Day 31. There's a room where the lights won't find you (31/1/19)

(Soundtrack: Facebook where my mate Simon George is putting up a tune a day. This week he's themed it 'a Tube' a day. Today is Simple Minds doing The American live in '82. It's as massive and frenetic and teutonic as the band were when I used to adore them live.)

Anyway.

You have to accept the knock-backs. You have to realise that they'll arrive, you have to anticipate them, roll with the punches, realise that there's always the next thing and deal with the emotions.

But they still hurt.

Doesn't matter how many times you've watched yourself recover from them, doesn't matter that you know that they're transient, that trajectories can't be permanently, solely, upwards; they can still get to you.

Today was a good day. Today was, in large parts, an excellent day, an epochal day, one might say, if one were so inclined.

Today I finished work.

And when I say 'finished work', I mean finished work. That's it. Over, done with. The future is now mine to write. And I mean that in all the ways you can imagine.

(Heaven 17 'At The Height of the Fighting' from the first ever Tube, the one where The Jam split up, as it were)

Tomorrow morning I do exactly what I did last time I left a job: I turn on the mac and I write.

So the day had ended with the final close down of the work station, the last time the screens would go black for me, and the walk toward the future in the shape of a meeting with director and producer of Silver Meadows, first performance due next February (this is how long ahead we plan these things).

And then I got the email.

An email from a literary agent that I had sent the start of the novel, the précis of the novel and the link to the four and five-star reviews on Amazon and GoodReads. It's a good book. It works. I know it works, the reviews say it works, it's just finding the right person who believes in it and can take it to a level that I can't on my own.

It was a no. And that's fine, there have been 'no's before, there will be more again. It was just the unfortunate timing of it.

Having the day I was having, seeing the subject line of the email, I knew that this was going to be good news. And it wasn't.

Kind of took the shine off the day. Just a touch.

The meeting cheered me up, like.

There will be setbacks. It's how you respond to the setbacks.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. There are people, every single second of every single day, receiving far worse news. Seen in the big picture, looking at what I've written, it's probably a bit self pitying to feel bad about it.

Every set back is about how you react to it.

Tomorrow, I'll react far better.

Onwards.