twiddling my thumbs

turns out this week’s theme is waiting. i am waiting for a few different developments which are just past-due, among them: the arrival of bureaucratic but important documents, feedback from the company i have been interviewing with, a decision from the lit mag i submitted to last summer (a series of 3 short stories, loosely based on a chaotic periodic in my 20s).

i am not particularly skilled at waiting, equipped as i may be with various mindfulness, breathing, and self-soothing techniques accumulated over the years. or perhaps i have gotten better at certain types of waiting - waiting for a train, or a plane, or a partner to finish getting dressed - those drawn-out moments where the outcome after elapsed time is predictable, familiar, conclusive.

this type of waiting, in contrast, comes with both the promise and the threat of an open-ended fate: if i am rejected by both the company and the lit mag, or my official records can’t be retrieved, then what next? some of the self-soothing techniques i have learned involve welcoming the feelings of fear and uncertainty which are knotted up into that question, and so i close my eyes, whisper to myself: what next? and feel an abrupt tightening-and-loosening sensation roll down my forehead and across the front of my chest like a sinusoidal wave. i am compelled to clear my throat, and am both delighted and disgusted to find it stuffed full of mucus and phlegm.

elsewhere, in the meantime, my muscles and thumbs and ligaments feel an urge to do something; anything! my Gmail is pregnant with unread emails and yet since friday the notification stream has slowed to a drip, drip, drip of marketing promotions and spam from misspelled accounts which purport to be either Costco or Home Depot. I hop back and forth between my laptop and my phone, refreshing my e-mails in the browser and again in the app, until after a time my thumb and my eyes no longer distinguish between Gmail and the various other apps showing red numbered circles in their upper right corner so i scuttle between all the red dots, refreshing here, opening there, skimming a feed here, pressing a heart-shaped emoji there. i have caught up on more Facebook updates in the past 2 days than i had in the previous six months.

after awhile my thumbs and eyes protest the strain on their organs. i jump up and dance around the living room, do jumping jacks, go for a brisk walk around the block. i skip across sidewalk squares, being careful to avoid the gaps - step on a crack, break your mother’s back! - but i am constantly wiggling, jiggling, trying to weasel my way through some slippery internal experience which remolds itself the moment i think i’m able to name it. it is not just fear, but uncertainty. not just uncertainty, but restlessness. not just restlessness; jumpiness! not just jumpiness but insatiability.

and now, finally, it is nighttime. i usually spend my first minutes in bed continuing the mind race but eventually, as the night expands, my sense of time dilates and i lose track of the idea that there is anything i was waiting for in the first place. at long last the thumb-twiddling has come to a close and i may rest; tomorrow, a whole new day awaits!

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash