{REJECTION} ACCEPTANCE

by Carol A.

I have never been confrontational. I’m not much of a risk-taker. I think of myself as pretty sensitive. In my younger years, rejection knocked me right out of the ballpark, and often kept me from trying. Recently, I entered a photo competition that I have been in before. Three of my photography buddies got accepted to it, and took prizes. One friend won Best In Show! My entries were not accepted. As my friends called excitedly to tell me they’d made it in, each was clearly kind when they heard I had not. They toned down their excitement, they said how much they had enjoyed my photos –they were empathetic, defensive for me and careful with their words. What lovely gestures! But do you know what I felt inside? I felt completely and honestly proud for my friends, and not the least bit poorly about myself. When did this happen? When did previously insecure me learn how to handle rejection?

I think part of it is  maturity – a lot of little life lessons that have sunk in along the way. Maybe, at this age,not caring as much about what other people think, or understanding better who I am. It’s also having found my true passion, and about enjoying the journey. It's about realizing that age is a blessing.

But mostly, it’s realizing that I am learning and practicing a skill. I am learning the rules of photography, and many of my photo outings are to work on a particular aspect of it. When I see the progress in my work since I started 4 years ago, I see how I am developing a skill. When I wrote my post on attempting drawing a few weeks ago, I mentioned that there were rules to drawing, just there are rules for photography. I’ve watched the cooking channels and seen that when given weird ingredients, the contestants use food rules to combine them into tasty dishes. I have a friend who is a professional artist.  People often say to her “oh you are so lucky to be born talented!” She’s confided that internally, her reaction to that sentence is conflicted – while she’s happy she has talent and passion, she says that the sentence implies it was all just dropped in her lap, and does not take into account her lifetime of work on her skills.

What I’ve found is that when you enjoy the process of creating, and the lifelong journey towards improving what and how you create, “rejection,” with it’s defeating connotations, has no place in the process. You have not failed, you have just attempted something new – which furthers your journey. As our FOL member Kelly (from mindingmynest.com) said in the comment section of my drawing post, instead of saying “I can’t" do something, from now on, just say “I haven’t mastered all the rules yet.” It’s really not a mystery – it’s a step along  your particular skill-path forward. That’s why I changed the title of this post above. It’s not about rejection – it’s about acceptance.

enjoy the journey

"I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors."

Carl Sandburg