The Art of Dealing with Rejection

So I applied for a research job in a non-academic organization about a month ago.  It was a plum – great pay, full benefits, pretty good politics, a long stretch of vacation days, sick days, mental health (!) days, etc.  I worked on the application for weeks, passing it to friends for feedback.  I really thought I had a shot at it.  I even spent all the money in my head.  Repairing the hole in my roof where the water has been streaking down my walls for the last 3 years, a wardrobe of suitable office clothes with complimenting shoes and accessories, maybe even a family vacation somewhere that resembles the rain forest where my son’s idols Diego and Dora live.   

I shouldn’t have let myself go there.  Because.  I didn’t even get shortlisted. 

After I received the thank you, but no thank you letter (unlike academic institutions, they were very prompt with their rejection), I went upstairs and went to bed.  This has been my response to the answer “no” lately.  Drop everything, immediately head upstairs, get in bed and cover myself up with my blanket.  Stay breathing and hopefully, sleep it off.  Sometimes this helps.  Other times, I wake up in a shock of sweat, confused by why I am in bed in the middle of the afternoon.  Then I remember I am doing the rejection sleep again and fall back into bed.  (Note: If you have any out-of-work or underemployed PhDs friends and loved ones, a good gift idea is  really good bedding – fluffy pillows, percale sheets, a warm duvet.  The flinging of one’s body into bed and forming a human cocoon gives a sense of high drama that is called for in situations like this, and props help.)

Anyway, this last rejection really got to me for some reason.  I suppose the NOs added up, took a life of its own and finally piled on top of me like an avalanche.  I was in the fetal position for a couple of days, wondering when my life took this turn.  My son asked me to play tag, and I told him that mama was too sad to play tag.  He gave me that look that 4 year olds give when they don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and don’t really care, shrugged and ran off to ask daddy and the dogs to play tag instead.  Add mama guilt to the pity party.  

I don’t think I am a pessimist by nature.  I am, in fact, hopeful beyond reason.  Even in grad school, when the concept of hope was thoroughly critiqued as an irrational discourse to have in this moment in history, I was stubbornly unmoved to the side of futility.  But lately, I have been sliding.  Everything looks pretty fucked at the moment with no reprieve.  From tar sands to Afghanistan.  From poverty to the large scale de-personalized violence against peoples, places and things wreaked by states and corporations and state corporations.  And me - not able to do a goddamn thing about any of it because I have no useful place in the world.  Self-importance much?  Depression mixed with self-aggrandizing is a dangerous brew. 

I eventually did get out of bed, mainly because I have to in order to take care of my child, work at the store, and generally keep the rhythm of life moving.  If no one expected me to show up for my life, I may still be under the covers.  Truth.