riding the echo down

Ha. So — so far at 3/4 for rejections (for jobs and writing submissions) over the last, er, month. Jobs — one I just did not hear from (the posting was removed and then relisted), and the other was a mismatch between what their ad said and what they actually wanted (they were nice about it, but it wasn't a fit). The writing thing I figured I would be rejected for, too, since right after I submitted, they shared on their social media, "we're especially interested in stories about [SOMETHING I DID NOT WRITE], as we've been inundated with stories about [WHAT I DID WRITE]", which...oops.

It's...I dunno. As I said to Ed in therapy yesterday, I know that if you don't submit stuff, you can't, like, expect to have any chance of getting stuff published, and if you don't apply to jobs, you won't get hired, but both processes suck a lot and I am not a fan.

I have one more piece currently out for publication. It was an even longer shot than the first one, so, er. I'm preemptively going, "yeah, I'm going to guess I didn't get in for this one, either" and shrugging. At least I tried?

Right, anyway.

The upshot to this is that while I was very much In My Feelings yesterday re: rejections and just feeling low, I got a very nice comment on one of the things I have on AO3 that I'm most proud of (The Road Through the Mountains, because...yeah, anyway). Like, nice enough that it made me teary, because it came in very shortly after the extremely impersonal writing rejection (like, they misspelled my name, that's how impersonal we're talking, ha), and it was very clear from what they'd written that they loved the piece, which was a great feeling. ♥

And, er, well.

The auctions for Fandom Trumps Hate opened for bidding today — they'll be open through Friday — so imagine my complete and total shock when I opened the bidding sheet for the writing I'm offering and saw that there is, in fact, a bid — one placed pretty early, even, for 5x what my minimum bid listing is, from someone I don't know.

I had sort of half-expected that I was going to need to send someone $5 to bid on me, so this is a very pleasant surprise. ♥ Almost offsets the "ugh, applying for stuff is the WORST" feelings. :)

If you're wanting to bid, then, looks like you have to donate more than $25.

If you want tabletop (bespoke tabletop!!), that one is open and doesn't have any bids yet — you can find it here.