It’s like I’m dating again. Courting a lawyer, a television executive, a production “package” person, learning the terms, navigating the reactions, all of it feels like an exercise in control.

When you’re sitting by the phone, really hoping he’ll call, you can tell yourself all you want that it doesn’t matter if he does, that you’ll be fine, that everything happens for a reason, but it’s all just talk, talk you don’t really believe. You don’t begin to believe it until the next happy thing happens. Then maybe you say, "Holy smokes, this is why that thing I wanted never happened." We try to make it math to soothe our minds. We’ve got silver lining rights.

You can’t just talk it. You need to feel it. But how do you turn talk into feeling? How do you make the leap from head to heart?

Every buzz of the phone makes you jump. You’re too eager, too wrapped up in outcomes, in things you can’t control. So with all your energy, you have to redirect every impulse and instruct yourself not to care. Not to want what you can’t have. And that, quite simply, never works. And it’s a good thing because it’s no way to live. If you don’t risk anything, you don’t get anything either. I’d rather leap than sheep. So all I can do, really, that works, is remind myself that trying counts for something. Risking, knowing I’ve got enough moxie to face a few failures is what makes me a success. I will still get impatient and want answers NOW, but I’ll remind myself that dealing with the waiting is part of the process. In the end, all I really can control is what I risk, how I follow it up, and how I lay it all out on the table again.