I spent most of yesterday waiting for a particular piece of news. After I got the kids to bed last night, finally, I got the call that my newest niece had been born after a day of labor, and everyone was doing well. Obviously, hooray for that.
Today, though, I find myself waiting for something else. The kind of gut-wrenching, throat-tightening wait that makes you check the clock every 17 seconds before getting back to wringing your hands together in an apparent attempt to flay the skin off of them.
It’s awful. I hate it.
And I might as well get used to it; waiting for word from agents or editors about novel queries isn’t going to be any more fun.
It occurred to me, then, as I was biting my lip and checking the wall clock for the 763rd time, that life is often filled with an absurd number of these kinds of torturous, agonizing, soul-crushing waits.
Waiting in lines…
Waiting for good news…
Waiting for bad news…
Waiting to get your grades…
Waiting for your taxes…
Waiting for her to say “Yes”…
Waiting for that damned stick to make a “+” sign…
Or a “-” one…
Waiting for your driver’s license…
Waiting to take the test for it…
Waiting to go on stage…
Waiting for the right time…
Waiting for edits…
Waiting for opinions…
Waiting for approval…
Waiting to live…
Waiting to die…
Something else occurred to me: those last two seem to be opposites. They’re not.
It’s been said to death and back, beaten into the ground over and over and over. But repetition doesn’t make it untrue; we’ve all got limited time to run around on this little blue marble. Just a few precious years of Life.
If you spend the time you’ve been given just waiting, you’re wasting it, flushing it away as surely as someone who’s morbidly waiting for their time to come. And yes, there are such people, more than you’d probably realize.
I’m not going to be one of them. You shouldn’t be either.
The time for waiting is past. The time to act is now, always now.
Especially because, see, the wrong action can be corrected.
The good things in Life, though, don’t come from waiting for them. They come from grabbing on and not letting go.
So go grab something. Hold on.
And stop waiting.
For me, that means it’s time to send out novel queries.
What’s it mean to you?
Pud’n
Puddintopia 