50 Tries

I Swear to God This Is the Last Time I'll Talk About Shopping

I just went to the mall with bags and came home with nothing.

I’d bought a pair of low-rise wool pants that I really loved, but when I put them on at home, the low-rise appeared to come from the lifting and separating of my buttocks and I just couldn’t live like that.

The other return was a belt that Adam bought me at Burberry, and I was thinking about returning it and getting a wallet—my current wallet, which Adam also bought me, is now ten years old. But none of the wallets were small enough or had the right configuration of credit card slots, enclosures, etc., and they all cost about a hundred dollars more than the belt.

We’re supposed to exchange small gifts at Christmas, so as not to be wrapped up in the endless present-giving vortex of Valentine’s Day, Anniversary, Birthday, Christmas, Ground Hog’s Day, etc. So Adam obviously broke the rule, yet he’ll be annoyed when he learns that I came home with nothing.

Even though the sun’s come out today and we’re going out with friends tonight, I feel little besides bleakly confused right now, and Burberry seemed filled with too many frivoulous choices. Is a cashmere-lined trench coat that’s perfectly cut worth $795? Probably not, but what if you wear it for the rest of your life? And what if the rest of your life’s not very long? Will your daughter wear it one day, and think, my mother had excellent taste? These were the thoughts I was having, only about blue nova-check wallets. Which I still really want, frankly.

I keep pressing my hands against my forehead today, trying to calm myself, only to find that my eyebrows have transferred themselves to the sides of my index fingers. I’m so tired of all this.

Almost Slightly Famous

I’m famous! To a very small public-radio-at-midday audience.

Adam turned on the radio as we were driving this morning, and The Brian Lehrer Show was doing a segment called “Digging Through the Reject Pile.” Two comics/cartoonists, Jon Friedman and Matt Diffee, have created a "comedic event" called “The Rejection Show,” displaying and discussing the work they’ve had rejected. Diffee, a cartoonist, actually receives rejections from the New Yorker! Unlike me, he also receives acceptances.

Anyway, they asked for callers with comments or questions, and I thought, well, rejection is practically my medium at this point, and called in and they put me on the air. I described the project a little (not mentioning the cancer), and one of the guests (I’m not sure which; Adam had pulled into a synagogue parking lot and he was trying to distract Kylie quietly, so there was a lot going on) said that I had found a very creative method of dealing with the rejection. Which was very affirming, especially after receiving two rejections yesterday, so I guess these guys have hit on something.

The host (Lehrer was out) asked if I wanted to give the address to their “millions of listeners” and I said “Of course!” and then said kiersten.blogs.com. I wish that I’d mentioned “50 Tries,” due to the difficulty of spelling "Kiersten", but at least I had the presence of mind not to say kiersten.connersax.com. In any event, it already seems to have drawn people to the site.

So, hello! Hope you like it. Sorry about all the cancer.

(And if you're looking for kirsten.blogs.com, here I am.)

And thank you, Jon Friedman, Matt Diffee, and Guy Filling in for Brian Lehrer. I now feel included in your experience of rejection.

Low Expectations

New submission: what do I have to say? Shouldn’t this be about figuring out what I want to say, rather than just “being funny”? I want to say that I’m tired, lost, and I can’t do this, any of it, anymore. So…?

Things I have to say:

• Healthcare in the United States is complicated and expensive, and I’d almost certainly be dead under any other system!

• Sometimes your most prosaic dreams don’t come true, in the most horrifying and degrading manner possible!

• Real estate in New York is too expensive, but that's because this is the best place to live. Which is why everyone else hates us, from terrorists to the residents of Wyoming!

• Even though I actually love playing poker, I’m REALLY tired of all the poker shows on television!

That’s about all. I’ve got some incoherent thoughts about not allowing a Republican into my house and how even my low-expectations Christmas was disappointing, but it’s time to go to bed.

Shopping for Dummies

No more presents to buy or surprises to plan.

I went crazy at the after-Christmas sales yesterday. I never enjoyed shopping before, but that was back when I was a big healthy girl who played softball and hiked in the hills—not that big, but not a size two, either. I can’t deny that now the clothes hang beautifully (of course they do; I'm practically a hanger) and it’s a much more pleasurable experience.

I used to cover myself up in turtlenecks and sweaters, a legacy of early adolescent development and an overbearing father, and then of simply not being able to afford clothes. So now, I want the strapless and the deep-v necks and the bright colors, no more New York black. It's fun until I try on some flimsy French t-shirt and see the portacatheter sticking out of the right side of my chest like a gigantic boil, with an angry red horizontal scar slashed above it. Reality slams down around me so hard that I can't breathe and it seems like I can see the concrete dust in the air.

But I found some cute things!

Not one, but two rejections came from the New Yorker today—one for me, one for "Charlie Spencer." They were about an hour apart. I got excited when I saw the second one arrive, because I thought that maybe they’d liked something, but it wasn’t for them, looked at my other things…all the thoughts you can have in the half-second before you open the message and get smacked upside the head with the same boilerplate you just read.

Today's first rejection felt encouraging, for all the reasons a rejection had before; at least I wasn't crafting prose for a meaningless void, etc., etc. But then the second one came, and something hit me that hadn't before. Maybe I’m really not good enough.

