Hurry up and Wait

This isnt the best time to start a blog post. Round 11 on a Tuesday night in the middle of a week that should have been over more than a week ago. I could use a spot of sleep. Maybe one full day in the sun with no money to spend and nothing to keep clean. But if I waited for the best time to do things, the only doing I would be doing would be waiting...and thats not doing, now is it.

They say we wait, what, 75% of our lives is it? And I ask, you, what is it that is so damn important? I mean what, world at large, are we waiting for? For that great new job, waiting for "the one", waiting for the wife who wont nag, the divorce that will never end, the rain to stop, the morning to come, the workout to be over, the next thing to break just so that you can pick up the pieces. Maybe, I mean just maybe, we spend so much time waiting that we miss whatever is in between.

You are laughing now. You didnt need to read a blog to know that! The buddhists even built an entire religion around it. Unwrap your little soul from around tomorrow and set it at the foot of today. No more waiting to spring once you get what you've been waiting for. Should you not get what you waited for (or what you didnt wait for), you'll probably spend the rest of your life seeking it. That fiery Spanish flame, that autobiographic novel, that nobel prize for the half of the world you saved, that love you never fought for. You'll go looking for it, wont you, for years to come. In dark musty bars and in plastic dentist chairs, in carpeted cubicles and pretty much everywhere but crosswalks... Because no one really looks for anything in the middle of crosswalks, have you noticed? They are really only looking to get the other side. Maybe thats what is so great about that Beatles poster.
(I was kissed in the middle of a crosswalk once. And it was, well. Very romantic. Like most moments though,I eventually had to end up on the other side before the light changed.)

Today one of my best friends in New York got a call from one of the biggest agencies in the world. On her cell phone. On a Tuesday. The creative director had seen her self-made portfolio randomly online and he thought it was just amazing. He said he was coming to New York this winter. He'd love to meet with her. Of course he would. When the world calls, you dont send it to voicemail. It might not call you back.

But like I said, it won't do to sit at home waiting for it to call. Its not a very good prom date. If you wait for it, eating up that 75% like daily calories on a jelly donut, it wont ever call. Its when you're sitting there putzing your way accross the crosswalk, jaywalking eating an enormous deli sandwhich typing on your blackberry and reaching in your purse for your subway card, that is when life will call you up and say "So...whatcha doin?" "Um, what am I NOT doing?? Can I call you back?" you will answer. At that point, if you dont stop and look around and stop looking so hard for the other side, then you get hit by a taxi.

Dont wait for things to get better and dont wait for things to get worse. Dont wait for an engagement ring so that you can wait to take it off when he is not looking. I mean I think about it like this -chances are if you add up the time I spend waiting in line at H and M and at the post office, along with the time that we have spent as a family waiting for results from the oncology lab, then we dont have much of that 75% left. By that logic, Alec, you're screwed buddy, you've actually been forced to take out credit on waiting. That means you have a lot of crosswalks to stop in. A whole month of deli sandwiches. And a lot of love to fall in. And a lot of calls from the world to return.

I wake up a lot at night lately. Then I wait to go back to sleep. And while Im sitting there awake I look at my life--my job in this wierdly skinny glass building, my squished PB and J sandwhiches I bring for lunch that never get old, my family and their unfunny jokes that are much funnier than funny jokes, this tallish chap that I am, yeah, really in love with and this outrageous year in a New York crosswalk and I think, so am I, like, happy? Or something? Is this happy? Or is this some kind of misguided, urbanized manic depression in disguise? No, it sort of just stinks of happy. And if so, what is it that I am still looking for? Maybe happy is like those people I used to see in San Francisco who ride the bus all day... but dont ride the bus to get anywhere in particular.

So tell me. What are are you waiting for?