"This piece is not for us."

"We appreciate your work but it doesn't fit our publication."

It depresses me, for sure. But it doesn't hold me back, not yet. As long as I believe in myself, I am not quitting.

Even if it makes me seek external motivation to keep the inner fire kindled, I am not quitting. And to speak of external motivation, I saw Dead Poets Society today. I had heard this had a lot of promise in it. And for sure, it had.

It's a movie about an English professor and his students at a respected, disciplined high school who are part of this secret Dead Poets Society. A movie that teaches, how being different is not being odd but being unique. That why the lines you write, the beliefs you believe, the faces you make need not conform to the standards of the society.

There were moments in the flick, that made me pause the media player and clap. I clapped at the finale. I never realized that a tear had streaked down my cheek when the credits began to roll. And I didn't realize that my hands were still beating against each other.

That being different is not so bad. That being bad at something is not so bad. Because bad is just a word defined badly. It doesn't necessarily have to be bad. That I have to find my own voice. My own gait. My own pose.

And then I can walk proudly amidst the crowd. And some will accept me and my work, one day, if not all.