The Waiting Game

I often joke that my lack of patience comes from my French genes (have you ever seen the French try to queue? It doesn’t come naturally) but putting joking aside, I’m very bad at dealing with uncertainty. As someone who is trying very hard to learn to live in the “now”, I struggle not to be preoccupied with the “later”. You must know the feeling: that distracting knot in the base of your belly that does the occasional back flip to ensure that it keeps churning up your worries about what is coming “later”.

My current overactive belly knot relates to my still to be approved new 457 visa. As I’m changing companies I’m getting a new sponsorship visa. The downside is that I was due to start work yesterday but can’t because the visa still isn’t through. So my Now looks great, I have extra holiday time. Except I find it hard to enjoy it as the knot keeps churning up questions about “how long will this holiday be?” and “how long can I afford not to be working?” It’s crazy, I’ve missed 2 working days so far and am fighting the urge to panic already. Saying that, we’ve had a little progress with the lovely folks at Aussie Immigration (love your work guys, really do, honestly am not just kissing butt in hope you’ll speed up my visa approval, that would be cynical) so it is looking hopeful that approval will be through in the next few days.

The reality is that as I can’t control when this will happen, I feel a tad cranky. Don’t misunderstand, I’m loving the extra time off. Today I’ve been writing, took Gertie Getz out for a spin and bought some yummy healthy goodness from Harris Farms and Fourth Village (going to stuff myself full of raspberries later) and watched a rather mediocre rom-com that I’d recorded (Did you hear about the Morgans? = spot on for a lazy rainy day but not a film I’d go out of my way to watch).

Does this make me a control freak? The more I think about it, the more I realise it’s when I’m relying on others (and particularly if those others are some kind of bureaucratic organisation) that my belly knot does Olympic level acrobatics and I get a major case of the cranks. Don’t I trust other people to get it right? I know I had to work long and hard on my delegation skills but I thought I’d cracked that particular problem. I don’t think it’s about my needing to do everything myself, it is more about the lack of control that I have over others to do what they need to do. After all, if I picked up the telephone to call immigration it would have zero influence on them.

Government departments and similar organisations are structured in such a way as to ensure that you feel as impotent as possible. I suspect that this is why they get so much rage directed at them. People don’t like to feel helpless. Like a cornered animal, they will fight back. Is this something that organisations need to do more about? After all, it will make the lives of their staff much more pleasant if the majority of the people they deal with aren’t frothing at the mouth with rabid frustration. Banks, governments, telephone companies, energy companies take note: your customers (and governments please don’t forget that your people are, to all intents and purposes, your customers) need to feel they have some level of control to prevent explosions of anger.

A perfectly happy, calm person can transform into Cujo (after he has contracted rabies) if they face the following:

• Endless recorded messages that send them circling around without reaching a real person


• Speaking to a completely disengaged person (or empty vessel) who has no power or control of their own and therefore their only interest is to transfer you onto another empty vessel


• No news, no commitment, no timelines: seriously how can there be no one who can give you clarification re when you are going to get the answers you are chasing? Why hide these magical oracles from us?

Admittedly businesses are getting wise to this and there have been improvements but not enough. In this age of social networking, you can’t afford to be sending out Cujos to infect the rest of the population against you.

So to answer my question, I don’t think I am a control freak. I think I’m a pretty normal person, prone to higher than average levels of anxiety, who just wants some kind of reassurance that things are happening and moving forward. While I’d love to have a couple of weeks off, sadly my landlord equally loves to be paid rent (weird I know) so it isn’t controlling to worry about when I’ll be able to start working again. But it does mean that my focus isn’t as in the Now as I would like. After all it is a warm evening, Martha Wainwright’s fabulous voice is serenading me via my Yamaha speakers , some beautiful aromatherapy oils are burning, Louis is off prowling and once I’ve finished this blog post I’m going to work on my novel outline. Life is good at this particular point in time. I’d feel quite serene if my tummy knot would just calm down.

Any anxiety fighting tips gratefully received, I’m all about self improvement. Never forget that we’re all works in progress, it’s good to help each other through.