I see a lot of back and forth going around about "apply anyways" and the dread of rejection that sometimes holds people back and it reminds me that you rarely see the stories of rejection from people who have already broken into the industry.

I've been rejected from SO MANY jobs, I basically lost count. Two of these were from major / popular studios and were especially painful as they involved travel or long interviews. It took a good chunk of time to recover from one in particular.

I'm not trying to downplay people's feelings, especially those who fall victim to the crueler sides of our industry's biases, I just wanted to say that rejection, and sometimes feeling very badly about it, is something we all experience. Even those who have "made it."

I try to think about it like an actor. Not getting roles is part of the job. Those hiring are looking for a specific thing and mostly don't let you know what it is. Your job is to lay out who YOU are. If those don't match up, it's often good you don't get the gig.

Sometimes that helps me. The most painful rejection would have involved a move that would have taken me away from our families. Within 6 months of that rejection my father-in-law suddenly passed away. We would have been hundreds of miles away when they needed us.

Never would have been there for our family, never would have worked at Telltale, never would have discovered I love writing interactive stories, never would have blah blah blah. You're picking up what I'm putting down, I'm sure

Matt Boland