Patience
Monday January 27, 2025
I am not patient. I hate waiting in lines, I hate sitting in traffic, I hate waiting for people to text me back. (No wonder I didn’t last in Los Angeles, huh?)
When I was in the dating pool, I had a habit of doing the dreaded “double text” or saying “I had a nice time tonight” too soon after a date. I mean, in retrospect, it was some doe-eyed wishful thinking that a follow-up text a day later might somehow make a woman reverse course on an active ghosting. Texting a good night message just seems like basic manners to me, though, so it’s no surprise that my wife offered the courtesy of texting me she had a nice time, too.
I’ve been thinking about double texts this week because I’ve been on a tear of scheduling intro calls with potential clients. Double messages aren’t as frowned upon in the professional world, of course, but I’ve found myself writing a lot of Lincoln Letters this week — that is, letters you draft and delete because they’re too emotional.
There are some genuinely interesting irons in the fire right now, but my impatience nearly made me shoot myself (and Lindsay) in the foot a few times in the past few days:
A very cool small creative agency reached out about a Sr. Copywriter role. I sent a gushing reply because I had contacted their founder about a month ago since I liked their work so much. He ignored my message, but it was a nice surprise that he didn’t ignore me. After a few days of silence, I was beside myself with self-consciousness that my reply was too over-the-top, to the point that I was actually mad at them for penalizing my enthusiasm. I wrote a snarky follow-up asking if I screwed myself by showing interest. Took a deep breath, Lincoln Lettered it, and drafted a more patient update on my availability, and waited. Three minutes later, the hiring manager responded, apologizing for missing my first message and scheduling a call for this week. Score 1 for patience.
A giant advertising agency put out a call for content writers on LinkedIn on Monday. I contacted the VP directly, who said she’d set me up with the recruiter. The recruiter reached out on Tuesday for my availability. I replied. He did not. By Wednesday, the times I sent him were no longer available, so I gave him an update. (Not too worried about a double message in that scenario.) He did not reply. By Friday, I was, again, mad. I drafted a note to the original VP that wasn’t exactly angry but stated my interest so transparently as to border on sycophancy. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t Lincoln Letter it yet. Instead, I left it in a draft, sent one more bump to the recruiter, and went for a walk with Goose and Lindsay, fully prepared to fire off the VP note when I got home. Mercifully, the recruiter finally wrote back at 4:30pm on a Friday, and we set up a call for this week. I Lincoln Lettered the VP note. Score 2 for patience.
Finally, we’ve been dealing with freezing pipes this week. The morons who flipped our house didn’t winterize the pipes or install any insulation, so this cold front has forced us to run water all the time and crank the heat. On Tuesday, the cold water stopped running in 3/4 sinks and a toilet. Googling ourselves into a loss, we called a plumber, who said it would be $300 for an emergency visit and probably a lot more if we had a frozen pipe. We still had cold water in one toilet, one sink, and the shower, so I felt adamant that the piping wasn’t completely frozen and definitely hadn’t burst. I asked Lindsay to push the appointment a day to avoid the emergency fee. I thought it might thaw out enough with a temperature increase that we could blast water through later. Still, we were both pretty fucking stressed about yet another major issue with this money pit of a home. Fortunately, we remained patient and inspected the piping we could access in the basement until Lindsay had the Eureka moment, finding a couple of spots where the piping disappeared into draftier parts of the basement. Sure enough, they were frigid. She went at both with a hair dryer, and suddenly, the cold water started flowing again, and the toilet filled up. Saved ourselves a few hundred bucks! Score 3 for patience!
It’s taking everything in my power to practice patience recently, especially as I wait to hear back after a couple of interviews this week or anything about a huge contract at a company I’m dying to work with. (I was employee-referred for the role, but no updates in over a week has me freaking out.) But damned if this week didn’t teach me a few lessons.
People may be slow. Situations take time to clarify. Life is long. But if you practice patience, kids, you may avoid making an ass out of yourself.
One Hollywood: Foxcatcher, Paramount+
The first time I ever heard a movie called a “slow burn” was after my friend Matt Honig saw this movie. It’s the perfect descriptor for Foxcatcher, a deeply discomforting movie about billionaire John du Pont’s bizarre obsession with Olympic wrestlers (and brothers) Mark and Dave Schultz. It requires patience to watch, but it’s worthwhile.
One Song: “Dance Yrself Clean” by LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy is the master of the slow build and “Dance Yrself Clean” is the obra maestro.
One Book: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The companion piece to Ulysses is less canonical but a much better book, in my opinion. Joyce was a famously particular and patient writer.
Down at the pub one day, he told the barkeep, “I’ve been working hard on Ulysses all day.”
“Does that mean you have written a great deal?” Asked the barkeep.
“Two sentences,” Joyce replied. “I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.”
This anecdote is key to understanding Joyce’s work and appreciating the grim, existential humor at the center of it all. The man was tortured by perfectionism but gifted with extraordinary patience to extract purpose from every single word.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first appearance of Joyce’s semi-autobiographical Stephen Dedalus, who is an immensely talented writer and thinker but can’t seem to create anything of purpose due in large part to the crippling oppression he senses from the institutions around him. At its core, Portrait is about a man desperately lacking patience and grace for himself, for others, and the world he inhabits; a curious foil to Joyce himself, whose thoughts are Dedalus’s but actions couldn’t be more opposite.
One Quote: “To lose patience is to lose the battle” - Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi kept that patience to win the battle. But man does it feel like he’s losing the war.
One Image: “Allegory of Patience” by Giorgio Vasari
This painting makes me chuckle. Look at that face. Those crossed arms. That is the poutiest adult child ever and it’s very relatable. I hate being patient, too, girl. (Boy? What are your pronouns?)
One Place: The grocery store
Grocery stores routinely try my patience. There should be one standard blueprint for every single grocery store. I lose my mind when I shop at a new store, and I can’t find anything because the aisles are in a different order or the inventory is organized differently than in my usual store.
What I hate the most, however, is when stores reorganize. The Assembly Row Trader Joe’s used to completely redesign the store layout every couple of months and it made me want to throw a brick through the window because the only reason they do it is to make you wander aimlessly and spend more time in the store so that you say, “Hmm, that looks good” and grab a couple of things that weren’t on your list. It’s a smart business practice, but good lord is it infuriating.
Just standardize grocery stores. PLEASE.