I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection to assure myself I am seeing clearly.

(Howard Barker, British playwright)

Someday I hope to have this attitude. The humility that what you are sending someone, though you have worked so hard on it, may not be what they want right now, or whatever else they say in the nice form letter that starts with Dear You and ends with Sincerely (don't they know it's gramatically incorrect to omit the Yours?!?), Name.

Yes, they did not want my photos for the UP Unwrapped event. Of course, when I opened the letter, the pictures they mailed back to me looked so amateur, since they'd just been rejected. But hey, now I don't have to sweat framing the photos, or deciding which is better, a matte or glossy finish.

I've been getting other rejections this week--evites are a great way to invite folks to your party, but inevitably folks will hit the "won't be attending" button.

Then there's the answering machine. I know it's not an actual rejection, it's just that the person is not there to answer, but sometimes the machine is so robotic that you want to throw up or throw the phone across the room.

On the way back from picking up my plane tickets from FedEx (yes, the ones for the beach at Thanksgiving, shoop, shoop) I picked up a beer. So now I am going to sit here, listening to jazz and finishing The Joy of Doing things Badly, which is a great book to read any day, but especially on a day when you've your work has been rejected.

Bottoms up!