I sit. I watch. I wait. I leave the room to use the bathroom. I come back and make sure I didn’t miss it. I watch some more. I try to use telepathic powers to make it happen. I still wait. I reluctantly go have dinner with a friend. I check my purse every 360 seconds for reassurance. I don’t taste a single bite. I worry that the area noise is overpowering. What was that? Did I hear something? No. I drive home with it on my dash for easy access. I fail to follow the plot of a made-for-tv movie. I check every few minutes, just in case I didn’t hear it. I go for a jog. I keep it in my pocket for safe keeping. I stop every 10 feet to make sure that wasn’t a vibration I just felt. I return home. I shower. I run to it before I even grab a towel. Nothing. I climb into bed to prepare myself for another round of this nauseating routine tomorrow. I double check to make sure it’s still on before I turn the light out. Silence.
Come on. We’ve all been there. Who hasn’t spent several days out of their life just waiting for the phone to ring? Who hasn’t driven themselves completely insane, when after two days of waiting, they started hearing ring tones or feeling vibrations that weren’t happening? The waiting game sucks. The side effects worse than those of Chinese water torture. So why do we put ourselves through it? Because that big payoff, the coveted prize, the minuscule chance of success, would make all the blood, sweat, and tears well spent. We know that the slimmest of odds exists ….. someone could offer us a job.
Sadly, this is a scenario I have played out many times in the past few weeks. OK maybe not this exact scenario. Anyone who has ever met me knows that I’ve never gone for a jog in my life! But I have driven myself to the outermost depths of sanity and hung over the edge by my toes, in anticipation of a call from a future employer. I have killed more trees than the California wild fires, sending out resumes. Kinko’s knows me by name from my daily (sometimes hourly) visits to its fax machine. I have developed a severe case of carpal tunnel from the endless online applications. All this for a chance to hear the melodious sound of my default ringer.
Ah the waiting game. It’s a losing battle. I have smelled the agony of defeat more times than Susan Lucci at the Emmy’s. But I will forge ahead because I can see the silver line on the horizon. Wait. No. As I’m getting closer I see it’s actually the unemployment line. Crap! Oh well. It seems the war will wage on a while longer. It’s alright. I have faith. Maybe someone will stumble upon this blog in their random web surfing, realize that I am the brilliance they have been seeking all this time, and offer me a job on the spot. Or maybe I’ll just have to continue sharing my tales of disappointing no-call days with my faithful readers….all of whom can’t argue with that!
Photo courtesy _rockinfree via Flickr