Wait for It
I’ve recently had some experiences that lead me to believe that maybe Limbo is worse than I would’ve thought, that it was more of a punishment than it was perhaps meant to be. I say “was” because, of course, in official Catholic dogma Limbo doesn’t exist anymore.
I spent a good number of months on either side of last year’s New Year’s looking for work, having been laid off for the first time in my life and having reached an age where jobs that are appropriate to my level of experience and my level of specialization aren’t exactly flooding the market. This left me a lot of time that could have been spent doing something more productive than looking for work but also left me in a state of mind that wasn’t much conducive to doing anything more productive than looking for work. If I could have just known when I would have been getting back to work, I could have budgeted my money and my time and not only have done something productive but also have had a fair amount of fun on the side. That waiting game, that not knowing, that sense of being in limbo, it’s not good. Not good at all.
Then, more recently, I spent, oh, say eighty percent of my waking hours between the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s lying in bed, wishing the slipped disc in my back would slide back where it belonged. Now thanks to the medications I was taking there were fewer waking hours in that week than I am accustomed to, but even so that was a lot of time to again be waiting for something, waiting in a way that pretty much consumed my consciousness, and not being sure when or if the thing would ever happen.
All in all, these two experiences taught me that waiting for something that you know is coming is a lot better than waiting for something that you are not quite sure is coming. I give Tom Petty a lot of credit for pointing out that “the waiting is the hardest part.” He was definitely on to something there.
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