Give Me Some Kind of Sign

Blogger won't let me upload a picture today.

This is the week I hear about getting in to the artist colony upstate. Depending on the mail (they send out the notices tomorrow). Yes -- in a quaint nod to the olden days, they mail you your acceptance or rejection.

Lately, I've been picturing how it will feel if I'm turned down. It's amazing on how many levels you can register defeat. Immediately I'm sure I'll go into my rejection mode, where I believe my essential rottenness and falsity has somehow been divined by the search committee; where my social awkwardness has somehow also been sensed and correctly judged as egregious and a drag to be around; where I go over and over the things I said in the application and experience them now as dumb, over-confident and shallow.

Then I move on to shame over the hubris that led me to believe I had any chance of being accepted into an inner circle of gifted people ...

Then I will relive every other rejection I've ever had and identify a lifelong pattern that will never change ...

Then I might look at my novel and recognize how laughable, uninteresting and conventional it is ...

Then I might start finding my shoes and wallet to go purchase a bottle of red wine ...

In the liquor store I'll experience myself as forever doomed ...

Later, I'll feel better.

But I'll probably give up on the novel and maybe on myself as a whole.

Not that a lot is riding on this.

Hope everyone has a good week.