Pessimism

I received a particular rejection email recently from a local company:

Thank you for your inquiry. I typically don’t reply to a candidate if I feel it’s not a good fit, but in this case I’d like to offer a small piece of advice for your future job search. I definitely sensed a bit of pessimism in your email which was the main reason we disqualified you.

I’m not sure how wanting to leave my current job is pessimistic.

Also not sure how writing a novel on spec is pessimistic. A year of evenings hunched over the laptop against the odds of the final product being published or even publishable, is that pessimistic? Then another year rewriting after a peer review hated the second half of it, was that pessimistic? To keep submitting through 45 agent and 4 publisher rejections, maybe that was pessimistic? And after I beat the odds and had my first novel published, and a 6 months of lackluster sales, what did I do in a fit of pessimism? I started outlining my next novel. Maybe that was pessimistic.

She doesn’t want to hire me, that’s okay. I can take rejection. And after receiving this email I don’t want to work for her either. I definitely sensed that she’s a poor judge of character. Just a bit.