I have a trip coming up, tomorrow actually. My flight leaves at nine in the morning—late enough that I don’t have to worry about sleeping in and missing it, but early enough that I won’t have to spend a large part of the day in anticipation.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip, but I’ve been playing the game of pushing it out of my mind to keep the excitement from building to an uncomfortable level, like when I was sent to my room as a kid, looking out the window and watching the other kids play, wanting to play with them, but knowing that I had to stay in my room for at least an hour, and only making the time pass slower by watching the other kids and letting the wanting build. At some point, I learned to distract myself. I would read comics.

And that’s what I do now. When I have something to which to look forward, I distract myself, often with work.

Something else I learned, maybe around the time when I first fell in love, was to minimize my expectations. Their shoes get so big that reality can never fill them. Like telling a fishing story, “You want to know how big the fish was? Just guess!”