008 | How to Get Used to Rejection
Thick skin and cold messages.
At one point in my life, I reached out to 100 people by cold messaging them in the hopes of having them on my college podcast. I documented this somewhere on Twitter, and while incredibly embarrassing, I think it helped create thick skin and was one of the sparks that lit my career. I emailed, I messaged, I did everything I could to reach the person. I don’t remember the response rate, but I do remember that while it never got easier, my expectations leveled out.
It was humbling and worth it.
Over time, the skin has thinned out, and I am now in the mood to partake in the act of rejection exposure therapy all over again.
I’ve always loved blogs, from Tumblr to Medium and now Substack. Even on Reddit, when I find someone who responds to a question in a way that I find just a bit strange, I will go into their profile and read every response I can find. Strangers who I don’t know, will never know, and who aren’t even sharing their identity on the internet.
I think of it like reading someone’s diary. Even if it’s boring, the day-to-day details, what they microwaved for dinner or how they reorganized their shoes, are interesting to me because it’s simply not my dinner or my shoes.
The act of people-watching through my screen has become one of my favorite pastimes, second only to the same in real life.
I want to know what it feels like to be a girl who lives in downtown Manhattan and works in fashion, or one in the Midwest who writes a romance blog during her downtime as a night nurse, or about life in Costa Rica after a messy divorce. I want to know about the mom of three living in New Jersey, and the recently unemployed woman who sees the severance package as a sign, as a gift from God.
I want to breathe every life that isn’t mine, and the internet provides.
Once your eyes are open to the uniqueness of human life, creativity, and expression, it becomes hard to blink. Knowing that other people are living their lives inspires me to live mine. So much of the information we consume is meant to make us feel like we have to constantly improve in some way, whether that’s the latest thing to buy or the latest food to cut, but too much of that makes you selfish. Life is so much bigger. Reading about others is a good reminder that the universe doesn’t revolve around my timeline, or anyone else’s.
Because of all this, I want to share some writers and other internet people whose documentations of life I admire, on the chance that you will value them, and the universe they’ve crafted, as much as I do.
I am unsure how to interview people for written work. Do you send an email with a bunch of questions and they respond? Do we hop on a phone call? Do we do a Zoom? That feels too sterile. Maybe we should grab coffee, but recording a conversation in public feels too invasive. This will be a learning experience.
If you have any advice, or people you think I should follow, let me know.
Let’s see how this goes.