Lately, looking at the bunch of "queue numbers" in the mempool, it’s quite like rush hour taxiing: you think once you click, it’s done, but actually you’re first being watched by everyone in the pool. Miners/packagers will prioritize picking the more "sincere" ones, if you send too little, it just stays hanging, and if you're lucky, it slowly gets included; if unlucky, it expires directly or you can’t stand it and cancel and resend. The more awkward part is that during congestion, the same transaction might be passed around by various nodes, and seeing "pending" in your browser makes your heart race. You shake your hand and increase the fee to speed up, and the result is just spending more money for peace of mind. Honestly, I’d rather reserve some time in advance; if it’s really urgent, don’t do on-chain operations at the last minute.

By the way, recently there’s been a heated debate about privacy coins/mixing/compliance, and I’ve become more cautious: the more blurred the boundaries are, the less I want my transactions to be scrutinized in the congestion queue. If I can avoid it, I avoid it; if I can sign offline, I sign offline… for now, that’s how it is.