Rejection blows.
That isn’t really a newsflash, but I’m reminded afresh every time I experience rejection just how bitter of a pill it truly is.
Last week I had a job I loved tell me “it’s not me, it’s you.”
Failure isn’t something I face often, and I’ll admit, the rejection stung. Since then, I’ve seesawed between frustration over completely fixable errors on my part and sadness over the loss of a job I genuinely enjoyed. That kind of out-of-the-blue breakup makes you question a lot about your perception of self; especially if you were bebopping along under the impression that things were going great. It’s rough because it’s so unexpected. It’s hard to react because you’re so unprepared. Like a terrible car accident where you get T-boned, there isn’t much you could have done differently in the moment. You still wonder though, you can’t help it. But really all that’s left is picking up the pieces and trying to move on.
There is a silver lining though: the end of a good thing isn’t the end of the world. Yeah, starting over sucks but I know that this experience doesn’t mean that I’ll never get another job, or that I won’t love a job ever again; it meant that it wasn’t a good fit so now I can go find a better one. And I can choose to learn from my mistakes instead of repeating them. I can email my old boss asking for constructive criticism and whether or not she responds, I’ll know I did the mature thing and behaved professionally. It’s less than a week later and already I’m wiser, more aware of my flaws. I’ve grown in my knowledge of things I wanted to know, and gained experience so I can go out and find somewhere better. I already have an interview lined up somewhere new and maybe now I’ll find a place where I actually want to be friends with my coworkers, who knows? But whatever happens, however much that disastrous adventure sucked, I know that pain is part of the process and struggle creates resiliency. My story doesn’t go: “and nothing bad ever happened, so the end.” That sounds like a terrible story. And worst of all, boring. The best adventures have action, development, and usually some heartache. I’ve got to fight to make my way in the world, I know that. And sometimes I won’t win, I know that too. But that’s not the end of the story, it’s just the end of a chapter and the beginning of another.
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