Dear reader, brace yourself for the rage writing that is coming your way. I just got rejected again, and I’m processing it by venting to you.
I just got rejected by a publisher for my second book. I was told, in so many polite words, that I needed to grow my social media following before they’d consider me. They want the audience pre-built, the marketing pre-done, the risk pre-eliminated. So instead of writing, I have to make video reels. My craft, the actual thing they would be publishing, is less important than whether I can stop a stranger from scrolling. Make it make sense. What they’re really saying is: do all the hard work, and then come back so we can take credit for it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been on the wrong end of this kind of logic. I was a finalist for the Chicago Police Department superintendent position. I grew up in Illinois. I grew up going to Chicago — loving that city, loving that department — the way some people love a sports team or a hometown establishment. It wasn’t performance. It was in me. My passion for CPD wasn’t manufactured for an interview. It was bone-deep, and everyone in that room could feel it.
They chose someone else. Someone from out of state who had run a larger department. The numbers looked better on paper. More officers, bigger city, broader scope. And isn’t that exactly what the publisher said? Get more numbers — more followers, more reach, more proof — and then we’ll talk. It didn’t matter that I loved that city with everything in me. It didn’t matter that I had written a book worth publishing. In both rooms, the answer was the same: come back when your numbers are bigger. As if the size of a roster determines the quality of a leader. As if the size of an audience determines the quality of a writer.
I’ll tell you how that story ends. I was recently told he was one of the most ineffective leaders they’d ever had. Not because he lacked credentials. Because he didn’t love the city. He didn’t love the department. He was checking a career box. I would have given that job everything I had — not because I needed to prove something, but because I genuinely, deeply cared. And caring, it turns out, is not something you can manufacture with a résumé. I just wanted a chance to show that.
This is not just my story. It happens every single day, in every industry, to people who are absolutely worth the bet.
The actor who shows up to every audition, who has trained for years, who gives everything in the room — passed over again and again while the theater casts the same familiar faces. Not because those faces are better. Because they’re known. Safe. Low-risk. And now there’s a new twist to that knife: casting directors want actors with a big TikTok following. Never mind that the aspiring actor is already juggling three jobs just to cover rent. Now they’re also supposed to be content creators. I understand the business logic. I do. But what we’re really saying is: the thing you’ve spent your entire life perfecting is less valuable to us than your ability to go viral. The audition has become almost beside the point.
The first-time homebuyer who can’t get a loan because they haven’t proven they can handle debt. The only way to prove it is to have debt. The bank wants a track record of the very thing they won’t allow you to start.
The internal candidate — the one who stayed, who sacrificed, who bled for the organization — passed over for the outside hire who arrives shiny and unknown. Familiarity, it turns out, breeds not contempt but invisibility. The people who know you best somehow see you least.
The venture capitalist who claims to fund bold, disruptive ideas but only writes checks to people who already have exits, money, and connections. They want revolution, but only if it comes pre-insured.
What all of these have in common isn’t cruelty. It’s something more insidious than that. It’s the desperate, institutionalized desire for the finished product. The experienced worker. The built-in audience. The proven commodity. Institutions say they want potential, but they only reward proof. They’ve outsourced the risk of belief onto the very people who need someone to believe in them.
And here’s what gets me. The people being passed over? They are often the ones who would give you everything. The diamond in the rough doesn’t take the opportunity for granted — they’ve been waiting for it. They’ll outwork, outlearn, and outlast the safe hire every single time, because they are acutely aware that they were given a chance when they didn’t have to be. That feeling doesn’t leave you. It becomes fuel.
So if you’re sitting in rejection right now — if someone told you to come back when you have more experience, or more followers, or more proof of the thing you haven’t been allowed to do yet — I need you to hear this: the system is not a verdict on your worth. It is a reflection of other people’s fear. Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep becoming, even when no one is watching. Especially when no one is watching. Because the people who were told no and kept going anyway are the ones who eventually have the most interesting stories to tell. Your persistence is not naivety. It is your greatest asset.
But I also want to speak directly to the people on the other side of the table.
If you are in a position of power — if you are the hiring manager, the publisher, the casting director, the investor, the committee, the decision-maker — I want you to sit with something. Think about a time when someone took a chance on you before you were ready. Before you had all the credentials, before you’d proven yourself, before the résumé reflected what you knew you were capable of. Someone looked past your inexperience and saw your potential. That decision changed your life.
You are now that person for someone else.
The easiest choice is always the safe one. But easy choices produce predictable outcomes. And predictable outcomes don’t change anything.
The person with the most followers doesn’t always have the influence you think. The person who leads the greatest number isn’t always the most competent.
The diamonds in the rough are in front of you. They don’t look polished yet. They’re not supposed to. That’s the entire point. Your job — if you choose to do it with any real courage — is to see past the surface to what someone is capable of becoming with the right opportunity.
Give someone the chance you were once given. Not out of charity. Out of the clear-eyed recognition that potential is real, hunger is real, and the willingness to work for something is the rarest and most valuable thing in any room.
Remember what it felt like to be overlooked. And then refuse to be the reason someone else feels that way.
