The wait

Anticipation eats at a person. It's one of those things in life that never really changes even as a person does. When I was six I would sit in class on Fridays and stare at the clock willing it to go faster. Even at that age I knew with all certainty that if I just relaxed, enjoyed my Capri sun and focused on making the the perfect blue swirls in my pencil tray glue sculpture, my torturous wait for scholastic liberation would be easier. Despite this knowledge my stomach was in knots and my concentration was spent on futile attempts of psychokinesis rather than the constant vigilance needed to successfully infuse the white Elmer's glue with beads of the bubbly blue generic work glue from from Albertsons.

My art suffered greatly for it.

As I grew I learned that hosts of other situations can be successfully, even artfully managed. A larger vocabulary allows the expression frustration in ways other than screaming and hurling stuffed animals around my bedroom with enough violence to startle a seasoned war veteran. Broken hearts are eased with cigarettes, whiskey, bad songs and long recitations to bored friends. Successes is usually handled in a similar fashion, replacing only the self loathing beat poet cigarette with the biggest most phallic cigar affordable. An attestment to the masculine dominance over whatever challenge has been overcome. And so on.

Things get easier, or at least dealing with them does. Routines are constructed and adhered to. When perfected it is possible maintain enough dignity to illicit admiration on how bravely you are dealing with the death of Marty the goldfish, because they just don't make goldfish like that one more than once in a lifetime. This can even get you laid.

Anticipation is another beast though. Even with years of work, keeping your sanity is next to impossible. Reason being a routine to deal with the stress of anticipation already exists. A routine your born with, that it self will not die. A routine that is simple, and only involves the losing your fucking mind. Even the most cool and composed are turned into obsessive compulsive dervishes of stress and self sabotage. Any romantically afflicted person waiting for the love interest to return their call is a caustic example of the psychological damage truly achievable by this scary station.

Stare at the phone. Triumphantly announce "Fuck it. I don't even want to see her. I'm going to turn my phone off and meet Greg downtown for a beer." Walk back and forth between the kitchen and the living room for twenty minutes, each time opening the refrigerator and string blankly into the light. Turn the phone off. Flip through the channels fifteen times before lamenting the lack of meaningful programming on these days. Turn the phone back on and check the messages. Sigh and toss the phone into the couch cushions with as much simultaneous indignation and feigned apathy that can be mustered.

Repeat.

Unfortunately romance is not the only circumstance capable of manifesting one of these mild psychotic breaks. An online job posting has done the trick rather nicely in my case. For my convenience the processing status of my application is posted and updated in real time. Though a notification system like this seems banal and even charitable on the part of the company it has wreaked havoc on my daily schedule. Closing date passed I have been checking the website and hitting the refresh button with the desperation of a lab hamster hitting the feeder bar on his cage, trying to get a food pellet out of an empty machine. I am almost surprised that I haven't been sent a message telling me to chill the fuck out, that I needed to be patient.

I think they understand.