It is a universal truth that few people enjoy Monday mornings. At least, I'm sure it is. I did make that up though. I'm not a fan myself. No matter how nice the weekend was, I greedily want it to last just a day longer.
Today, it's a chilly Monday morning. The temperature gauge on my car is hanging around 13 degrees farenheit. Needless to say, it's a wee bit nippy. The sun is shining though which means it'll look warm, even if it feels like the inside of a meat locker. However, compared to my friends in the Northeast who appear to be have hit with a massive winter storm, I won't complain. We've had a few of those and while I'm enamored with almost every flake of snow that falls, it's also nice to have the promise of spring creeping up slowly.
I went to visit my parents this weekend which was a nice treat. Due to the trials and tribulations that I experienced with the DMV, I've been unable to drive for fear of getting arrested. So it was nice to head home for the weekend. I wanted it to be one of those relaxing weekends where I can nurse my battered ego and feel refreshed. It didn't start quite as relaxingly as I'd planned; I left work a little early only to get an urgent text about 30 minutes into my drive telling me to call in for a staff meeting. So I get to spend the rest of my 2 hour drive listening to a meeting on the phone. It was interesting and all and I really am glad I heard the information but I had planned on listening to a playlist on my iPod I'd burned. Being at work, even virtually, when driving, is not a good way to unwind.
Still, I can't complain. The rest of my weekend was exactly what I needed though. Sometimes all it takes is a few hours of just being with my mum. Sometimes it's just a trip to Walmart, sometimes we actually do other stuff. This weekend, we went wandering around a big antique shop. It's one of those converted house-type places where there are a ton of nooks and crannies, all of them full of stuff. It's fun to imagine the history behind some of the things you see. For example, there was an old photo album handwritten with the date "1891". It was during the time period when photographs were always posed and shot by professional photographers so rather than a captured moments, slices of life, each photo was a portrait. It was amazing to see, to wonder who those people were, where they went, who the babies became and how, exactly the photo album came to be in this antique mall. I love looking at things like that. Some of the antiques baffle me; there are old spice tins that are the same as the ones you buy in the store today, old hats that are so motheaten they're almost moving. Yet for each piece of junk, there's a treasure. I never buy anything but it's fun to look.
So, by the time I left on Sunday, I felt significantly less blue and downcast about the harsh rejection I received and a little better about life. Every time I get rejected, I tell myself that the next time, it won't bother me, that just because the rejector doesn't get my writing, doesn't mean it's bad. Yet...every time, I'm thrown into that dizzying spiral of self-doubt. I'm going to try, once more, to ignore the rejection, to concentrate on the feeling I get when I am writing. I'm going to try to write without thinking of needing an agent, without thinking of who might publish my story and when it would happen. I'm just going to write because that's all I can do.
In the meantime, I just want to say thank you to all my readers who believe in me, who've made me realize that I can't not write. It is who I am, for better or for worse and I will keep writing, even if it turns out to be utter crap. I'm going to look forward, not look back at the road paved with rejection and think that somewhere, along the road that lies ahead, there's a success story just waiting for me.
Happy Monday.
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