The kind of "queuing" in the mempool is basically a bunch of transactions competing for the same block space.

After you click send, it first propagates to the node, and miners/validators and various builders see it and start to pick: those who can afford tips, those that can be bundled in, or those who can easily do some sandwich or rollback arbitrage, are prioritized.
What you see in your wallet as "estimated minutes" is more of a psychological comfort... During congestion, transactions may get stuck, be replaced by others (with the same nonce), or simply wait until your set deadline passes and fail directly, still burning some gas.
Anyway, the chain doesn’t show mercy.

Recently, a bunch of people have been interpreting ETF fund flows, US stock risk appetite, and crypto prices as interconnected, which makes me want to laugh:
No matter how hot the macro narrative gets, your swap still has to take a beating in the mempool.
What annoys me most is that even when the direction is right, being stuck in congestion causes slippage and MEV to take a chunk, and the mindset instantly shifts from "I am very rational" to "Forget it, I give up"...
Next time, I’ll just honestly keep an eye on gas and block rhythm first.