No Crying in Baseball

Or badassery

May 04, 2025

As you may recall, I waved a white flag in March after a grueling nine months of morning sickness, weird cravings, depression, and utter despair. That was my job search in a nutshell.

My mother told me when I was young, “Never swing at nothin’, never hit nothin’.” Deliberate bad grammar aside, she was right. (She also said, “If you’re bored, you must be boring,” and I took that to heart, too.) I’ve been sending stories, essays, and batches of poetry to commercial and literary magazines since my teens, tracking each submission on a spreadsheet. As a batch was rejected, it would go back out, via snail mail, to another publication. My batting average sucked, but this wasn’t baseball. Only the wins counted, and I’d racked up quite a few.

Applying for jobs was a different story. I chose carefully—positions that fit my salary requirements, my skills, my experience, and my interests, and there was no shortage of these. But my nine-month job search netted a big fat zero, and that’s what I felt like. That’s what I feel like. When I submit work, rejection isn’t personal. Somebody didn’t like a poem. OK, someone else will. Not so much a reflection on me or even the poem as it is on someone’s personal taste or mood. When I submit a resume and a well-crafted cover letter, it’s a little more personal. But when I’m interviewed (yes, I smile), several times, I can’t help but feel that something about me isn’t good enough. The failure is personal. As much as I needed and wanted a job, I could no longer face the daily demoralization. So I quit my looking-for-a-job job.

Now I spend my time where I’m appreciated. I make flyers and posters. I design merch. I march, rally, protest, and dance with my funny parody signs. At the May Day rallies, I must have posed for more than 40 photos. That brought me a lot of pride (and only slight annoyance). People asked where they could buy my signs. (Keep reading.) One friend suggested I turn them into a marketing campaign for myself, and Funder Woman was born.

I gave myself a good spin on LinkedIn, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. I am all those things. But I still feel like a loser, like the F on my chest (for Fun and Fuquinay!) really stands for Failure.

At this point, a therapist would have me list all my successes: I raised a good-hearted child who’s a hell of a writer and musician; I had a book published by Simon & Schuster; I have two Master’s degrees; I’ve been in a stable and loving relationship for more than 40 years; I make good art.

But for each of those things, I can add the failures: my child is sad, my book was panned, etc.

Sometimes people tell me I’m a badass: tough, confident, impressive. But badasses don’t spend their days inert, playing games on their phones and crying while the TV murmurs in the background. Badasses know their worth and don’t settle for less. Badasses brush themselves off after a swing and a miss and swing again, and they don’t stop swinging. I’m more of a broke-ass bitch.

I don’t say these things because I want sympathy or reminders of my value. And this didn’t come from the suck voice or imposter syndrome. I’m not an imposter. I have a strong mind and I make some good stuff and I still like to squeeze all the juice I can from this life. I’m just being honest about the demoralization of a job search—at any age. And I’m showing you the ways I cope—or don’t—with my failures.

A lot of us feel this way at times, and it can impede action. However, even as I stew over my lack of worth to the business community and my brokeassery, I do what I can. I went to three May Day marches, in DC and Maryland, on Thursday. I went to the Flower Mart (first time ever for this forever city resident) yesterday. I’m heading to an in-person Indivisible meeting today. I’m planning a doll-head and thrifted ceramics indoor/outdoor fountain. And I’m trying to figure out how to turn myself into Blossom, one of the PowerPuff girls, even though I’m more of a Buttercup. (Buttercup won’t go over well on LinkedIn.)

Photo by Utah at the May Day event on the National Mall.

Also, after launching my self-promotion campaign on LinkedIn yesterday, I uploaded my four parody protest signs to Zazzle. If you’re interested, you can buy any of these four posters in two different sizes, use a spray glue to adhere them to foam core or cardboard, and attach a wooden paint stirrer as a handle. You can buy two and make them double sided. Or you can put all four on the same sign, a pair on the front and a pair on the back. You can even laminate them with large laminating sheets to protect them from the rain.

Now that I’m not swinging at every pitch, my batting average is bound to improve exponentially as my chances of finding work take a hit. But there’s no crying in baseball anyway.