The year of rejection: my experience so far

By: Victoria Diaz.

Last year while scrolling through TikTok I found this video where  a girl commented about something called The Year of Rejection, wich it’s exactly as it sounds. For a whole year you start doing things that you know you’re more likely to be rejected than accepted. Like job applications, asking people out, speaking out more. Just anything you can think of. And after a tough 2023 where I even considered dropping out of my career as a film student because I had a very horrible teacher who made me doubt myself and made me feel useless I thought why not? 

Currently it’s 2024 and my year of rejection has begun and I decided it would be related to my filmmaking and writing career. I started by sending my short film Casiopea’s Kingdom to different film festivals. And like I knew, most festivals rejected my work and others waitlisted me. But there was one who accepted me and put my short film, among others, on their platform letting me showcase my work for the first time in an international area. And I was really happy, it was the first time I did something related to cinema outside of college and it paid off. I got reviews and criticism for my work and I’ll be forever grateful for it.

And then I discovered online magazines. I also send a bunch of applications and recently started sending submissions for my writing which is a part of me I used to keep hiding because, at my college, they don’t encourage you so much for… anything really (if you are wondering why I don’t switch colleges I simply can’t afford so) and is going really well. I’m writing and you’re probably also reading and doing some videos for other magazines. I’m really happy I discovered them, it has helped fall in love with writing all over again. 

Also I finally started doing some content creation in spanish (my first language). I’m currently doing YouTube and TikTok (occasionally Instagram) and I’m really happy. I mean I’m aware I need to be a little bit more organized but I like it. I vlog about my life (mostly things related with art) and talk about movies and books which are making  me watch and read more, something I lost contact with last year because I was really depressed. Every time I watched a movie it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to make movies (thanks to my teacher) but now I’m buying more books and going to the cinema more and there’s a magic about it that I’m glad I can fully comprehend… yet.

Also I send a lot of job applications I haven’t heard of but once you send as many it suddenly is not that scary anymore and you realize that your talent and ability has nothing to do with rejection or no response. Maybe they’re not hiring at the moment. Maybe they didn’t check spam but, at least, you send them. 

To sum up my year of rejection, it's going pretty great. It definitely has helped me with the confidence in my work and myself. And I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year looks like…