There's a particular kind of restlessness that comes with an airport lounge — not the excitement of going somewhere, and not the relief of having arrived, but the flat, suspended feeling of the middle. I was sitting in one recently, boarding pass tucked into my passport, and I caught myself doing the thing I always do when I'm made to wait: checking my phone, refolding the same boarding pass twice, willing the minutes to move faster than they were willing to move.
Then, for no particular reason, I stopped. I put the phone away and just sat there, hand around the passport, watching a woman across from me read a paperback she'd clearly already finished once, judging by how loosely she held it open. Nothing was happening. It was, if I'm honest, one of the more forgettable hours of my week. And yet I keep thinking about it.
I think that's because I spend more of my life in that stretch than I like to admit — not just literal waiting rooms, but the pause before a decision, the weeks between finishing a design and knowing whether it actually works, the evening walk you take because you don't quite want to go home and don't have anywhere else to be either.
I took one of those walks a few nights ago, somewhere with cobblestones and string lights strung between buildings the way someone might string them without much of a plan, and it turned out beautiful anyway. I wasn't going anywhere in particular. I had my small gold earrings on, the ones I always forget I'm wearing until I catch my reflection in a shop window, and I remember thinking — almost embarrassed by how simple it was — this is enough. Just this. Walking, looking, not being anywhere else.
I used to think patience was something you called on only when it mattered — waiting for good news, waiting to see if a piece would sell, waiting through the eleventh version of a design before it finally felt right. I don't think that's true anymore. I think patience is mostly built in the unremarkable in-between hours, the ones that don't ask anything dramatic of you. An airport lounge. A walk with nowhere to be. The two minutes before you know if something you made is actually good.
I haven't gotten better at waiting, exactly. I've just gotten a little better at noticing that I'm in it — and letting that be its own small, unglamorous thing worth paying attention to, instead of a delay before the real part starts.
— Arina
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