Waiting

I've long been sympathetic to people who wait for a living. Just the name, "waiter." Think about it. What could be less fun than waiting, for a living?
Of course, the term waiter is even dying out. Maybe because it's not really accurate -- at many restaurants, actually, the "waiter" is the person who wouldn't mind some more fizzy sugar water to wash down the salt sticks.
Or, the connotation is too strong. You think waiter, you think person who may be able to do 15 percentages of bills in his head, and can do percentages of spittle in water glasses on later visits if your percentage falls short of 15 percent. This makes you leave 20 percent, or even 22 if you're eating with someone who "used to be a waiter."
At the moment, I could be considered a waiter, for a living, of a different kind. This waiting is even less fun.
This waiting is the kind where you've gone on interviews, sent out resumes, even done some follow-up stuff, and....
And....
And....
Repeat.
There's no good solution to this. You hit refresh on the e-mail endlessly, see something in your inbox, then find out that you that despite the bodyslammed economy, Rolex watches and Gucci purses of indeterminate origin are still totally for sale.
Your phone rings, and you answer, and a parent asks, "So? Any jobs yet?"
They care, they really do. And part of it may be that they fear that if said jobs don't pop up soon, I may move back in with them.
But neither the spam-smelling e-mail nor the distracting parent phone calls get to the goal, which is work. And yet if I'm going to get to the fabled land of Employment again, I must brave the road stop of penis-enlargement come-ons and the roadside dinosaur of talking to my mom about snow at her house.
In the meantime, waiting. And writing here. And those off-ramps of distraction.