What am I doing right now? I am waiting for the Foreign Service to call and invite me to training, ending my happy lifestyle in Tucson and sending me into a swirl of newness — new job, new home, new location, new schools, new training. And while I am understandably anxious about all those things, and while I am definitely dreading the day Ben has to say good-bye to his best friend and the school he’s loved since kindergarten, there is a huge part of me that just wants to cut through all this waiting and get it over with already. You know, lance that wound? Stop the anticipation?
I have never, ever, ever been good at waiting.
They're not good at waiting, either.
Strangely enough, when I thought I wouldn’t get on the foreign service register, I was fine with the wait. I know I was fine because half the Yahoo! group who are also waiting to hit the register totally freaked out when I mentioned how long my file was in suitability review (5 months). Now every time someone’s file goes to suitability review, my name comes up as a specter…”I hope it doesn’t take as long as that ONE person (aka, me), who had to wait 5 months.” I’ve now become the warning sign on the highway of the FS clearance process. However, for most of that, I didn’t really worry about it. In fact, I spent a lot of time reassuring people that it was perfectly fine, this was, after all, a top security clearance and a very important job, and ‘these things take time.’ By which I meant, “They are going to come to their senses ANY MINUTE and realize that I couldn’t possibly rate this kind of job after 9 years in the backwater of the American West combined with a short mommy-track, some random volunteer work and a master’s degree in a completely unrelated field? Right? Right????” So the length of the wait didn’t bother me, it just meant I had more time before I had to confess to everyone that I didn’t make the cut after all.
Yes, this is really how my mind works. Frightening, isn’t it?
But then I did make it. But oh, I was at the very end of the register! They knew to put me at the back!
But then I passed the Japanese exam. And suddenly, I wasn’t just on the register. I was on the register, and COMPETITIVE.
Can I just add that I have always been slightly bitter that I spent 8+ hours a day studying for almost 2 years to learn a language I was never able to use again after coming back to the U.S.? Hmmmmm? Well, THE UNIVERSE JUST SHOWED ME, didn’t it? That psychotic, I-must-learn-this-super-hard-language-immediately urge actually made something happen 10 years later! Oh, the vagaries of the universe!
Although it always has surprised and sometimes even impressed people. You know, that I’m American, and I speak another language, and it isn’t Spanish. YES I JUST WENT THERE. But seriously, my last name? It’s Hispanic. So when I mention I have a second language, there is a certain assumption made that that second language is Spanish. After all, if my first name was Sumiyo, they wouldn’t expect me to know Hindi, right? I’m just sayin’. But the short version is — Japanese rocketed me up to the top third of the list, and now I’m one of the cool kids. Sweet.
Anyway, so now that I know I HAVE A SHOT AT THIS, all of a sudden the waiting is perfectly unbearable. I just checked the aforementioned Yahoo! group to see if anyone else was announcing an invitation to the January A-100 class (that’s the training class where “you’re in!” and you sign on the dotted line). It was the fifth time today, not including the 10 desperate minutes I spent trying to log on with my iPhone this morning while drinking my coffee. And, it doesn’t count the million times I watched the screen refresh while I ate lunch. I WAS TRYING TO SOUND SANE HERE, PEOPLE. But yes, five times…plus a little. And the last time I checked? Oh, right. Those last two postings — they’re mine. Because everybody else is out on a Friday night doing something more interesting than waiting for the tea to boil and obsessively checking a Yahoo! groups board.
Except for these guys, of course. They have all the time in the world to wait for a peanut butter sandwich.
So here I am. Waiting. Waiting. WAITING.
This is just karma for never listening to my mom when she said, “Nice girls don’t call boys!” Oh wait. That wasn’t it. It was, “Well, if you’re set on calling, at least wait a couple of days!” I never, ever listened to her advice. And here I am, waiting for things to change, waiting for decisions to happen and to say good-bye to good friends, waiting for good and waiting for bad and waiting for sad, too.
Sit, Missy, sit.
Wait, Missy, wait.
Good girl.
