In the past couple of days, I've had a couple of high-end rejections, both of which were extreme long shots. In each case I'd also made it past cuts earlier in the process, and thus I've been dangling with both of these august institutions for quite a while, all the while knowing that I had very little chance of making it to the end.

I guess, in a way, that's a success, though I've got nothing to show for it. Anyhow, there's a certain relief in crossing them off my submission list and forgetting about them. I'm no better or worse off than I was before. My ambition as a poet is unchanged. My feelings about my worth are unchanged. My financial precarity is unchanged. My place in the larger networking world is unchanged. And thus I muddle onward.

But I've also gotten some straight-up good news: two of the people who participated in my online chapbook classes have gotten their manuscripts accepted for publication. This is enormously satisfying, and for sure takes the edge off my own unproductive floundering.

"Unproductive floundering" is just sulky talk, however. I am not, in any way, floundering unproductively, and I know it. I am writing well, better than I ever have, and that, after all, is the heart of the matter. I have a routine, I have collegial support, I have familial support, and I have talent and skill and mulish determination. No money, no famous door-openers, no institutional network, but so what? I am what I am.