Man, i'm kinda depressed right now. i just got my rejection letter from yaddo, and that was one of the fellowships i wanted the most for so many different reasons--the solitude, the beauty of saratoga springs, the productivity, the presitge--and now i have nothing worked out for the summer. it's amazing how one letter can change your status from hopeful and mysterious to despondent and chaotic.

I don't know how, but sometimes i forget how much rejection there is in writing, how on every level of this process--the mfa program, the literary journal, the agent, the publishing house, the fellowship, the grant--rejection is actually the rule, and acceptance, the anomaly. i keep on forgetting. . . i keep getting these outlandidsh hopes, i keep feeding my insatiable dreamlife, and then yaddo rejects me and i realize how quixotic i really am. it's humbling and it hurts. . .

i just knew by the size of the envelope that yaddo had rejected me, so, before i opened the letter, i took a bunch of pictures of myself in my mod squad look when i still felt talented and hopeful. that way, they couldn't take it away.