No more pouting

After I dropped J off at school I had a good cry yesterday and vowed to not be sad about this whole shiteous debacle anymore. The way I look at it is if Britney Spears can overcome two failed marriages, a drug problem, temporarily losing custody of her children, gaining a bunch of weight, shaving her head and maniacally attacking paparazzi with the butt of an umbrella while still emerging as a well-respected pop star, well, then I can certainly pull myself out of the doldrums handed to me by a pathetic little law firm passing on my brilliant J.

My decision to shrug off the bad news was based on one question: WWJD? If you're thinking "What Would Jesus Do", um, no. I don't swing that way. More like:

What would Jackie do?

What would Johnny do?

What would James do?

Yes, I look up to all these people for different reasons, be they fictional characters or otherwise. They are the trifecta of cool. Each one overcame their obstacles (hello? I'd like to see you escape from being pinned to a table with a deadly laser inching toward your crotch) and did so with class and style.

But, I suppose the real overarching question here that I've been unwittingly avoiding is: What would Don Draper do?


I'll tell you what he'd do. He'd sit and brood alone with a cigarette and a glass of scotch at the end of a smoke-filled bar, and think things like:

"Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car… It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay."

or

"Mourning is just extended self-pity. In New Guinea, pygmies grind up their ancestors and drink the powder in a beer."

(Quotes are both from season 1.) Then he'd finish his scotch, light another Lucky Strike cigarette and be over it. Damn, that guy is smooth.

So I took Don's approach to it and simply reminded myself that J and I are a young, educated couple who are resilient and can prevail over any curveball thrown our way. There will be many rejections for both of us in our lives, and that's okay. It's not the end of the world. Is anything, really? (Besides being homeless, hungry and slowly dying of throat cancer, like a man my dad told me he saw the other day?) So yeah, rejection sucks, but it's a part of life. I suppose if we never got rejected, we'd never know how fulfilling it is to finally attain success. And like Don said, mourning is just extended self-pity...