The slowdown

I hate waiting. People always grumble about impatience, but we are all impatient. We all need to know or do or have what we want as soon as we can. Few of us love to wait.

So I know you're in the same boat. What I don't know is whether waiting takes you over as it does me. What I don't know is whether waiting swiftly becomes a torture—such a torture in fact that it's easier to simply write off whatever you're waiting for than to remain waiting.

The danger in this is one of throwing babies out with bathwater. But to the tortured one, it's a price worth paying. Well and truly. Writing off means you'll no longer be waiting. It means, go about your life as if this is all there is. Forget hope and wishes; just dim the headlights and pretend that all there is is what's on the road before you.

The alternative is to wait for what's not coming—and that's the worst of all, worse even than the torture of waiting itself. In my experience, this is why you don't ever want to wait too long. This is what justifies writing off in advance, rather than holding out hope.

Hope. This is what makes waiting a torture.

When I said waiting takes me over, I meant it. Right now I can't think of anything else, do anything else, write about anything else (unless there's a brief and a few hours' diversion into the pixelated, Legoland-style world of Official Business).

All I can do is wait. Or write off. Either way, it's torture.