Getting Rejected from Everything

It’s official. With my final rejection delivered to my inbox this afternoon, I’ve been rejected from every program I applied to for next year. Not that I’m surprised, nobody ever said that getting a Masters degree in Creative Writing would open a whole lot of doors for my future, but nobody ever said that getting a Masters in Creative Writing would also lead to long, sad naps in the middle of the afternoon while I waited to hear back from an almost-minimum wage nannying agency to see if I got an on-call part-time position as each essay of my thesis slowly backs deeper into the hard drive of my computer, unable to find a good home. I can’t really complain. I’m lucky that I have a place to live rent-free with a boyfriend that I like (love, even!), two cats to cuddle with while I scour online job postings, and parents who have generously agreed to help me fund much of my summer, but it’s hard not to feel kicked in the gut when every a few days I open a new nicely worded e-mail informing me that I’m just not quite what this job/program/literary journal/MTV reality show blog (I’m desperate, ok?) was looking for. They say that if you want to be a writer, you have to have thick skin. But I’m notoriously thin-skinned, like a ripe plum that sat too long in a crowded fruit bowl or one of those clear eggrolls with the shrimp inside. The point is, I’m sensitive. I’ve always been sensitive. No matter how many times I get rejected, or how small the rejection is, I handle it mostly by eating several helpings of dessert and crying openly.

I’d like to say there’s a freedom in being rejected from everything. Something wise and optimistic about how every time God/Fate/insert chosen higher power here closes a door, he/it/whatever opens a window, but it actually just sort of sucks. It’s more like being stuck in a windowless room full of locked doors and hoping to one day form a Shawshank-style escape plan, spooning away the concrete from behind a pornographic poster and trudging shit-soaked through the sewers until I finally reach daylight. It seems impossible at times that I will ever open up an e-mail that isn’t a “Thanks but no thanks.”

But I don’t think getting rejected feels good for anyone, and unfortunately I just happened to pick a profession and a time period to be 25 in which getting rejected happens much more often than getting accepted. I wonder if that’s the fate for all notoriously sensitive people, we wind up having our hearts broken and broken until we learn to assemble the pieces the way they should have been in the first place: strong and resilient. Or maybe we all just waste away into nothingness, slinking off to dark corners where we can cry in private whenever a dog dies in a movie. I’m hoping for the former, though.

But because nobody else seems to want me to work for them (even though I would bring really delicious cookies for the breakroom like every week, but whatever. Your loss, every business who has rejected me. I guess you hate chocolate chips with just a little bit of salt so that flavor really pops.) I have a lot of free time. I’ve decided that I’m going to start my own historic cooking blog. My good friend and amazing graphic designer (and bridesmaid-granter. Bridesmaid maker? Person of whom I will be a bridesmaid for.) Lauren Jolly is designing the website for me. In this blog I will post my attempts to recreate historic recipes from cookbooks before the year 1980. Remember the post about the sponge cake? It will be like that! It should be up relatively soon. Hopefully it will be funny and weird and full of delicious/probably mostly disgusting recipes from throughout time. Hold onto your petticoats!