Write about Waiting

Everybody waits. At the traffic light, in line for the bathroom, or for the waiter to come around.

Today, write about one of your times of waiting. Even better, write WHILE you’re waiting. Take whatever downtime you have that you might otherwise waste and try to get to 500 words.

A very common phrase said to me when I was young was “Patience is a virtue”. Waiting has never been a strong point for me. It’s not that I get impatient, the overhanging cloud of anxiety is never far away when I have to remain patient. This is where waiting becomes an enemey.

Being patient, or waiting, has never been an easy thing for me. Everyone would like things to be done faster and quicker, you only need to look at the latest and greatest piece of technology, you’ll see great claims of a new faster processor and longer battery life. In other words, you can post a picture of your cat fast now thanks to the new and improved speed.

Getting straight to the point is important in design. Making someone work or figure out something runs the risk of your design or experience failing hard.

Let’s take a step outside of that though and switch up the point of view.

If you think your old iPhone is slow, wait until you get to experience a permanent residency process. PR moves at a glacial speed. It is never in a rush for anyone or anything, it moves along at its own pace.

To give Canada credit, they recognized this. In 2015 they implemented a new stream for PR applicants. It was based off a points system, the higher your score, the higher the chance that you would then be invited to apply. Wait times were reduced from 18–24 months to 6–9 months. Canada, a sound bunch of lads.

My personal experience of this is not new or unique. I was fortunate enough to have an employer that would sponsor me to stay in Canada. I can’t stress how much of a help this alone really is. You get more of those points that I mentioned above so you are more likely to get an invitation to get the process rolling.

But wait, there’s more…

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to apply under the old stream. I would still be waiting now!

While that situation never came to be, a different hurdle presented itself. My visa was up on July 11th 2015. My application was never going to be processed by that time. In order to stay in Canada and continue to work, you apply for an extension and while that is pending you can continue to work and stay in Canada. They called implied status.

The catch is, you can’t leave Canada.

I referred to this as immigration limbo. You are safe, but also not safe. It’s as fun as it sounds.

Each day, you check your inbox. For me to properly get an invitation, I would need to get my sponsorship. The 600 points associated with made that process very popular, so there was a large increase of applicants for this as well.

This delayed my application. More waiting.

Being on implied status isn’t just waiting, it’s like the match that will light the fuel for anxiety. When you already have an oil field of fuel, the smallest spark will set it off.

With anxiety, there isn’t really a way to properly describe it. When it’s not in your hands, things are even worse, the effect is compounded. You focus more on what could go wrong and what will go right. I was confident that my application for sponsorship would be accepted, my PR application would be even better as well. I wanted nothing more than to stay in the country so there was a lot riding on it.

I can distinctly remember someone telling me this at the time.

It’s just your thoughts, don’t worry about it.

In the Eckhart Tolle sense of things, the above statement is right. The Now, as Tolle would out it, is all that you have, so why worry about the future or the past? They don’t exist or can’t exist anymore. I’ve since read his book The Power of Now and have found it to be profoundly helpful.

He is quite right when he says that, but when you want nothing more than your future in a certain country to be secure and also working on implied status, the Now means fuck all. I could never really get comfortable, no matter what the situation is, when I was waiting. Saying that it’s just your thoughts around a situation, doesn’t actually address the situation right there. It glosses over it like a spilled glass of water, it ignores the elephant in the room.

While the positive outcomes of getting sponsorship and ultimately PR would be massive, the slightest mistake on your application and you are back to square one. When you’re on implied status, square one is YVR airport and a flight back to Dublin to try again from there. That’s not an easy pill to swallow.

It hurt a lot. I was never sure of myself because I was never sure of my future. This really did hinder me as a person. I put a brave face on it and rolled with the punches, you do this on good days and on bad days.

“It will work out fine, it will all be ok”

Telling yourself stuff like that helped, it’s not a solution though.

All that worry over nothing?

In the end, I did get my sponsorship, and from there I got my PR. The happy ending did come, it didn't come easy though.

If I look back on it, I can see some big errors on my side. I let it control me too much, positive mindsets were few and far between but in the heat of the moment the positive doesn’t always win through. I had great support from people in the same position as me. We were all in the same boat at the same time and I never really appreciated that.

Like I said, my situation wasn’t unique or rare. Thousands of people are in the same position as me, millions are in one even worse. Each of us will deal with it in a completely differnet way though, that’s that thing.

While everyone goes through the same motions, we all hold our balance in a different way. You get advice from one and advice from another that could totally contradict each other, yet each person is giving you the best that they have.

Ultimately there is no wrong or right way to deal with it. Just take your time.