It’s not a race? Rejection thoughts

 

People say that all the time. I’m thinking of this because it just hit me that I’ve done one race this year. I was supposed to hit an assload of  Interior Running Association events but only did one. Grr. Stuff gets in the way. Book stuff is worth it. Other stuff not so much. Usually I’m pretty good with time management but everyone has limits.

Why is everyone so down on competition now? It’s tough and most of the time it hurts. To be honest competition just drives me nuts and on one level I hate it, but if it weren’t for competition I can’t see how anyone would know what they’re capable of.

If I weren’t competitive, I probably wouldn’t have written the one novel that anyone had remote interest in. Sure it’s obscure at the moment, but I’d rather have some success with something leading-edge than just repeat what’s been done.

Race day runs feel completely different to any other run. Now, I’ve gone to what I thought was max effort during training (which you shouldn’t do), but even then, it was nothing like race day. There’s a slight difference between doing something for pleasure and trying to win something, even if that’s just winning against your own best.

It makes people feel bad. But you get used to it. Writers collect rejection letters, and 99.999346463446333333366634 percent of runners like myself end up racing for personal bests most of the time. I can’t speak for anyone else, but there’s a difference between getting used to rejection and magically not being bothered by it.

Just to be clear, rejection bothers me. A lot. I’m hypersensitive to it.

There’s a line in the In Flames song Clayman that says, “I tried confidence – had it for breakfast today . . ” and it’s kind of like that. Confidence is something I’ve never quite understood in some areas. People just tell you to “be confident” but what does that even mean? I was sure confident when I ran the P.A.R.E. for the RCMP. Cocky, even. AND MY TIME SUCKED. It was still well within their requirement, but sure as hell was nowhere close to the sub-3-minute realistic goal I had set for myself.

I was so confident my dumb “experimental” novel would blow away the first editor who laid eyes upon it. It ended up being some of the worst writing I’d ever done.

Being confident didn’t help performance. It just made it all the more shocking when I didn’t measure up to the way I’d built up my own concept of how well I was doing.

So what’s more valuable–confidence or toughness and persistence?

Who isn’t crushed and devastated by rejection? Maybe most people aren’t. I’m not wired that way. It’s better to process such devastation and somehow improve than it is to develop some state where failure and rejection seem acceptable.

On another note, posts about fitness are more popular than posts about my writing. *shrug.* I assure you I’m a better writer than I am personal trainer. So I don’t know. The point is . . . read my book already.

I’ll likely be doing a signing in Chapters next month. That’ll be exciting. Independent book stores are great, but there will be a lot more people to engage in a mall.

Not sure when the new Katatonia album Dead End Kings actually came out, but I just got it and love it. Impressed by the solo on Lethean. And who wouldn’t love a song titled, The One You Are Looking For Is Not Here.

Anyway. Not sure how Katatonia fits into this post. Eh. Great band though.