Nervously waiting

I’m
all of a jitter. I can’t settle in to anything and have been flitting about
like a dry leaf in the wind.

I’m
still waiting for feedback from my agent on the manuscript I sent her last
week.  My conscious self knows that she’s
on her annual meditation retreat. I know she’s
completely off-grid, and isn’t able to receive messages via email, phone or any
other social media. From 1st May she
will be occasionally checking email but will not return fully to the office
until 7th May.

My rational self knows this, but my irrational self checks the
email every three minutes. Do I really think that she is reading my manuscript
upside down on her yoga mat?!  Or secretly
reading it with a torch after lights out in the dorm?

Obviously I must do.

[image error]Nervously waiting…

My symptoms are quite bizarre from rapid heartbeat, to flutters
in the stomach to sweating palms. I lie in bed at night worrying I’ve written
is rubbish. I’m beginning to feel that sense of panic – you know that stress
dream where you have your English ‘A’ level approaching six weeks away but you
haven’t read your set texts? 

Never mind, you console yourself; there are five weeks to go and
then four and suddenly it’s the night before and still you haven’t read them
and you just know you’re going to
fail.

If she hates it, I can’t write 100,000 words – i.e., a new book –
in a week!

I’ve Googled up my symptoms – I know I shouldn’t – which are
variously interpreted as paranoia, possibly severe anxiety but best guess? Hypochondria.

Maybe I‘m just going mad.