Waiting for, well, something that never comes
The last few days have been somewhat plagued by this feeling. I’m anxiously waiting for something that never arrives.
What is it that I’m waiting for? Well over the last few days, it’s been a number of things.
Calls to third-parties at work result in “I’ll call you back”. I then sit there waiting for the call back. Someone emails me asking a question. It looks urgent. I respond immediately, but ask a question of my own for clarification on some point. I then sit and wait for a response, which never comes. I check the stats on my blog. Then I check them again. Then again. Then again. Have they gone up from the last time I checked?
These are all manifestations of the same sort of issue. I’m expecting some sort of immediate response, based on criteria that I’ve set myself. I then sit there anxiously waiting for the response to arrive, unable to do anything else in the mean time, in case I then miss the response.
Part of this is a logic problem, I think. When someone says, “I’ll get someone on that right away – they’ll give you a call”, I take it to mean that some one will be calling me imminently. I don’t want to miss the call, so I sit there waiting for the call. Doing nothing.
Part of it is also that I can’t really hold much info from a variety of jobs in my head at the same time. If I persuade myself that I’m not going to be getting the phone call any time soon and then go and work on some other task, chances are that when the person does call me back, I’ll find it difficult to switch back to that original task. I find that awkward and embarrassing, so I try and avoid it.
The website stats issue I mentioned may look like something different, but I don’t think it is. When I find myself repetitively looking at the stats, it’s like I’m waiting for something. I don’t know what. But those familiar feelings of anxiety and of having to concentrate on nothing else are there in spades. Perhaps knowing that people are reading that I’ve written makes me feel like they are communicating with me in some way – a little like the guy eventually calling me back at work.
What I really need, of course is to shift the anxiety. None of the above are anything like this much of a problem with my anxiety levels are lower.
Do any of you have any anxiety busting tips?
Update: It’s a few hours now since I published, and non of you have been visiting to push my stats up! Have you any idea how badly that affects my anxiety?!?
…and for the avoidance of doubt, that was a joke. 
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4 Responses to “Waiting for, well, something that never comes”
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awildanimal on August 28th, 2009 awildanimal(Quote)
James
I don’t know if I can help with the anxiety (I’m afraid my personal solution is currently the odd bottle of Green Goblin Cider) but you’re certainly not the only one that does the waiting thing – same logic/same difficulty switching between tasks
I do this ALL the time!
Wild
Rachel on August 29th, 2009 Rachel(Quote)
Hi James,
I think there are two separate issues here:
1. Waiting for a response that never comes
I hate that. It always makes me sad. I feel forgotten. Or judged. Or both. Oftentimes, I’ll be very direct about some topic, and for reasons that escape me, people disengage. (?!?!) Directness is so important to me, at both ends of a dialogue, that I just can’t do it any other way. I’m trying to convince myself that being direct is just my way of weeding out the people I’ll never connect with anyway, but it’s still very hard.
2. Waiting for a response that does not come immediately
My husband tells me that I always look for an immediate response, and he’s generally right. Partly, it’s just insecurity; I want someone to reassure me that I haven’t said something to drive them off. And partly, it’s because I tend to jump on tasks right away and have difficulty imagining that other people don’t (despite 51 years of extremely clear and compelling evidence to the contrary). I’m always afraid I’m going to forget the Very Important Thought that just passed through my mind, so I often just go for it. Even if I write it down to do later, it’s very hard for me to let go of it, because I know that I’m going to have about a million other Very Important Thoughts in the meantime.
When my husband is away for a couple of days and I can observe my patterns, I find it hilarious to watch myself bouncing from task to task like a billiard ball. I get an idea in my head, I go to carry it out, and on the way, I get a whole other idea in my head, and I go to carry it out, but then, oh gosh, I’d better do that other thing over there before I forget, and before you know it, it’s three hours later, and I can’t remember where I put my list.
For me, the only way to manage the anxiety is to channel it into something else: writing, art, watching a movie, exercising, etc. And yeah, sometimes, I just stay anxious, but I accept it. It’s just part of who I am. Ultimately, I get bored with my anxiety and turn my attention elsewhere.
DonkeyBuster on August 29th, 2009 DonkeyBuster(Quote)
LOL…OK, here’s a tiny bump up in your stats! =0)
I am familiar with what you describe, especially when it comes to waiting for service people to show up… living in the country it’s really very loose. They’re generally pretty good about showing up on the day they say, but time? Oh forget it. Even as basic as morning or afternoon, it’s really just hit and miss.
And don’t even think about call backs… it’s never going to happen. I’m trying to get ahold of a welder to come do some on-site work for me, I leave messages and nothing, absolutely nothing. I just have to keep trying until I manage to catch him or annoy him enough. The guys at the various car shops always say… we’ll call you back and let you know what’s going on but do they? No. Well, they might if I left my car there for a week, but I generally need it sooner than that.
I’ve gotten better at continuing to do my work around here while I wait for repairmen… having noticed my pattern makes it easier to work with. In a sense I can say to myself, ‘Oh, this again’ and just get on with things.
One of the things I’ve done that I think helps me is when I’m just sitting, kind of blanking out, I direct a thread of attention to the anxiety and just watch it, not fiddle with it, just observe it and become familiar with it, its peaks and valleys, its buzziness, how irritating it is to my system, all the different ideas and thoughts that come up in reaction to it. It is a very old cycle within me, but I’m learning I do have the capacity to just experience it and not get hooked into it. Sort of let it just flow over me like waves at the ocean.
So I no longer expect the anxiety to go away, it’s a companion for the journey. But I’m coming into better relation to it, a more comfortable and less reactive relationship.
Hope this helps. =0)
James on September 2nd, 2009 James(Quote)
Hi Rachel,
Ha! I do this too, and it feels wonderful to me – like I’m getting a huge number of things done. If I am, I’m doing so via an awful lot of unnecessary backwards and forwards movement – walking from one task to the next and then back to the previous etc.
Yes – I can see how all of those things help. I never seem to grow bored of my anxiety, however, and have to try and fight my way out until it starts to wane naturally to background levels.
I also feel that expression of how I’m feeling is likely to help – hence the large number of gloomy postings here over the last couple of weeks.
I am starting to wonder if it really is helping, however, or whether it’s just keeping me gloomy and anxious. Not sure any more…