Sometimes things take too long

Reframing your relationship to the ride

CDD20 / Pixabay

I like to think I’m a patient person. Perhaps I am, in some respects, while in others, not so much. Given that I’m a big believer in the idea of delayed gratification—resisting immediate rewards for the sake of greater ones down the road—the areas in which I’m better at practicing patience might follow a pattern. For example, I try to save money aggressively when I can. I try to consistently exercise and eat well. If I’m upset about something, I try to understand what’s really driving that feeling before launching into a full-blown freakout. Without a doubt, I splurge on big purchases, skip workouts, go to town on deliciously unhealthy meals, and lose my shit all the time. Self control and rules are great and all, but a guy’s also gotta live. You can allow for pockets of indulgence and “slip-ups” while still moving towards the longer-term rewards in a healthy way. It’s about balance.

Every now and then, though, it seems that you and I and we come up against periods of delayed gratification so protracted that they call into question the golden unspoken agreement as a whole. It reads: chip, chip away and wait, for your shiny prize will arrive at just the right time. In just the right place. And all the effort and waiting will be worth it.

We live in a society obsessed increasingly with instant gratification, driven by a breakneck pace of Internet speeds and on-demand services and hybrid tech-media products vying for our limited time. Attention economy and all that. So there’s definitely an argument to be made that the feeling of big ticket life prizes (e.g. landing a good job, finding a life partner, buying a nice house) taking “too long” is less about the actual effort + time it’s taking and more the perception or experience of that combined frame. However, you don’t have to look much further than baseline data trends around entry level employment, marriage rates, and median first-time house-buyer ages to know that such an argument represents at best a small slice of the story.

So…what’s up? Why is important shit taking so long to come to fruition? Don’t worry (or sorry, depending on who you are)—this isn’t about to veer off on a rant about the tyranny of capitalism. I’m a product of Soviet Jews that grew up under the oppressive thumb of communism, so you’re just not going to get that from me. Instead of zooming out, I’m going to zoom in on the particulars in my own life.

For example: you may or may not be aware that I’ve written a novel. I very much would like to publish this novel, not only because that would be extremely validating, but because I genuinely think (with some professional help) it’s worthy of publishing. I could be wrong, and I’m willing to accept that once I’ve put everything I can into making it the best it can be and exhausting all avenues, traditional and otherwise, for bringing it to publication. The thing is, I finished a first draft of the novel in 2019. I self-edited it and started querying the somewhat polished product to literary agents in 2020. I paused that in 2021 once it was clear from many rejections that I’d jumped the gun. I spent 2021-2023 getting a ton of feedback from family and friends and strangers in writing workshops and beyond, then revising and revising and revising. I honed the pitch. I started querying again in 2024. I got some bites from agents, asking to read the full manuscript. One took six months to issue a rejection. Another took almost a year to do the same. Of course, it only takes one offer of representation to land an agent, but the process of revising and pitching it to publishing house editors could take even longer.

Could I have shortened this timeframe at all? Maybe, but between working a full-time job that actually pays, continuing my writing practice in other ways, and (in theory) living a well-rounded life full of family time and partnership and friendships and hobbies and so on, actually, maybe not? Now, it’s hard to document all of this without sounding bitter, and the truth is I am. I am a bit bitter. BUT, only sometimes, and never at anyone in particular. As the years stretch on without my goal being hit, I constantly reframe my relationship to the goal and to the journey towards it. I have to, otherwise I’ll go insane or descend into total despair. Whereas publishing a book once felt like a goal mostly connected to hard work, honing my craft, networking, patience, etc.—levers more or less in my control—today it feels more like a well, let’s-put-in-the-work-and-hope-for-the-best kind of shrug that acknowledges the futility of trying to make things happen on any sort of timeline that I would consider reasonable. It might happen, and I’m committed to maximizing the chances, but my word, once we’re deep into the “needlessly long” timeline of publishing, juxtaposed against the speed of many other industries in the year 2025, there’s not much else to do besides basically living your life and ensuring the plate keeps spinning every so often.

I think this reframing, however you apply it to whatever it is that feels like it’s taking too long, is critical. It’s what I imagine my father does in relationship to the dacha he’s been working with a contractor to build in a terrible state for building housing since 2018. It is, as he jokes bluntly, “a process.” Indeed! A process, that if you’re invested in seeing through to the end despite all that’s out of your control, takes as long as it takes. Once it’s done, ideally the process isn’t one you reflect on negatively, or perhaps at all. It’s just: done. And on to the next one.

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