Waiting in Place.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...
-- Dr. Suess, Oh the Places You’ll Go

Staring across the small barrier, I can’t help but wonder whether the slight-but-overly-cheery attendant truly understands the seriousness of the situation. Drumming my nails like wild horses across a marble countertop, I mentally check myself. Crushing his pearly whites with my tiny-but-determined fist – while self-satisfying and point proving – will not address the issue at hand.

“I’ll wait.”

Two weeks ago I jetted off for a weekend to recharge, only to immediately be thrown back into the maelstrom of my life. The second I stepped off the plane, I was back in exactly the place I needed desperately to escape. 

The place where I do, wait, drive, answer, fix, pay, deliver, create, solve and coordinate. The place where I’ve forgotten how to receive, not just to give. The place where I don’t have to yell, beg, cajole or bribe. From sun up to sun down, from home to work and back again, my life and my career are built on the idea that making others happy will also make me happy.

What it makes me is exhausted, irritable and unhealthy.

I made myself a promise. That I would start to demand something more for me. That I would work less and live more. That I wouldn’t always race around to respond, to fix or to find. And it has been a painful exercise in unraveling expectations I’ve allowed to set in.

Which brings me to the issue at hand.

Which is that I am standing in a hotel lobby. In my peep toes and pencil skirt. With sopping wet hair.

And T-minus five minutes to race from here to there because someone asked me to do something.