DEAD IN THE WATER

I'm sending my writing off to agents and so far I've been given the happy nod from the self publishing arseholes that want me to pay (not what I was looking for) and the scowl of disapproval from the real agents that could be helpful (I say could be because I have no experience to say that they certainly would be). With the first rejection letters I felt okay, like it was a right of passage, but now that feeling has changed. I check my email and when I see a rejection I can almost hear the sound of hammer on nail head, driving that spike of hate deep into the cheap wood of my literary coffin.
Should I stand and watch as they hammer more and more nails in and then lower me down into that hole? Listen as they start tossing spadeful upon spadeful of wet earth down onto its wooden roof and here that bang of inevitability as with each load I am forced to accept the brutal reality of life? The simple truth that I'm just  not good enough, not exciting enough or even more realistically that I'm simply not hard working enough?
If I fight on and keep taping away and chasing this dream when do I finally look up and know that I'm beat? Will it be a month down the road or ten months? Will I die knowing I could have done it if I'd just stuck at it or will I die knowing I should have accepted my weaknesses and just got on with life instead of wasting time trying to catch something that was always out of reach?
Right now I feel like quiting. Turning it in. Old Yella' has a rope around his neck and he's being led to the back of the barn because he simply can't see anymore, the farmer has his gun and it is only going to take one barrel, but he's loaded both.
I can write for my own amusement, put my stuff up on line, fill my blog and have a respectable time without any pressure or possible achievement clad in the fancy clothes of finance. Its something I will probably end up doing.
I think I look and see my failings, can see that I'm no Wordsworth or Joyce, struggling against the world, armed with prose, punctuation and the inevitability of my own success. I'm not the man I wished I was. I'm not even the man I hoped I was.
I won't give up yet. I still have some energy in the old pulse rifle and a steady aim. I can see the enemy approaching and I can knock a few down before apathy and defeat take this battered fortress, pillage the dream with its stark and powerful armies of reality and finally I find I must submit myself to the average. The mundane.
I'm sending off, I'm continuing to type, to craft and to try but my eye now wanders. It sees what must be the alternative, a job that I can rise through the ranks in. Be it in a shop or in an office or sweeping roads. Reality  hits and i'm rocked. My legs have wobbled and everyone in the arena knows the score now. This bum goes down in the next couple of rounds.
I was never a real contender.