Creative Aging: The Anxiety of Rejection

Editor’s note: Fourth in a series

By this age, I should be able to let rejection just roll off as easily as baseballs rolled off my hands in high school. (Leftfield was my chosen position, where I first observed the miraculous nature of prayer being answered when the ball rarely came to me.) As a former ad guy, I’ve faced so much rejection that conventional wisdom says by now I should have developed a protective callous from all that endless abuse. But the experience of age tells me that conventional wisdom is a whole lot of b.s. You may learn how to deal with rejection, but it still always hurts. 

Recently I applied to two prestigious summer writing programs. Yeah, at 71 I’m putting myself out there like a college student.

I’m gearing up for the April rejections. But this time, the gearing up is different. 

The rejections of the past always were about my ideas being rejected. Or there might have been people simply more talented than I who did better, got the job, or the client. Those rejections produced lots of self-flagellation trying to swat away the pain of internal imposter syndrome. My therapist daughter tells me that imposter syndrome is endemic among Millennials and GenX’ers. Hey guys, you didn’t invent this. 

But now, there is a whole slew of other reasons to add to the question, “Why was I rejected?”

It’s perfectly okay in this social-justice fueled world to dismiss someone’s ideas and talents based on age. The irony is that my writing and ideas are better now than they have ever been. 

One: These programs want a bunch of aspiring, brilliant, sassy, sardonic, angry young writers envisioning a more just society. The kinds who are selling books today. Not someone my age, who is … less angry. While applications no longer ask for a birthdate, the reviewers can easily look you up on the web. Between my website and LinkedIn account, they’ll know I’m old. In this case, it doesn’t matter how good my writing might be. We live in a society that is ageist. It’s perfectly okay in this social-justice fueled world to dismiss someone’s ideas and talents based on age. The irony is that my writing and ideas are better now than they have ever been. 

Two: Then there is the article I recently read about the Masters of Fine Arts program at Columbia University. Students are being encouraged to identify in their novels a character’s ethnicity, color and pronouns, right up-front. I have no problem with people expressing and celebrating their identities and pronouns. But when it comes to creating characters in my own writing, I’m staying away from this trend. As I learned teaching at USC, old white guys are now always under the microscope by a new generation for every possible infraction, and there is no tiptoeing into this new identity framework correctly. Additional rules and requirements are manufactured every week. And it’s created a minefield laced for an unavoidable explosion that could kill my new writing career in seconds. 

Three: And now here is the most paranoid reason for rejection that’s making kasha out of my kishkes. (Note: I’m learning from other groups who are using their ethnic expressions with great pride, to now return to mine, which I always publicly avoided because I was afraid it made me look too Jewish.)  I read an article this week about the diminishing numbers of Jews being admitted into a whole range of fields, programs and universities in America. The thesis in the article is how Jews are losing out in the world of DEI. If this conclusion is valid, then might this have influence on the acceptance process for these writing programs? Both applications had very clearly and prominently stated DEI policies, which leads me to believe they are intending to make sure the composition of their attendees is diverse and inclusive. Might I lose out because an old Jew is not counted to be among a diverse group of writing students and that there are too many Jewish writers in America now and others need to be let in? 

Yeah, yeah. I’m whipping myself up into a frenzy. It drives everyone around me crazy. One of my therapists reassured me it’s a defining characteristic of creative personalities. 

Life would be so much easier at this age if I was content just watching ESPN and The Sports Channel every day. Isn’t that what old guys are supposed to do?

Gary Wexler woke up one morning and found he had morphed into an old Jewish guy.