On being totally fine with rejection
An exercise that paid off
This is a departure from my usual content, I know. But I came across a half-filled out calendar the other day and thought maybe this wild thing I did a couple years ago might help someone somewhere.
I’m talking about a literal paper calendar, the kind my grandma always bought me for 99 cents at Long’s Drugs to stick on my fridge. (My favorite version every year is Men of the Islands because they are hilarious. They also have ample boxes to write important days and stuff to remember in). I still buy one out of habit every time I go back to Hawaii around the holidays.
When I moved back to NYC a couple years ago and was trying to find my bearings in a city I had left for Philly a decade prior, I floundered a little. I was getting a lot of work as a freelancer, writing recipes and articles, but the work tends to dry up around the holidays (once all the holiday content has been planned and published).
And freelancing is stupid stressful and inconsistent (I’m extraordinarily lucky now to freelance infrequently). Dealing with editors who don’t respond, or anyone who doesn’t respond, can be pretty demoralizing.
So backtrack to January 2023, just over two years of closing Poi Dog the restaurant, and I didn’t feel like a fully baked food writer or anything and I was still cheffing on and off, but without a home base.
I made a commitment to my calendar to apply for one thing every single weekday (I gave myself weekends off). Applying could mean something different every day. It could mean pitching an article, applying for an art show, emailing a store to ask if they would carry my line of sauces.
In each date box on the calendar, I wrote what I applied for. If it was a success, I’d go back, highlight the thing, and note in that same box when I got an acceptance or a response. Rejections got crossed in Sharpie. It was also a really great way of keeping track how long it took for people to get back to me, so that I could anticipate when I would hear from other editors, curators, retailers, etc.
I got rejected and ignored A LOT, but pretty soon, stuff started sticking. Because if I was applying for something every single day with a 20% success rate, it still meant that I was getting well, a lot of stuff.
These daily applications got me an art show at Nordstrom’s NYC flagship store; my fiber art into the Affordable Art Fair NYC (I know, bonkers); I got my first bylines in The Guardian; my sauces onto shelves; an MFK Fisher writing award (which came with thousands of dollars in a cash prize); a workshop teaching crochet at the ACE Hotel, the list goes on and on and on. I also made a ton of contacts all over the city and beyond.
(Posing at Nordstrom NYC with my pieces)
It also got me into other gallery shows I could never have dreamed of participating in, and a lot of my work sold.
I didn’t get a lot of the stuff I applied for. And yes a 20% success rate sounds terrible but it really wasn’t, because I have so much to show for the things that were successes.
I only did the calendar thing for about three to four months, until the work I got from the exercise took over in importance and took up all of my time.
Here’s a link for the 2026 Men of the Islands calendar from ABC stores if you want to try it.
News and links!
The Poi Dog x Habibi Ceramics collab is GORGEOUS.
I somehow made it into Forbes?
I wrote a recipe non-recipe for Spam and Eggs for Food and Wine (it’s in print this month but the link will take you to the digital edition). The accompanying article is the same one that won the MFK Fisher Prize, but truncated for print.
My Hands, Please column from two weeks ago tackles shopping responsible for fish.
I was interviewed by Art Blog.