I woke up today to the news that I was not selected to mentor trainees interested in writing grants. They had over 70 mentors who expressed interest and well, none of the students had similar interest as mine, so I was not needed for mentoring. At first, I was stunned. It’s not every day that people reject me with grant writing. But then I remembered maybe it was all for good.

My ways are unconventional and well, this isn’t the first time I have been counted off. So I decided to write this to myself. Mostly to showcase that until it exists, then all the dreams I have with grant writing would be dreams. To turn it to reality, I need to put it in words. I need to be deliberate about what I mean for example when I say grants are stories. I also lack time and patience. My head is still on a long break from work that the idea of teaching or mentoring may not be right for me these days.

But I can persevere. The next couple of days are my attempt at making sense of grants as stories, my attempt at explaining it, celebrating it, and bringing it to the center of my life so that folks will understand how it has helped me soar. I don’t know what the structure will look like but I will try to share tibits of what I imagine this can be. Motivated by this rejection, I wrote a lot today, as in a lot and for the first time, decided to keep it from here. Not because I don’t think there are aspects of it worthy keeping, but more so because I am learning to find myself in this process, learning to persevere courageously too, until this story I have been telling to an audience of one, makes sense.