"Fitzgerald?"

In the last few years, I haven't had writer's block in the traditional sense where there is blank paper and angst. I think some of this can be attributed to my Internet addiction -- I can't wail I don't know what to write about when there's plenty around me to write about.

These days, when I'm not writing? I sit in the waiting room.

There are lots of waiting rooms in my non-writing life. The pediatrician's is a little dingy and divided into smaller areas with toddler toys and television. The psychiatrist's is one long boxcar with lots of New York magazines and the occasional People on the end tables. The general practitioner's has endless scattered pamphlets about smoking cessation and high blood pressure. The veterinarian's has a flat screen television, free roaming live-in cats, bottled water on the table, and a tasteful mosaic of romping, happy cats that lines all the walls. The DMV's is really just a bunch of seats thrown together where everyone is talking, but no one is listening. All of the ones at restaurants are packed, noisy, smell tantalizingly good, and I suspect plenty of people get tables who just walked in 20 seconds ago.

My writing life waiting room isn't literal, of course, but at various points it's resembled all of those other ones. 

It's been in dire need of renovation, and it's been so tastefully, carefully decorated that it makes me very suspicious of what goes on in the office itself. It's had magazines, pamphlets, televisions, menus. It's had other people in it, it's been empty except for me.

I've waited five minutes, I've waited five months. The receptionist has been soothing and sympathetic, the receptionist has been cranky and brusque. And when the time comes to step into the office and tend to the business at hand? There's times I've been relieved, and times I just want to finish the Justin Timberlake interview in my magazine before I grab my bag and get up.

My last waiting room was awful. I'd been there before a hundred times, I'd read all the magazines, the seats were really uncomfortable. Worst of all, it seemed like everyone who saw me sitting there was like, what in the hell are YOU doing here? But dammit, somehow I knew that once it was my turn to go into the office, it would be worth the wait. 

And I have to say, I was pretty much right.