What to Do While You Are Waiting to Hear from the Universe

You are waiting to hear back from the universe about something that matters to you a great deal. 

You might hear this month. Or next month. Or the month after that.

The longer it takes for you to hear, the less likely it is that you will hear what you hope to hear. 

You are fairly good at estimating probabilities about this sort of thing, and your best guess is that you only have a 5 percent chance of getting good news, anyway. 

Good news would bring a small jolt of much-needed joy to your life and reassurance that your career is not over. 

Bad news would spell the end of your career, or at least you think it would, but you have a feeling you may be exaggerating a wee bit in thinking this.

So the question is what you should do while you are waiting to hear.

This is STRATEGY NUMBER ONE: 

1. Check your email every few minutes. If you are sitting by your computer, which for some reason gives a little ding if an email arrives, listen for the ding. If you are out and about, just keep checking your phone. Occasionally make yourself wait a full ten minutes before checking. Surely if you do this, the universe will reward you with good news, right? 

2. In between dings, lie on the couch and do Sudoku puzzles on your I-pad, even though this always makes you feel terrible about yourself. 

3. In between Sudoku puzzles, eat squares of raw cookie dough. Right now you have available Annie's Organic Oatmeal Raisin and the ever-reliable Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip.

4. Also work your way through a bag of Reese's peanut butter Easter eggs.

5. Repeat daily.

This is STRATEGY NUMBER TWO:

1. Do anything OTHER than 1-5 above. Take a walk. Read one of the half dozen enticing library books you have in a pile by your couch, including the extremely engrossing new 900-page biography of Sylvia Plath. Do the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Amsterdam that you bought as a treat for yourself. Work on the delightful online course you are teaching. Read a friend's manuscript and give her insightful comments. Revise that darned article (see previous post)! Write a poem. Write ideas for a possible new book. Write anything at all. Call a friend. Call two friends. Call three friends. 

As you may have guessed, I've been following STRATEGY NUMBER ONE, and I have to confess it isn't working as well as I had hoped. I'm thinking tomorrow I might at least try STRATEGY NUMBER TWO.

What do you think?