I have taken courageous steps this year by submitting to 5 publications and 1 grant. I did not get the grant, I was declined in one publication, and was accepted in another. As for the others, I’m still waiting. I also started this blog a few weeks into the pandemic because I was desperate for a sense of achievement, or progress, or purpose, or whatever feeling I could get that isn’t anxiety.

Never giving up on your dreams is a cliché because at some point, you need to hit yourself in the head and say, okay, you’re not cut out for this. I know, writing is a form of expression but some people aren’t contented with just ‘expressing’ themselves. Some people want to be read. Yes, me, I’m ‘some people’.

You win some, you lose some. I’m so used to getting rejection letters but it never gets easier. I’m trying to fool myself into having a normal day and not thinking about it. That’s wrong. I have to mourn. I created something and it’s just not good enough to be published. I can be a little sad. Cry for about five minutes and keep typing again.

And then there are small victories that lifted me up from the losing streak.

But, I still have to ask myself: how do I know that I need to keep on going? And how do I know that it’s just time to settle and that I’ll just be a (kawaii?) potato all my life?

And is being an unpublishable potato such a bad thing?

💜 Dyne