Waiting. Playing the waiting game. (It stinks, in case you were wondering.)

I’ve come to the realization that waiting really is the pits.

Well, there are some times when waiting is fun. Or it can be made fun. Like when I’m in line for a workout really early in the morning, surrounded by thousands of my newly-discovered close friends. We are all in it together, bound by some undetermined brand of crazy, and the solidarity makes it fun.

Waiting in line for Combat. It's 4 am. Yes, we are smiling.

Waiting in line for Combat. It's 4 am. Yes, we are smiling.

But this waiting right now, when I am on pins and needles to hear if I’ve made it to the next round of a speaking opportunity? When the email saying they’d received my submission came with the glib statement, “We’ll let you know by the 19th.”? This waiting is the pits.

It’s the 19th. It’s been the 19th for almost 20 hours here, at the time I’m writing this. Okay, 19 hours and 31 minutes, and if my computer had seconds on it I could tell you the seconds. But who’s counting?

“I’m waiting to see if I’ve made it to the next round of a speaking opportunity” sounds easy to dismiss. It doesn’t sound all that critical, right? 

The thing is, though, I poured some of my heart into that submission. And in part I’m waiting to hear if my heart is going to be deemed acceptable.

That’s harder to wait on. Harder to think about. Harder to breathe through. There’s nothing glib about that feeling.

And even though I can rationalize why it’s taking so long (they are all busy, there are a ton of great submissions, they totally forgot about mine, they decided immediately mine wasn’t good enough but spaced on sending the “thanks but no thanks” mail, they all died in a freak bomb blast that somehow nobody knows about, they actually will be getting to me by tomorrow or the next day) there is a part of me that feels like a teenager, waiting to be asked to a dance. I’m excited that I might be. And sad that I might not be.

Nineteen hours and 37 minutes now.

I wish the mail would just come.

Will it ever come?

Kind of like waiting for the sun to go down. 

Kind of like waiting for the sun to go down. 

Nica WatersComment