Waiting

I spend a lot of time waiting. Okay, fine, procrastinating. After a while, the lines start to blur. So much of writing is this space where I wait for sources to respond to interview requests, editors to accept my stories, or instructors to respond to questions.

The one thing I'm much better at is not waiting for inspiration to strike. Feeling creative, I've learned, is 99% about refusing to look up from the page until I get the damn thing written. Sometimes the "not looking up" takes the form of a run, or a long shower, or cooking up a week's worth of food. But through it all the words fester and somehow, at the end of whatever process a piece takes, a story appears. I don't wait for words as often as I used to. This isn't to say there isn't panic, desperation, horrible first drafts and much worse. But I can make them happen. There's little waiting.

It's easy to wait, people say, when you distract yourself and keep busy. I have no dearth of things that must be done. Some are time-sensitive, others less so. I have hard deadlines, even in these last few days of spring break. Appointments, reading, research for new projects, prepping my house and life for another ten-week sprint of classes, assignments and other madness. There's so much to occupy my mind. This waiting should be easy. Instead, it balloons effortlessly to fill every crevice in my brain.

The list  lies untended, while the waiting blossoms into a life of its own. It weighs my limbs down, lifts my fluttering heart into my throat, reduces words to meaninglessness. This waiting, it has grown into my whole self until I cannot give shape to what it is I am waiting for. An email. A phone call. A test result. A feeling. A life. The little delays meld into a formless whole, a waiting presence in the midst of what should be a mad rush to get the rest done. Distractions, work  -- even sleep -- fall to the wayside as this grows, this waiting. I lie awake, and when I dream I hold a talisman, bright blue and cats-eye to ward off some unknown evil. I could not tell you why it is I held it to my lips as I dreamed last night. When I woke I remembered the colors, the feel of the cold stone against my fingers, as though the cold and bright would hasten the end of the wait.

And all of this when I know full well there isn't an end. There will always be another editor, another story, another medicine. It's called being alive and a grown-up. In my brain, I know this. And still, I
struggle as though somehow, the world will be different at the end of my watch.