The Waiting.
Good morning.
I am waiting for people to call me back. This is probably my least favorite part of the morning here at Small Publication because I've started out all proactive, all a-calling people and leaving a flurry of polite but insistent messages on voice-mailboxes across the state. And then I place the phone back in the cradle and...wait. And wait, and sometimes, wait some more. Nothing drains one's energy and motivation like this waiting. Except perhaps outright rejection.
But no. At least with rejection, one can move on, right? On: to the next story, the next series of phone-calls. It's the worst when you start out very bright and early and punctual and PRE-punctual, even--before 9 in the a.m. all optimistic and abuzz with green tea-tinged happy caffeine, and then no one calls you back till 11 or 12. That's the worst.
Because then you sit there in front of your fellow workers, alternately trying to find something productive to do and pretending to be busy while writing email and reading The Comics Curmudgeon; all the while, trying to keep your energy levels up so that when that phone call finally does come—you still remember what the topic of the story was in the first place, and feel glad that the phone call has come instead of, yes, secretly-secretly, in some dark but ever-expanding-with-time corner of the brain, wishing at this point that it hadn't come at all, so that you could just go home instead of working later than usual which is now required of you because this person called later than you'd like.
That's Not what you really want though, not really, not the not-working, because that's the worst of all. That means you've wasted your morning completely, that you are lousy deadweight on the ship that is this staff. Enough mornings like this and perhaps even your purpose in life may be called into question.
You laugh. Ah, but 'tis true.
I am waiting for people to call me back. This is probably my least favorite part of the morning here at Small Publication because I've started out all proactive, all a-calling people and leaving a flurry of polite but insistent messages on voice-mailboxes across the state. And then I place the phone back in the cradle and...wait. And wait, and sometimes, wait some more. Nothing drains one's energy and motivation like this waiting. Except perhaps outright rejection.
But no. At least with rejection, one can move on, right? On: to the next story, the next series of phone-calls. It's the worst when you start out very bright and early and punctual and PRE-punctual, even--before 9 in the a.m. all optimistic and abuzz with green tea-tinged happy caffeine, and then no one calls you back till 11 or 12. That's the worst.
Because then you sit there in front of your fellow workers, alternately trying to find something productive to do and pretending to be busy while writing email and reading The Comics Curmudgeon; all the while, trying to keep your energy levels up so that when that phone call finally does come—you still remember what the topic of the story was in the first place, and feel glad that the phone call has come instead of, yes, secretly-secretly, in some dark but ever-expanding-with-time corner of the brain, wishing at this point that it hadn't come at all, so that you could just go home instead of working later than usual which is now required of you because this person called later than you'd like.
That's Not what you really want though, not really, not the not-working, because that's the worst of all. That means you've wasted your morning completely, that you are lousy deadweight on the ship that is this staff. Enough mornings like this and perhaps even your purpose in life may be called into question.
You laugh. Ah, but 'tis true.
posted by Alice at 4:55 AM
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