waiting and expectations

I am waiting for my books to arrive from the printer in Wellington. I expected them today, but postal deliveries in this post covid world are slow and irregular and I need to be patient.  What will it feel like to hold my book in my hand and see the labours of two years work? I check the mail box every half hour and open the door every ten minutes to see if the courier has placed them by my gumboots. People are asking me if I am excited and I don’t know the answer..my emotions are all mixed up. If I look back over the process of writing this novel, I think waiting for feedback from the manuscript assessment was the most harrowing and the most daunting.  Every day I waited was like a month and every hour was like a week. If feedback was positive, I was on the right track and if it wasn’t, then it meant starting again. I was on the right track and somehow this gave me permission to continue and the confidence to battle on.