What with all the advance notice and hype over something coming, be it a new TV show or movie or record album or the appearance of some new car model or the unveiling of whatever, not a day goes by when we can avoid having to anticipate something.
Right now for me it’s College Football Season – August 30. It can’t get here soon enough. But I find myself wondering if I can maintain the sense of anticipation until then. I have had many instances in the past where I have waited breathlessly for something to arrive only to have the wind go out of my sails at the very moment it does. In the worst cases, like with a new TV show that seems too good to be true, I will fall asleep and miss it. 
What’s that old thing about “it’s not the destination but the journey” or whatever?
On average, how often do you wait anxiously for something to happen and then when it does, realize all the thril was just waiting for it to arrive?
When I was a little kid, at least once a year I’d “save up and send off” for some doodad in a comic book or magazine or even off a cereal box. It would take forever to arrive (up to three weeks at times) and I’d get all fidgety and nervous and would run up the block to greet the mailman to see if it had finally come. Day in and day out it wouldn’t be there and I’d have to find something else to do until the next time I saw the mailman coming. Eventually it would arrive and I would tear into the package to find I had been ripped off – again. The decoder ring or the throwing knife or the secret magic trick or the Sea Monkeys or whatever I had been suckered into buying would be less valuable than the packing material and I would be heartbroken. But I never learned. Never have. I’m still a sucker.
You?
