Separating failure from rejection: When ‘no’ becomes ‘possible’
Caveat : This post is about 'no' in response to a piece of professional work, for example a piece of writing; it is not about consent in a personal context. When the response arrived, I was excited. When I opened it, I deflated. The message was one of rejection, of thanks for trying but no, we don’t want you. I had wanted it so much that I had not considered the possibility of not getting it, such was the confidence of my younger self. “It” was the annual Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference to be hosted by then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, whom I admired in that position for her championing of the arts and her work with indigenous communities. But my wants didn’t matter; my application to attend the conference in the year 2000 was not successful. It would have been a fantastic experience and I wasn’t going to have it and there was nothing I could do to change that. That “no” was “the end”. That specific experience of not succeeding remains a visceral me