On Waiting
the strange, unbearable art of living in the in-between
I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.
Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month in addition to the biweekly Reasons for Living essays, as well as an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversations about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain this newsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is unable to work at a traditional job.
If Reasons for Living has moved you, challenged you, or given you something to hold onto, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. If a paid subscription isn’t possible, a free one is just as appreciated. Either way, I’m grateful you’re here.
Waiting isn't passive. Passivity comes to mind upon hearing the word, depending on the form it takes—waiting for a bus, for example, or waiting in class by dozing before the professor shows—but waiting is also labor. It takes up mental space, demanding attention like a low-grade fever: not acute enough to be all-consuming, but persistent enough to unsettle and discomfit.
Right now, I'm waiting for a few critiques on writing that's more vulnerable than anything I've shared before. I want (& need) feedback, but waiting makes my body taut and apprehensive. I'm waiting for payment for a speaking engagement. I'm waiting for medical procedures that I know will trigger bad nights; anxiety rises, hot and sick, days before entering the clinic. I'm waiting for the next piece of bad news about what's happening under the current administration, which floods my nervous system with too much information to take. I know this is their intent: an overwhelmed person is less likely to act.
While waiting, time warps. Minutes distort through a fish-eye lens—sometimes unbearably slow, sometimes swift. There's no rhyme or reason to how it goes. I want the waiting to be over, but I also know what comes after—the answer, the next decision, the next step, and of course, the next thing to wait for—and so I try to live in the present like my Buddhist father, a man who exhorts me to worry less and to enjoy my life more.
Of course, there are ways to survive waiting. Some are more deliberate than others. Some disguise themselves as productivity—while waiting for edits on my current book, I begin to write the next one. I organize my Dropbox folders. I work on preparing a launch that makes me both excited and frightened. I do my makeup whether I'll be leaving the house or not, pumping the liquid foundation directly onto my face and smoothing it with a sponge. I stroke pink up the cheekbones I don't have, tracing a fine line of black ink along my eyelids in pursuit of transformation or, at least, greater confidence, because waiting diminishes me, makes me small.
When I'm finished, I check my email. Then I check it again. I tell myself I won't check again for another hour, but my fingers tap the icon before I can stop them. If an email arrives, I look at the timestamp. I attempt to parse the phrasing. Is a short response bad? Is a long one worse?
Other forms of waiting are less productive. I've watched so many episodes of the eleven seasons of Vanderpump Rules that I know the precise twang of Brittany tearily saying, "Rot in hell" to Jax before it comes out of her mouth. I know the rhythms of their arguments, the supplication of every faked apology between so-called friends. "Tequila Katie" and "Crazy Kristen" cry over shit that could have been avoided. I see the Vanderpump crew believe in their own Main Character Energy with the conviction of heads of state. The absurdity is a balm because reality television demands nothing from me. There’s no analysis required, no deeper meaning to extract to understand it, and no expectation that I'll do anything in response.
Because part of the worst part of waiting is the anxious spiraling—the obsessive interpretation of small details and the conviction of my complex PTSD that if I'm vigilant enough, I can not only decipher the future before it arrives—I can yank it back from becoming a catastrophe.
I try to remind myself that waiting is still living. Unless I spiral too much, or let myself put off too much of what I really want to do, I'm not wasting time. My habits and routines—however strange, however desperate—are ways of making time bearable while I wait.
They're also the stuff of life itself. I once read a fairy tale about a girl to whom a witch gives a ball of yarn; time will pass, the witch says, as quickly as the ball unravels. First, the girl pulls the string to get to Christmas. Next, to reach her birthday. She pulls the string to become a teenager, but adolescence is terrible, so she pulls it to become an adult. She wants to be married: another pull. To have children—well, she does the same. The story goes on in this fashion until the once-little girl is suddenly on her deathbed, having barely experienced life at all. So I remind myself that I'm not that little girl, and life is not made to be rushed through. I'm not simply getting through the wait. I'm existing inside of it. ❤️
I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.
Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month in addition to the biweekly Reasons for Living essays, as well as an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversations about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain this newsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is unable to work at a traditional job.
If Reasons for Living has moved you, challenged you, or given you something to hold onto, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. If a paid subscription isn’t possible, a free one is just as appreciated. Either way, I’m grateful you’re here.
It's 2025, and somehow we STILL need this reminder as writers who want to write, are allergic to the concept of an “author platform,” and refuse to spend all day "engaging" on social media:
🔥 You do NOT need to be Extremely Online to build an author platform. 🔥
And before you @ me, take a page from big-name authors who have successfully built engaged, devoted audiences without turning themselves into content machines. (Leslie Jamison? Barely posts. Carmen Maria Machado? Occasional, intentional presence. Have you SEEN Sally Rooney appear online at all? And yet... their books sell.)
Here's what I tell my students inside The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy:
Your job is to write. Not to churn out endless posts, keep up with trends, or manufacture engagement just for the sake of it.
The secret? Your best platform strategy is just sharing what you're already writing.
Slow, consistent, and meaningful growth beats frantic social media scrambling every time.
Take a look at how this works in action. I shared part of my nascent memoir-in-progress. It received more views than the average Substack newsletter that I send out, and—bonus, bonus—I was able to get 4 new paid subscribers and 8 free subscribers on top of it.*
But “build a Substack” isn’t the only thing I’ve learned about building an author platform. Inside this class, we’ll talk about:
A clear understanding of what “platform” actually means (and what agents & publishers really look for, based on conversations I’ve actually had with them).
Is it actually about size & follower numbers?????? Find out.
Practical strategies for building an audience without relying on social media (and how to use social media if that’s your jam).
The best platform-building tools for introverts, deep thinkers, and non-marketers.
Ways to grow your readership through newsletters, podcasts, partnerships, and more.
…all coming from an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling writer who’s been studying online marketing from the likes of Steph Crowder and Shannon Matson for over a decade. (Me. That’s me. 🥰)
Here's how to stop stressing about platform-building and start making it work for YOU— without losing your creative energy: Join me for Building Your Author Platform (When You'd Rather Be Writing).
📅 March 15, 2025 at 11AM PT
⏳ 90 minutes, live on Zoom (recording available, of course)
💰 $67 with an Academy membership, $97 alone
Because your platform should work for you, not the other way around.
*I was initially anxious about the fact that it received very few comments, but as it turns out, the sensitive topic likely kept people from replying.
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I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.
Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month in addition to the biweekly Reasons for Living essays, as well as an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversations about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain this newsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is unable to work at a traditional job.
If Reasons for Living has moved you, challenged you, or given you something to hold onto, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. If a paid subscription isn’t possible, a free one is just as appreciated. Either way, I’m grateful you’re here.
“While waiting, time warps. Minutes distort through a fish-eye lens—sometimes unbearably slow, sometimes swift.” - this is the most relatable feeling.
I process a lot of “waiting” in my own writing. As a foster/adoptive parent, our lives feel like they are always in a “waiting” space. Waiting for: children to come/go; court dates; big decisions; an important change; a meeting; . . . never-ending.
This is a good post for me to feel seen in my waiting. Thanks for writing it and putting it out into the world.
Waiting to hear back from med schools, a friend of mine has challenged herself to check her email only once per hour between 9am and 5pm. She says it helps keep the waiting-noise at bay, and I'm in awe of her discipline; waiting for a response on my own grad school applications, feedback on submissions, and, and, and, I find myself refreshing my inbox far more frequently than is sensible—certainly far more frequently than once per hour. Finding productive, soul-refreshing ways to trick my brain into forgetting that we're waiting for anything (like exploring my new journal—thank you for the Sterlling Ink rec!) isn't always possible, as you say, but it does feel great when it is. <3