A Rejected Designer Found Herself After the 13th Submission

I still remember the first time my submission got rejected—13 times before I stopped asking why.

It wasn’t the algorithm failing. It was me.

I grew up between two cultures: my Jamaican mother taught me that silence speaks louder than noise; my Irish father taught me that code can be beautiful if you keep writing even when no one reads it. So I wrote anyway.

At Pixel Pulse, we didn’t chase ‘lucky pigs’ or rainbow balloons—we chased truth.

Every game had a RNG—but real life doesn’t. The odds aren’t published. The rewards aren’t guaranteed. But the rhythm? That’s yours to build.

I used to think: if I stop submitting after the third rejection, will I find myself? Or will I become just another voice in a crowd?

So I kept going.

I started tracking submissions like journal entries—not wins or losses, but moments of clarity at 2 AM. Each draft was a small act of defiance: typed on an old MacBook under fluorescent light, surrounded by half-empty coffee mugs and unread comments.

One night, after submission #13, I opened a file named ‘Still Here’—and for the first time, it didn’t say ‘rejected.’

It said: ‘We see you.’

You don’t need a lucky pig to win.

You just need to show up—with your whole self.