Originally published by The Clifton Courier, November 17, 2021

Yeah, look, I wrote this months ago, long before those long queues and long wait times. And I have to say, I had a pretty cruisy experience when renewing my passport. I don’t mean to rub it, but I got my passport back in like two weeks.

I’m currently on hold with the Australian Passport Office. 

I’m attempting to renew my passport as both an act of both optimism and life admin, hopeful that may at some point in the near future, I might be able to use it again (well, as something other than a coaster, anyway). I mean, I’m not saying I wish the rest of the country were a miserable bunch of pessimists too, but I had hoped there’d be less people calling about renewing passports given we’re still living in These Uncertain Times. 

So far, I’ve been on hold for 48 minutes and seven seconds.

And, look, as far as hold music goes, this stuff is fairly nice. It’s kind of mediative music with didgeridoos and clarinets and choral refrains, so I guess I could chalk it up as a bit of a relaxation session… if that relaxation session was also a hostage situation. 

But I haven’t been relaxing this whole time. 

In fact, I’ve actually been able to get quite a few things done while I’ve been on hold thanks to the hands-free magic of ear buds. Here’s how I’ve spent the now 53 minutes and 24 seconds I’ve been on hold so far:

Paid my internet bill: This was something I’d meant to do yesterday, but didn’t get around to it because it required 1.45 minutes of concentration and me to enter a few details into the online form. Clearly, as a pencil-skirt wearing career woman, I had no time for that… until today. 

Paid my phone bill: I don’t think I get monthly statements for this and if I do, I’ve clearly ignored them for much of the year. I can’t remember the last time I was prompted to pay for my telephonic privileges and therefore can’t remember the last time I paid, so I just took a stab in the dark and transferred what I hoped was enough to ensure my lines of communication won’t be cut. 

Hung some washing on the line: I’ve started divvying up my loads according to light and colourful garments. It’s a very exciting development in my life, hey?

Wrote a post card to my sister: I went to an art exhibition like a month ago and bought a postcard of a famous painting featuring a pair of sisters. I have been recently quite slack at keeping up my postal correspondence with this sister, which we like to maintain despite the modern communication methods available to us (well, they’re available if you remember to pay your bills on time…).  I had been planning to send a the postcard with more exciting life updates than “I’m on hold right now” but things have been quite dull in most aspects of my life (except in the laundry, ammiright?!), I’d been meaning to send it for a while and I had nothing else to do with my time. So she’s got a nice underwhelming surprise coming for her in the mail. 

Wrote a note to my other sister: Late in September, I’d bought myself a set of really, really comfy knickers with a matching crop top. I was chuffed with them. I ended up back to that shop a few days later and, noticing it was in the midst of a sale, I decided to snag a cheap set for my sister as a little put-a-smile-on-that-dial mid-week mail surprise. I hadn’t got around to sending them and after so long, I felt like I need to accompany them with a note explaining the delay, so I wrote that while on hold. 

Realised I didn’t have anything to send my other sister in the mail: There’s absolutely nothing to read into that, but any chronic overthinker of a middle child could write a whole column on being casually excluded like that. 

Sent a hasty Facebook message to my ignored sister: I misspelled “you” in my rush to pre-emptively mend things. 

Started writing this column: Some might say I was being very meta, cheekily breaking down the fourth wall with a wink to my readers. Others might say I was seizing the day, taking what life thrusts at me and milking every opportunity out of it. And then there would be some who would say writing about being on hold is scraping the barrel, topic-wise.