Yesterday I received a rejection from the NYTimes Modern Love column for the third time. I’d submitted an essay I felt really strongly about. Of course I did, otherwise why would I have sent it in? I felt really strongly about the previous two I’d submitted as well. (One of which did get tweaked&picked up by the LATimes last year, so there’s that.) Cycling through the ready-list of emotions: frustration, anger, disappointment, embarrassment, I finally landed, as I always do, on Why Bother To Even Try? which is most often followed by I Give Up. I rolled around in all that for a while, then—I think mainly because I’m currently in a project called #1000wordsofsummer, which is really keeping my accountability meter on high alert—I decided to repeat those two phrases like actors do, putting different stressors on the words. (Side note: how many times have I been startled on NYC subway, streets, etc. hearing actors run through random lines like “It’s all your fault” “It’s all your fault,” “It’s all your fault,” “It’s all your fault.”)

So what would Why Bother? look like if I played around with the temperature and the stressors? Before I could do that, I found myself prowling around the whole thorny foundation. Because I’ve placed the words on a shaky structure circled by other people’s (imagined) input. For instance, the Modern Love editors were loudly and in front of the entire newsroom pointing at my essay and laughing “Why does she bother continuing to send in her essays?” while throwing darts at it. There’s also the ledge that holds friends, family, and writer’s group reactions. Those are whispered behind hands or sent using secret coded language (for some reason I go all J.Bond on the communication): “I’m not sure why she bothers writing, although let’s not say anything because it will crush her.” Now for some truth around all that: I’VE MADE THIS ALL UP. NO, I don’t actually think those things are happening in real time. Especially since my family, friends, writing group actually give me good criticism that is sharp, usually right-on, perceptive, and not always pleasant. And the Modern Love people? They are bushWappled by thousands of submissions every day(?). There aren’t even enough darts for this to be a reality.

But enough about them. Me. Who am I inside of that phrase: why bother? From the jump I can acknowledge the Three-Card Monte tricksterism that imposter syndrome plays inside the phrase. The fear that none of those cards will reveal talent, so why do I bother continuing to move them around? I see that thought and raise the phrase Why Bother to hurt feelings: why bother if no one even appreciates what I do? Usually followed by a long tortured sigh. Shuffling the deck again, I come up with a disappointed-in-humanity moment: why bother since I’ll be let down, as always? Then, barely even able to lift my (imagined) hand, I pull the final card of resignation: Why bother? It will always be thus. Get used to it. By this time I’m flat on my back. I actually have this mental picture of myself quite often. When something feels too hard, I imagine me, lying akimbo, flung out, limbs askew, staring up at the sky. I Give Up are the words ricocheting in my head.

So “Why Bother?” and “I Give Up.” They really go together so well. A two-pack. A double punch. Yesterday I walked around mumbling them post ML rejection. I went to the pool and while swimming, they tumbled around in my cranium I tried them with a different spin: Yeah, why do I bother? For real, why do I bother to write? Because it’s the only place I can get completely lost in my own imagination. Build a world where my story rules, my characters live and die, my words play with each other, I get to go places I’ve never been, or have been but want to experience differently or again. Where some things that didn’t work out well the first time have a chance to work out after all. I get to build a character (or a few) who is opposite to me or similar yet says a thing I wish I’d said. Does a thing I wish I’d done.

Pairing that with “I Give Up,” which so often follows on Bother’s heels, I trace back to when they got married. I think constantly on the last story I’d written at SPIN at the end of 1993. A Screaming Trees piece that had been heavily red-lined by magOwner, Bob. The notes, corrections, and ultimate rejection of it shook me in a way I didn’t know what to do with. That was close to three decades ago and still I ruminate over the choice I made in that moment to give up. Why bother? It stands as my most vivid example of what those two phrases could do: walk me out the door of my music journalism career never to reenter. In all honesty, there were other things in the firmament getting at the roots of my unhappiness, but yet.

To give up. What could that look like if I took the words in differently? Went a Buddhist route and decided to give up any attachment to outcome. Accept that what I’d like to see happen may not, probably won’t in fact. But something will happen. It just won’t look like what I thought (or wanted) it to.

Reframe the words. But also be dead-honest around the seed of shame that festers when Why Bother is attached to a situation that feels embarrassing, so therefore I won’t mention it. Tra-la-la, all is fine. No one needs to know I was rejected because then, egads, everyone will realize I should give up this silly writing-submission stuff. But a funny thing happened on the way to deep-sixing that bitter turn-down Modern Love email into some YouSuck google folder: I mentioned the situation in the #1000 Words of Summer group (around 20,000 strong, so more like a tiny village spread out globally) and wouldn’t ya know it, people responded in kind, relating absolutely to the whole feels-shitty, I’ve-got-a-story-like-that-too sensation. The woman who spearheads this project, Jami Attenberg, an awesome author whose generosity is just astounding, shared her Modern Love rejection adventures and damn if I didn’t think, “Hell, yeah, we’re all bothering and giving it up together.” And I felt a helluva lot better for saying it out loud because so much of the time we just whisper this stuff to ourselves. And sure, sometimes you do say the thing out loud and people just stare. Maybe they don’t know what to say back or the words have touched something they haven’t really thought about. But still and all, it’s nice to rephrase the questions and statements so they’re not personal projectiles but instead plates of food (I’m hungry currently, so that happened).

And because I’m nothing if not a lover of words, here are some choice bits taken from the kick-ass authors who’ve contributed letters for 1,000 Words’ participants this past week. I think they can apply to life overall, not just writing:

Roxanne Gay (her charitable contribution: Hope for Haiti): “…Here’s the thing… making yourself or your writing smaller doesn’t make anyone like you more, I promise you.” (whole piece here)

Sara Novic (her charitable donation: DHCC): “For everything there is a season: a time to listen to a brilliant writer friend or editor, and a time to rip out your (metaphorical?) hearing aids and do whatever the hell you want.” (whole piece here)

Min Jin Lee (her charitable donation: Asian American Journalists Association): “I give myself freedom and permission to frolic in my infinite possibilities. I don’t care if that sounds irrational, delusional, or foolish, because already, I am those things. I am a fiction writer, and being one means I don’t expect to make sense to most upright folks.”  (whole piece here)

Morgan Parker (her charitable donation: Loveland Therapy Fund):

(whole piece here)

Emma Straub (her charitable donation: Everytown for Gun Safety): “…noticing leads to more noticing, … paying attention to the worlds within us and outside of us fuels everything.…” (whole piece here)

Chris Gonzales (his charitable donation: Black & Pink): “…writing … It’s not about catharsis or suppression; it’s about embracing all the mucky parts of myself, holding myself steady when the world feels anything but.” (whole piece here)

Mira Jacob (charity of choice : Sri Lankan Crisis Relief): “There is no expiration date on creation. There is no cut-off point for applying and re-applying yourself to the work you love.” (whole piece here)