An Important Lesson

Several months ago, I applied for a prestigious national fellowship for a journalism project I’m working on. Earlier this week, I found out that I didn’t get it. This is the second time I’ve applied to this particular fellowship, and the second time I haven’t gotten it. Of course, there’s an important lesson to be learned here. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And sometimes when you try again, you will also fail again.

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High School Dreams

Every once in a while I have dreams in which I’m back in high school and screwing up. Last weekend offered a variation on that—and usually they are variations. This one I was in college, but a high school-like-college, and I had screwed up something—not doing homework, missing tests, that sort of thing—and I was going to fail all my classes. The tension of these types of dreams tend to revolve around the moment at which the problem becomes too significant to ignore, and the moment at which I address it. In fact, I dropped out of high school in my senior year. I was a bit of a fuck up. Sometimes I think about going back; you know, one could turn that sort of thing into an article. I never got my GED: I took classes at UC Berkeley when I was in high school, I went to junior college, I transferred to and graduated from UC Berkeley, I went to grad school. Despite all those boxes checked, I’m still the girl who has dreams in which I’m screwing everything up all over again.

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"You Have to Know How to Accept Rejection and Reject Acceptance" -- Ray Bradbury

Dear Susannah,

Thanks very much for writing.  I'm afraid we won't have room for this one, but I appreciate the chance to read and wish you the best finding it a good home.

Yours,

[redacted]

Quitters Never Win

Dear Susannah, 

Thank you for sending us "[Redacted]." This is an interesting topic, but the piece is missing the connection to a bigger picture idea, the reflection or takeaway that would make it a [redacted] story. 

Best of luck with this, and I hope you’ll pitch us again in the future. To receive future calls for pitches, sign up here: [redacted].

Sincerely, 
[redacted]

Personal Essay Seeks Home With Non-Rejecting Publication

Image via Drawception

Know anyone who wants a nonfiction essay?

This one is up for adoption and needs a home.

Declined by Brevity.

Email:

Dear Susannah Breslin,

Thank you for sending us your brief essay 'It Was Hard'.

Although we do not have a place for your work in the issues for which we are currently reading, we wanted you to know that our readers read your essay closely.

We have been blessed with a large number of excellent submissions lately, and we hope that you understand that we can only publish a small fraction of the material we receive.

We wish you the best of luck with your writing,

Sincerely,

The Editors
Brevity

1/10/2017 (1 month, 13 days ago)

The Difference Between Success and Failure Is Not Giving Up

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Don't Do It

💀 to #failing

See this Instagram photo by @susannahbreslin * 12 likes

Support the arts! Buy a digital copy of THE TUMOR, a "masterpiece of short fiction" by me, Susannah Breslin.

Failure Is Inevitable

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

You said it, Backhoe Failure Meme Generator

Tragically, I forgot to blog yesterday. Originally, I set out to blog 365 days this year. Yesterday, I failed to do so. Although, after setting my goal for the year, I realized it was a leap year, so I can still blog 365 times this year. Regardless, I failed in the consecutive department. Disappointing.

Relapse is part of recovery

I guess addicts use this to differentiate between I AM WINNING and I AM FAILING. The truth is that you're probably doing either neither or both at any given time. I figured I would probably forget or fail to blog at least one day this year. And that's exactly what happened. It's not an anomaly. It's an inevitability. Accept it.

Success happens when you set yourself for it

I set myself up to fail. I didn't automate my blogging. I didn't pick a daily time to do it or pick a daily time by which to do it by. A couple times, I almost forgot. A pattern emerged of nearly not doing it, and I didn't act quickly enough to change the pattern. If I'd decided to, say, blog every day right after I woke up, or blog every day by noon, or had the word BLOG tattooed to my forehead, I wouldn't have fallen from my consecutive days perch after 21 days.

Meditate on mindfulness

I've had a good amount of success in the past from meditating. Just 10 minutes a day, prone wherever, thinking as hard as I can about nothing. This is a way to give your mind a break and reset itself so it doesn't go careening off the side of the road and run into a tree and eject you into a lake. I resumed meditation today. I will meditate 10 minutes a day. You should, too.

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Loser, Baby

So far, two days, one and two, of public self-shaming have failed to prompt me to get back to writing the next short story I'm going to sell online.

Things I Did That Were Not Working On The Story

1. Went to the beach
2. Ate BBQ
3. Wrote a Forbes post about porn stars voting for Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio
4. Slept
5. Drove around in the car
6. Did Pilates!
7. Watched the sun set
8. Thought about the story but didn't open the .doc
9. Considered opportunistic synergies
10. Bought a yak pop for the dog

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Oops

I tried to blog once a day every day this year, and I missed yesterday, so I failed at that.

Who Dated Who on 'Sex and the City'?

I'm embarrassed to report that not only did I do the "Can You Guess Who Dated Who on 'Sex and the City'?" quiz, but I only got 11 out of 15 right.

[BuzzFeed]