A couple of weeks ago, in a room full of strangers, someone totally validated my choice of decision back in January to start Substack every day like this. The best kind of validation emerges when you do not expect that to be the case, and come from someone who has absolutely no idea who you are. There is no ulterior motive, no other reason than them pronouncing their own truth.
This morning as I was making breakfast my watch vibrated to let me know that a submission that meant the world to me had not made it past the sifting period. Reading the email, I was informed that even though Submittable indicated the curator of this particular project had not accessed my pieces, they had indeed done just that.
I want to share my thought process as a result of this rejection, and why I am my own worst enemy when it comes to finding reasons why work is ‘not good enough’.
In that same room of strangers, a lovely life coach and motivational speaker used a phrase in relation to how we find ways to avoid change and conflict. We will ultimately tell ourselves stories, a combination of our own experiences and the subjectivity they are built from as mechanisms to give us meaning in an increasingly chaotic world.
They become how we self validate and protect ourselves, except if they are built on unsound foundations, all that happens is a slow degradation of everything we see, do and feel. I placed highly unrealistic expectations on this sub because of the person editing the publication. This is the tenth submission to this publication too, and as yet nobody has shown any interest in my work.
See what I did there? I made up a fiction to cushion an inability to find acceptance.
The key to freedom is noticing how you hobble yourself as a creative. As yet, I have not found the magic formula in my work. We’ve established, only in the last few weeks, that there’s been a significant hole in the current creative process when it comes to poetry. That needs to be fixed, refined and then bedded in. Progress and change on that scale, we know, takes months.
Having a bucket list or a set of self-created benchmarks to hit to show that you are progressing as a writer is all well and good. However, accepting that where you are published is not nearly as important as your own confidence and belief in sustainable progress is another thing entirely. I thought for a long time that I’d only have ‘made it’ if I were published in certain places.
What a load of utter bollocks that was when I stand here and look back on it.
Growth happens in the most unexpected of places. The lies we tell ourselves in order to justify not growing are the most predictable of repetitions. Only by giving in to one and removing the other have I found any real sense of progress. It is impossible to see and know how anyone else feels, which is why this is only ever opinion.
I feel growth grants more validation than any publication will ever do.
If I can tell my stories in a manner that engages and inspires other people, then there is always merit in telling them. THAT must be the goal at every step, though each issue, those are the foundations I build on. It doesn’t matter that I only started this journey later in life. This is the best it has ever been professionally, even on the days when I really struggle mentally.
These are the most worthwhile validations I will ever receive.