If you’re always waiting for the next thing, you’re never really seeing this one.

Waiting is a full-time occupation, and it uses the same attention you would need for whatever is actually happening. The trouble is that the next thing arrives and immediately becomes the thing you are standing in while looking ahead to something else. Done long enough, you can get through years of your life in a permanent state of nearly.

Try naming the thing you are waiting for, out loud, because that usually breaks the spell for a minute. Then pick one ordinary stretch of today, the walk home or the first ten minutes of practice, and treat it as the event rather than the gap before one.