I'm not a Publishing Slut

I think I've recently experienced growth. For as long as I can remember, my attitude about research was as soon as something was finished, send it to a journal to be reviewed. There are definitely times that I can remember when I've worked on an article and polished and got it to the point where I thought it was perfect (though reviewers seem to never agree with me on that). There have been other times when a paper just wasn't very good but was as good as it was going to get, and I sent it out inspite of its flaws. Whether it was a poorly designed study, unremarkable results, or insignificant conclusions, surely someone will want to read it, right? So last week, I had a paper that I had worked on a fair amount, and I had it on my to-do list to send it out. I had the journal picked, I had checked the manuscript submission guidelines, everything was ready. I knew that it didn't have a good chance of even a revise and resubmit. If it got rejected, I had already decided not to put too much effort into sending it out again because it wasn't part of my research program. But still, it doesn't hurt to give it a try once, does it? A host of reasons to not submit this occurred to me, not the least of which was the potential reviewers who would read this mediocre work and might be biased against something later of which I was proud. I said no. I didn't send it. And after the decision, I felt pretty good about it. Growth!