Friends! Pals! Elaborate and Mysterious Bots who have subscribed to this newsletter! ‘Tis I—Robin Rendle and you likely subscribed to this once-in-a-while newsletter from my website. You can, of course, unsubscribe at any time.
I just did a big and scary thing.
The other day I submitted a draft to a publisher with a name we all know and I’ve never done anything like this before. First: I’ve never felt like I was good enough for traditional publishing (yawn, c’mon man). Second: I’ve always felt that what interests me is so very niche or personal that it isn’t welcoming to strangers. Third: isn’t it more punk to build your own ship than it is to stow away on someone else’s?
A few days passed as I waited with one eye nervously on my inbox, and then a reply: a curt and yet rather polite nope.
It wasn’t devastating, strangely enough. It wasn’t an earth shattering, day-ruining nope where you wince and recoil for days afterwards, embarrassed out of your brains but now from the safety of your bedroom. I’ve had plenty of those rejections in my career, enough for a lifetime perhaps, but this Enormous Nope kinda slid right off. It’s disappointing, sure, but mostly because I’m looking for something else now. I’m not looking for as much acceptance as I am from Big and Important Institutions perhaps.
Right?
Maybe I’m just making excuses so it doesn’t hurt quite so much. Like when a friend is going through a breakup and they tell you they never really liked this person and you nod politely but you both know the unspoken truth because yikes this rejection is completely devastating. You try to help by agreeing over and over again that, yes, your friend is indeed very powerful and independent and nothing can stop them now.
So is it like that? Well, after a few days of poking and prodding at this latest disappointment, it does feel different from the others...but why?
A few years ago a nope of this kind would’ve surely flattened me. It would make me want to delete my blog and throw all my books into the nearest river. I would moan endlessly to friends and try to soothe myself by making bad jokes. Oh the number of bad portfolio reviews I’ve given to designers who are much better than me! Oh all the work I spent weeks on only for it to drop into a vast ocean of indifference! Oh the bad dates that crushed me for months at a time!
This disappointment isn’t like that though. This isn’t a rejection where it stings my ego but rather I feel more disappointment in the potential. There’s this feeling that I could’ve met someone interesting or funny if I had organized my thoughts better or made a better pitch. I could’ve found myself in an unfamiliar room with someone who I welcome into the roster of Good People. The group of smart and funny folks who I want to spend the rest of my life working with in order to get better at whatever this thing is that I do.
Sure, I still require enormous amounts of validation and I’ve always worried it’s the sign of a particularly fragile ego. I demand my rubber stamp! I moved this button on a page, I picked this good font, I wrote this fun CSS! Where is the celestial confirmation that I am a Very Good Boy?
But now I feel disappointment not so much in that I failed to get that rubber stamp or that I failed to intrigue a Big and Important Name. I feel disappointed in myself, that I tried to impress someone with an idea that they’re immune to. I’m disappointed in myself that I haven’t learned this other, bigger lesson that I struggle to put into words.
Perhaps the draft is bad! Sure! Perhaps this thing I submitted is an embarrassment of colossal proportions! Okay now I am nervous again! Why did I type this! The next draft will be better!
Jokes aside, whenever I think about what I want in life I always come back to Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. It’s a movie about a bunch of misfits and weirdos who can’t get a gig in Hollywood and so they make their own films. And they are all very, very bad. But I find Ed Wood hopeful and bursting with optimism because what’s really important isn’t the work or the prestige of being accepted by some Big Name.
(Fame and success is for losers.)
Ed Wood’s big idea is that perhaps, instead, we shouldn’t spend our lives begging and pleading for acceptance from folks who just won’t get it. And that’s okay.
So this is a reminder to myself here: stop looking for prestige, stop looking for fame and attention. Push back against any signs of a fragile ego and try not to chase accolades from people who aren’t your people. That will only lead to more rejection, more frustration, and a life spent trying to be someone you just ain’t.
Instead: find your weirdos. They’re out there, somewhere.
Keep it weird,
✌️ Robin