A Moment of Honesty: Getting Back Up

I've become all too familiar with the burn of holding back tears. I feel it in my throat, I feel it as it tightens within my chest. Not soon after comes the worrying. I'm never going to get to my goals. I set the bar too high. I'm not as good as I thought I was. In fact, I suck. Why am I even trying? It's been happening more and more frequently. Nothing worth having is supposed to come easily but is my spirit meant to be broken beyond recognition? Whether its an immediate rejection email or a realization that occurs months after what I thought was a very, very good interview, the feeling is always the same. The ignored follow-up emails should have been your first clue, dummy. Go back to school and get a "normal job." I feel defeated and each time it gets more and more difficult to pick myself back up.

I don't write about this because it's easy because it certainly is not. It's not some romanticization of myself as a "struggling artist" type. It's because I know that I am not alone. I'm surrounded by many kindred spirits. We're all trying to make it. With each failure, we have a choice: we can either be closer to giving up or closer to getting to where we need to be. Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper because he “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He was no stranger to failed businesses and bankruptcy. The Wright Brothers went through years of failed airplane prototypes. Einstein's teachers has ruled him out. And, perhaps closest to my own plight, Oprah was told that she was "unfit for television." Look at them now.

I don't really know what else to say, honestly. I don't feel qualified to offer some "glimmer of hope" advice because I have not found it myself. I'm in a dark place but I have to keep pushing forward. We all do. That's life. I wish it could be macarons and perfectly un-smudged winged eyeliner every day but it's not. We were never promised that it would be easy, simple, or fair. Despite all this, we must persevere.


xo,
e.m.