Even though you know the material. Even though you know the other players. Even though you have played the same material with the same players successfully before. Even though you have no conflicts on your calendar. Even though you’ve been listening to the material for years, thinking about it, yakking about it, mooning over it. Even though you’ve had actual literal dreams in your sleep about performing on just such a gig playing just such material with players that are these exact players. Even though you are friends with everyone in the band. Even though you’ve done every reasonable non-creepy triangulation one can do to position yourself for the call when the time for the call comes. Sometimes you simply don’t get picked. And it feels terrible. I suppose if you were moving through life with supreme unending confidence and belief in one’s own powers of transformation it wouldn’t feel terrible, but I am not that person, and probably neither are you, and so when you realize that you didn’t get picked, despite all of the above, you feel terrible. You feel rejected. You feel unchosen. You feel bereft. You feel like a loser because in this gig-filling instance where there are only so many spots for musicians and just one specific gig date in question, you are in fact a loser. The loser. I’m not going to lie to you. Sometimes the ego takes a slap.  

So what do you do in such a situation? Well, you can spend an adequate amount of time feeling sorry for yourself, the problem here being how to gauge “adequate.” I’m not going to tell you to avoid all self-pity. I am not some manosphere influencer robot person. Self pity — it happens. And on these occasions I wish I could still recommend that people smoke cigarettes. I don’t recommend that. Cigarettes are bad for you; news at 11. However, one does wish one could smoke a single solitary Camel Light out on the back porch while feeling grindingly and wholly covered in shame scabs. That’s about the proper amount of self-pity. One cigarette’s worth. After that you’re just wallowing. 

Second, it’s important to keep it to yourself. I am not suggesting that you hop on all of your emotions like Yosemite Sam and never express your feelings. (Y. Sam was actually quite good at expressing his feelings.) But I am saying that self pity, expressed outside the audience of your single solitary Camel Light, is only a feedback squeal of despair. No one cares. No one understands. You’re just making noise. And it just makes you sound whiny. Because that’s how self-pity translates into the world. It wells up inside your brain as poetic, justified self pity, but the tongue can’t translate it without turning it into whining. I’m sorry. I wish this weren’t the case. So keep it to yourself and your cigarette. 

p.s. Smoking is bad. 

Don’t go complaining to the band leader, or your friends in the band, or your other friends outside the band, or your spouse. For godsakes don’t send passive aggressive texts about it. (“Really interesting lineup y’all ended up with for that bar mitzvah gig, chief.”) Don’t take it to social media and be weird. You probably shouldn’t even write highly sublimated blog posts about it. Feel sorry for yourself. Smoke your one solitary, metaphorical cigarette. And move on. 

Productive next steps that don’t include whining: there’s only one: keep practicing. Keep listening. Keep going to gigs. Keep booking other gigs. Life is not fair, and besides you are a poor judge of fairness anyhow. The only thing to do is to be like a shark and keep swimming. There’s still something you don’t know how to play. I can guarantee it. And the world is filled with players who stunted out — at 17, 27, 37, whatever. They got to their point of comfort and all progress ceased. They didn’t learn any new material. They didn’t learn how to solo over changes. They didn’t figure out how to sing harmony. Their record collection never got past 2004. They never wrote any tunes. Don’t be one of those people. Pick some underexplored skill/nook and get after it. That’s the only way to dodge the ineluctable inequities that life throws in your face, those water balloons we are all heir to. Keep moving. Only the dead stay still.