How To Have a Productive Advocacy Call While On Hold for Forty Minutes
A Survival Guide for When Government Phone Lines Test Your Last Nerve (Warning: sarcastic humor)
The moment you dial a government agency — VA, DoD, TRICARE, DFAS, or whichever branch of bureaucratic chaos you’re dealing with today — you know exactly what’s coming:
Hold music.
Endless hold music.
Soul-crushing, time-warping, will-to-live eating hold music.
But instead of staring at your phone like it personally betrayed you, here are some semi-sarcastic, semi-useful ways to transform that 40-minute wait into something…productive-ish.
1. Answer Three Emails You’ve Been Avoiding
Congratulations — you now have time to respond to:
The staffer who sent a confusing message at 11:47 PM
The volunteer who writes paragraphs instead of sentences
That one person who says, “Is this bill important?” (deep breath)
Hold time magically boosts inbox efficiency.
It’s like forced productivity… but with worse music.
2. Fold Laundry
You can:
Wash
Dry
Fold
Rediscover 14 socks without partners
Question every fashion choice you’ve ever made
By the time a human answers, your laundry room will look like a deployment-ready supply depot.
3. Learn a New Language Out of Pure Survival Instinct
By minute 15, you’ve memorized the hold music.
By minute 25, you’re humming harmonies.
By minute 40, you’re fluent in:
Spanish
French
Bureaucratese (the language of vague answers)
Honestly? Put it on your résumé.
4. Reflect on All Your Life Choices (and a Few You Haven’t Made Yet)
Somewhere around the 32-minute mark, your brain enters an introspective spiral:
“How did I get here?
Why is ‘Your call is important to us’ the biggest lie of my life?
Should I move to the mountains and raise goats?
Would the goats judge me less than the VA does?”
This is normal.
This is part of the process.
Lean into it.
5. Rewrite Your Entire Advocacy Strategy
Hold time is the perfect time to:
Redraft your talking points
Rethink your meeting script
Plan an entire Hill Day
Compose two emotionally charged emails you’ll delete
Decide Congress needs a timeout
Build a color-coded plan of attack
By the time someone picks up, you’ve completed a full strategic reset and possibly ascended to a higher plane.
6. Clean Out the Fridge Before Something Gains Sentience
Something in the back has been there since…
well, since before the last continuing resolution.
Now’s the moment:
Toss it
Purge it
Wonder what chemical reactions have occurred
Question whether military housing or your fridge is the greater threat
You’re multitasking. You’re thriving.
7. Pace Like a Tiger in a Very Small Habitat
At some point you will begin walking laps around your house —
not because you’re stressed, but because movement is the only thing preventing you from screaming.
Your steps become faster.
Your breathing increases.
Your aura becomes unhinged.
This is advocacy cardio.
The gains are emotional, not physical.
8. Snack Aggressively
There is no stress quite like hold-time stress.
So you reach for:
Cookies
Chips
Emergency chocolate
The good snacks you hide from the family
This is not emotional eating.
This is tactical fueling.
9. Draft Your Memoir
Working titles include:
Lost in the Hold Queue: A Modern Tragedy
Press 1 for Pain
Your Call Is Not Important to Us: A Life Story
You’re not losing it.
You’re creating art.
10. Stare Into the Abyss Until the Abyss Blinks First
Around minute 39, you enter the contemplative void.
You consider:
The meaning of life
The meaning of paperwork
Whether time is real
Whether you are real
Whether the VA is, in fact, a simulation designed to test emotional endurance
Then — just as you accept your fate —
a person picks up.
You jolt back to life like a Victorian protagonist revived with smelling salts.
And When They Finally Answer…
Take a deep breath.
Sound calm.
Pretend you haven’t:
reorganized your entire home
eaten half the pantry
reconsidered your career
aged emotionally by a decade
Because you’re a professional.
A champion.
An advocate with patience forged in the fires of bureaucratic nonsense.
And before you hang up?
Always ask for a direct extension.
It’s the advocacy equivalent of finding a golden ticket.
Why We Endure This Madness
Because our work matters.
Because families are depending on us.
Because the system won’t fix itself.
Because advocacy is built on persistence — not convenience.
And because humor is the only thing keeping us from setting the phone on fire.
