Waiting is hard

Tell us about it, they say, and hurry up with the carrot, already. The. Carrot. Now.

I know. I know all about carrots. I can see a truckload of them on the other side of contracts and construction, and it also terrifies me because for some reason that totally escapes me, I feel the worst after an accomplishment. I could never run for President. Travel all over the country, compulsively shaking every hand I can find completely genuinely, and trying to schedule time for campaign induced bulimia to rid myself of all the fair food, but not because of that. No, because if I lost, I’d fall apart, sinking into a depression of immeasurable depths and end my days in level 1335 of Pet Rescue. If I won, I might, too. Someone asked Pete Buttigieg how he managed emotionally after losing his bid for Indiana State Treasurer. He had a great answer, but I can’t remember it. 

I am going to venture a guess. An idea that suggests itself as I type (another reason to write a blog), the mistake is investing oneself too much in the process. That sounds the opposite of Zen. More like anti-Zen. But, no, it’s not that you neglect the process. You pay attention to it and you do it, faithfully and rigorously, talking yourself down from every thing that starts a cold sweat and makes you want to reach for the Atarax, but you think bigger than the process all the way through it so that it doesn’t become your reason to live. 

It can be like a cancer of the soul, the thing that animates you to lift a hand, to grasp a mouse, to double right click and type, to get up, to eat, to sleep and to toilet, and — nothing else. The process that is supposed to help you takes over the ordering of every neuron in your brain, redirecting them from previously passionately held pursuits and towards its own ends and no other. 

How ironic that it was my doctor husband who correctly diagnosed me. 

“It’s a funny thing about you. When you get doing something, you do it 100%, to the exclusion of everything else.”

“No. No, I don’t. That’s not true.”

Yes, it is. Yes, it absolutely is. Getting the laundry and grocery shopping done do not count. Don’t even bother. 

But, I insist. I need really badly to be right about that, or project being right. Why? Because — I need to be right? That’s it? That’s all it is? Shit. I thought it was untrue! 

I thought I was better than that. More valorous. 

Face it. A year ago you vowed to get this done, and everything else disappeared simultaneously from your life. You thanked your lucky stars that the man who runs your boarding facility is an angel for the horses, and recounted the anecdote about the vets saying that when there is a case of colic there, they know it’s very serious and prepare to handle the emergency. 25 horses and one colic in the 5 years we have been there. That was an elderly horse with other issues. His time had come. That anecdote was your justification. Monsieur is your insurance policy. 

And the garden? Ok, credit where it’s due. You killed ourself out there. You even gave your right elbow to the effort, but what was behind it in large part? The work on the house. Things that had to be done, trees that had to be felled, cut up and trailered to the dump to let the work move forward. you mowed the lawn, but that is like doing the laundry. 

The weeding and the pruning?

Shame is a powerful motivating force. 

And wait. Shit. Isn’t it right there at the bottom of this blog page? What Camus said? 

“The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

Why does my heart feel so empty in the waiting days? The days when a packet of work is done, and celebration would make more sense than the fog and the fatigue of some sort of exhaustion blanketing me? 

Yesterday, I struggled beyond it and drew the plans to make the floor area and lot surface coverage calculations that would tell me whether we will need a building permit or “only” a declaration of work at the mairie. The magic number, as I understand it from our mayor, is a total not in excess of 160 m2 of habitable floor area because of our PLU, or plan local d’urbanisme. 

I drew the polylines around the areas to calculate, and noted the numbers to add and to subtract. The total came to 160 m2. I should have been delirious. Punched the air like I do after vanquishing an especially difficult level of Pet Rescue. I just smiled and felt satisfaction. I knew this was the right solution. It just works. 

And today, thinking, Finally, today, TODAY, I will feel sharp and on point, I felt the let-down. 

What’s left is to keep on moving. Keep on. This time, I am not waiting in uncertainty. I know the contractor I prefer is coming next Wednesday. I have plans that only need dimensions and notes to take to the mairie to confirm that we’re good. I am a little worried about the roof overhang projecting over the property line. I don’t think our neighbor will object, if it can work that way, à l’amiable. There is also the little matter of the cladding doing the same... but surely, 3 cm or so can’t be a project stopper, can it? 

I can fix the overhang problem, if it is one, with a change in the proportions of the elevations. Not that I really want to. It makes the whole thing taller. 

The difference between the animals and me is their only expectation is immediate. Carrot. Now. It requires no effort beyond a contortion of the neck (not actually necessary at all, but they seem to think they need to come down to the height of my head on the other side of the bars). Their disappointment can be forgotten easily in a distraction, a neighbor, their hay, a nap. 

For me, it is otherwise. Disappointments have to be transformed into new ideas and more work, a continuation of the struggle that not only makes me happy, but fucking exhausts me. 

Manco, on the other hand...

....