’s gonna happen for me. This is reality now, not the fantasy world I so desperately want to live in.
I live here. I am not getting out of here. This is the life I am living, and it is a normal one, on the ground, with everyone else.
There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong.
[ ]
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I came home to a rejection letter in the mailbox. This one to a short story. Which one, who knows, I haven’t checked yet. Anyway, it’s one of those tiny little slips, like they squeezed as many as they could onto one sheet of paper and cut it up again and again. The standard “Thank you for letting us consider your work . . . it is just not what we are looking for at this time” and signed, well, unsigned, as The Editors.
Apparently, a certain someone who shares my bed steamed open the envelope. At the bottom of the rejection note, was written:
p.s.
We are slightly retarded.
Please excuse us.Man, I was cracking up all the way upstairs. It’s the best rejection I’ve gotten in months.
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is my birthday. Today is also the day I received (via email, via the account of her assistant) a rejection for my novel from a prominent agent who I had tangled myself up in hope thinking perhaps-maybe-you-never-know-i-could-be-lucky that she might like the thing this time. Email said no: my revisions were not enough. My heart sort of cracked open at the timing though. Birthdays are notoriously awful days that remind me of everything I didn’t do right the year before and I suppose the email this afternoon was the final door slam of last year and there’s nothing much I can do about it now. This agent, btw, is a complete other person from the editor I was talking so much about in months past. The editor has never ever (ever) responded and I’ve pretty much given up on that whole thing, but there was a part of me that expected the No from her today, too. It’s my birthday; fate is cruel like that. But one rejection was certainly enough, thank you. So after the rejection we went to see a movie (Brokeback Mountain) and afterward in the lobby I was crying and it wasn’t over the movie and I couldn’t get my eyes to stop leaking and made a gallant effort in a bathroom stall that didn’t stick with me when I left the bathroom and E saw me and he felt helpless I know, for all these faceless people breaking my heart over and over again and he can do nothing to stop it. But really he is what is keeping me upright. I couldn’t take all this without him.
Yesterday, before this happened, was a beautiful day at City Hall where E and I were married before three witnesses and that is the day I am going to think about right now, yesterday, when I was younger and extremely happy and fell asleep on a sparkling white featherbed at a dreamy hotel beside the love of my life.
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(And by people I mean editors. And by talk I mean answers or feedback or some kind of human communication.)
1.
I have grown horns on my head and don’t realize it.2.
There is only a certain amount of space available in editors’ brains and that space is already taken up by their own deadlines, the writers who they deem important, of which of course I am not one, the meetings they must attend, the pressure from sales and marketing and publishers and other things I don’t fully understand, and of course the fact that they need to pick up the dry-cleaning.3.
I am wearing a sign that says “Ignore Me” (instead of “Kick Me”) and people are quick to follow directives on signs.4.
I am a passive aggressive bag of stress and pathetic anxiety, and this seeps out of me whenever I send an e-mail, make a phone call, or enter an office to ask a question, and instead of dealing with it, it is far easier to look away.5.
I am easily forgettable. When they receive an e-mail from me, their first thought is “Who is that again? Oh, right. Her.” And then as soon as the e-mail is out of sight they forget that I exist until I send another e-mail. It is a vicious cycle of forgetability for which my weird name does not seem to help.6.
I am one of those annoying people who don’t know they’re annoying and whenever I leave a room it is mentioned how annoying I am and so far no one has decided to tell me to my face.7.
I have inadvertently gained the power of invisibility, but the drawback of this power is that I don’t know I have it and still assume people can see me when I walk into a room.8.
I am deaf. People have been talking to me this whole time; I just can’t hear it. -
Intern/personal assistant desperately needed to help struggling artist get through day. Tasks include laundry, dishes, shredding thousands of pages of old manuscripts, finding books lost in piles in bedroom because there are no bookshelves, perhaps building and installing bookshelves, dyeing hair, packing lunch for workday at meaningless job that sucks life out of employer, giving praise when employer has had life sucked out, buying employer the skincare products she wants at Kiehl’s but hasn’t yet because she is too tired to walk over to 2nd Avenue, dusting, stocking fridge, putting away items employer drops on floor, scrubbing bathtub, telling dog owner upstairs that dog is barking too often and too loudly and too late at night and is driving employer crazy, paying bills, standing on line at post office, buying lotto tickets, attending public functions and parties on employer’s behalf, taking over employer’s position at meaningless job when she calls in “sick”, making bed, hanging up clean clothes on floor, buying employer a new pair of shoes, and finding lost birthday checks from nana.
Respond with resumes and references.
Monetary compensation cannot be provided.
distraction no.99 