Napkin Wisdom: Stop Waiting

I recently had a flight delayed for over four hours. Early on, the airline employees kept making announcements that it would probably be about thirty more minutes. Then thirty minutes later, they would be back with the same announcement, on and on for FOUR hours. If you've been in this position before, you know the kind of insanity that can overtake you. All of your senses become heightened. The rage becomes a hot feeling in your head which then becomes a disgusting taste in your mouth which then becomes oils that seep out of your pores. I spent the last hour of that waiting period constantly swiping on deodorant and sending angry tweets to American Airlines demanding free chardonnay. It wasn't a shining moment for me.

Waiting is the worst. No one likes it. Humans don't like it. Dogs don't like it. Cats are probably fine with it actually, I don't know. But regardless, it's one of the least palatable states of existence.

It's the reason that the idea of purgatory is so frightening. It's the reason we don't use dial-up Internet anymore.

But for as much as people hate waiting, we tend to do it a lot. We like to think that all of the delays in our lives are these fixed, inevitable, external circumstances (doctor's offices, subway stations, the line at Starbucks, etc.), but the truth is we create plenty of our own waiting periods in life. We don't just have to wait; we choose to wait. 

I recall a time from a few years back when I was living in Austin, Texas. I had moved there because many of my family and friends were there, and I mean, it's Austin, y'all. Why wouldn't you want to live in that glorious town?

And while that year was filled with wonderful experiences -- food trucks, put-put golf sessions, concerts, outrageously fun cookie swap Christmas parties, invigorating conversations over coffee, lots of thrifting, and so much joy -- still, I felt deeply discontented. For months and months, it felt like I was holding in one giant sneeze -- like something explosive, relieving and wonderful was on the other side of whatever it was I was doing, but I just felt stuck. I was working three part-time jobs, not doing anything particularly creative, and the prospect of trying something new just seemed exhausting.

And I would be lying if I said I didn't have some idea of what I wanted to be doing: I wanted to move to New York City. I wanted to start my career. I wanted to do something BIG.

But instead, I waited. I did life at about 30%, and instead of chasing my dreams, I just watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica (this, by the way, was probably one of the best things to come out of that year).

Looking back on that time in my life, I don't regret it at all, but I kind of wish I could step through the time-space-continuum and slap myself in the face. That would probably cause a black hole, I don't know, but I kind of want to do it. It wasn't like I wasted that year, but man, I waited that year.

I sat, I laid, I wandered until one day something clicked. I signed up for an improv class, my husband and I had a serious talk about making life happen in New York, and we packed up a truck full of all of our most prized possessions and moved to Brooklyn. That first day, when I crossed over the East River on the Manhattan bridge, I felt like I could breathe again. Suddenly, I wasn't waiting anymore.

Via jasonanderin.com

All of this to say: yes, life is full of waiting. It is, and it sucks, and I'm sorry. But if you are in a particularly dismal period of feeling stuck, you may want to ask yourself: who is causing this waiting? Is it some cosmic, external force (God, nature, the DMV) or...is it maybe you? We often try to justify reluctant periods of our lives as seasons of patience, and while those do exist, I would argue that they are not as frequent as we claim they are.

So how about this: If the thing you are doing feels like waiting, then do a new thing.

That doesn't mean necessarily that you should quit your job, move to New York City, engage in risky behavior, or get a face tattoo. But the thing about this existential waiting game is that while we don't often choose to admit it, we tend to know exactly what it is we are waiting on. You know what will change the game for you. Your heart cries out for it all the time, and if you're playing the waiting game, you're probably telling it to shut up right now. So stop doing that, and do something new.

It's scary, it's exhausting, it's risky, but it leads to better things. It really does.

For the record, as is the case with almost everything I write, I am basically writing this post for myself because I am continually forgetful of my life's most poignant lessons. Hopefully, unlike me, you only need to learn this once.

That being said, do something new this weekend! What will you be up to?