Rejection made easy

Feeling non-specifically coldy and run down, which happened to be handy as I am working on The Sick Day the short play competition entry I am writing about the death of a hypochondriac. Hypochondria, I'm beginning to think, is a good metaphor for the loss of confidence being experienced in the financial markets around the world too. Institutions are losing confidence in their continued existence, in the way a hypochondriac begins to believe that he or she is holding onto life by their fingernails.

Went to the gym for half an hour or so of lumbering on the treadmill and pulling and pushing heavy things. They should wire all of these weight machines up to generate power. Returned home to receive a rejection from a poetry magazine. I'm very philosophical about rejections these days. It is essential if you are to prevent yourself from peering at editors through telescopic sites from a city rooftop. You have to separate what you make, from who you are.

J-P Sartre in Being and Nothingness talks about this, which he calls "bad faith". His example is of a miserable waiter, who is miserable precisely because he is sees himself as a waiter, not as someone who has chosen for a few hours to work as a waiter. Any criticism of his waiter's skills then becomes a direct criticism of him personally, not of something he happens to have chosen to do for a few hours on a particular rainy Tuesday. When you start to live in bad faith you become the job - because you have forgotten the choices you have made.

Anyhow, after a short but refreshing siesta, and a large cup of coffee, back on the play. Working is the best cure for rejection. And soon I was feeling positive again - a change magnified by a nice call from a very positive French Bloke. Balance is restored.

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