Submission #15

Premise: you get a lot of ridiculous crap for the holidays and returning it is a hassle. Hardly original. I submitted it directly to the Times, as it’s probably already too stale for the New Yorker (though I’ll send it there, too, in a few days).

The new year is coming. I’ve never been one for resolutions, and the ones I would make (have more fun; eat more) are counterintuitive, and things I’ve been “resolving” to do for some time. But I can't just keep sending in submissions, coasting along with this work (emotionally speaking).

It’s great that I’ve gotten this far—15 out of 50 is 30 percent—but now I’ve got to do the networking that I really REALLY fear. Thus far the rejection has been impersonal and largely by omission. So, hey, let’s turn that around!

Funny that I don’t perceive publication as a possible result.

On with the up-close-and-personal contact with editors and agents. First, I will create a timeline of my plan, which will of course delay my taking any real action for at least a week.

Surprises

I have a draft of something to send tomorrow, and an obsession with a Palm Pilot game called Fish Tycoon. I don’t know whether it’s helping or hurting.

The middle and ring fingers on my left hand are swollen and painful when I try to grip, or type, or use the mouse. This could be because of Fish Tycoon, or typing, or chemotherapy, or mixed connective tissue disease, or cancer, or something entirely different. C—, my favorite nurse, saw my hand today and was very concerned that it’s the beginning of lymphedema. Lymphedema could cause my hand, probably my entire left arm, to swell to the point of grotesquerie.

A warm front blew rain in today, washing away the snow, and the Snowman of Despair toppled over on his side.

Kylie and Adam have been wretchedly sick with fevers and miserable colds. We couldn’t go to Kylie’s Holiday Tea, at which the children were going to perform—I believe they were going to put on antlers and do a dance as reindeer, but it was supposed to be a surprise. Now I’ll never know.

Submission #14

There. There.

I just frankly and openly expressed my feelings to the New Yorker. I sent it to both e-mail addresses that I have. I sent it as myself. I hate conflict, and I feel as if I’d just had a fight with one of my friends.

My hands are cold. My whole damn house is cold. There’s one thermostat for the entire thing and the windows are original to 1927 and to say that it is “drafty” is to imply that there isn’t a constant current of cold air circulating from room to room. I suppose people have larger problems.

If last weekend was any indication, I’ll start feeling terrible within the next few hours. I want to say that I hope this treatment will work, but we’re past the point where things could ever work out the way I’d want them to. The unpleasantness of Herceptin and blood counts and surgeries will occupy the rest of my life, however long that may be. It’s all worth it, of course, but it’s not what one would want, and until I was 31 my life was not perfect, but it was essentially what I wanted. I’m having trouble accepting the loss of possibility.

There’s a line in “Measure for Measure” when Isabella asks “To whom should I complain?” I always remember it as “To whom should I run?” and I think about it all the time. Trapped, alone, in a tragedy with a tacked-on happy ending that doesn’t dispel the miserable way she reaches the end, only to find out it was a comedy all along.

Too Depressing for Judy Garland

Good lord. The original version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was even MORE depressing. It was too depressing for Judy Garland.

It’s my favorite Christmas song. How could it have been even more sad? “Through the years/the people you love will leave you/if they don’t just die/with some gin we all just might seem to muddle by”?

I was so excited about the current piece when I was high on steroids and wrote the first draft, but it’s an open letter to the Shouts & Murmurs editor, and it’s really putting all my cards on the table. I don’t know what the effect will be, or if they’ll even notice. Really, I don’t know whether a cabal of New Yorker editors is sitting around a poorly lit office in monk-like robes, grumbling “How DARE she flaunt our submission guidelines!” or if some editorial assistant sifts through submission messages when he’s drunk and bitterly disappointed that life there isn’t like “Bright Lights, Big City.”

Fear and Self-Loathing in New Rochelle

Seth Mnookin is a lucent, intelligent, provocative writer. Reading his elegantly written articles makes me hate myself.

He was a year behind my husband in high school, and his career success always hits me in the gut with my lack thereof. He went to Harvard, had a serious drug problem, cleaned up, and went on to be a popular culture editor at Newsweek, publish stories in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, etc., and today I just saw that he recently appeared on “The Daily Show.” He’s a print journalist, my age, on “The Daily Show.” I hate him (but really myself).

I am envious of every single accomplishment, and even though I’ve never met him, somehow his having known a number of my friends makes it more personal. I wanted to go to Harvard and have my work in real magazines and have famous people give me glowing reviews and banter with Jon Stewart.

I’m not even kidding about envying the addiction. I’ve always believed that every great writer has or has had a substance abuse problem, and when Seth Mnookin stuck a needle in his arm, the toxic chemicals he injected were for a good time, not miserable discomfort. Don't misunderstand me: I know that tremendous amounts of miserable discomfort were involved, but see above, he cleaned himself up. I do not want to belittle his trauma, but I'm jealous. It’s not like I can someday, somehow, decide to kick the cancer habit.

And yes, yes, I deeply appreciate my compassionate, hardworking husband and perfect daughter, and how much hard work I put into my family and friends and blah blah blah. But sometimes I wish that I had taken a different path with my career, and I’ll bet Seth Mnookin doesn’t spend many weekends putting Dora figurines in Clifford the Big Red Dog goodie bags.

Submission #13

I give up. I hate this and I’m miserable. It’s too short, too late, and too repetitive. Lucky number thirteen.

Christ. My mother is singing “Frosty the Snowman.”