Waiting

Waiting is hard.

Waiting tables, for someone like me, is nearly impossible. I've done at in the friendly confines of a summer camp, as a counselor, for our biannual "fancy" dinner where we wait tables in character. Loads of fun. Definitely not the same as being an actual waiter.

Waiting for acceptances or, more often, rejections, is the toughest part of being a writer. You sit there, at the mercy of theater companies and fellowship committees, having put your heart and soul on paper and having no other power to convince them that you're worthy. The only part that makes the wait for college acceptances worse is that, in that case, you actually expect someone to say yes. Woe to he who expects.

And then, there's expecting... waiting for the expected. There are all kinds of divinations that go on on the birthing industry, all kinds of special warning signs that tell you when the baby is nine months, eight weeks, two days, or six hours away. They are all, to put it politely, bull-crap. No one knows. Two days could mean three weeks; six hours could mean twenty minutes. And when predictions are off by that kind of scale, they aren't predictions at all, but wild guesses.

We're left with the pure experience of waiting. Sitting, standing, doing dishes... taking walks for the sake of walks... looking for any and all events within shirt walking distance. Watching lots of TV. It's not at all easy. There's a part of me that would love to get work done, but the mind won't consent to that. It wants to wait, too. So that's what we'll do.

Waiting is hard. Luckily, eventually, it ends. What lies beyond waiting can be truly transformative, joyous, life-changing... and, sure, sometimes it's disappointing too. But at the very least, the end of waiting produces one wonderful feeling: relief.