Why can't I idle and make requests at the same time?

[TreyThomas93]

I am finding it problematic to always have to stop idling and then restarting it. And when i am attempting to make async requests, some requests will restart idling while another request is about to be sent out and then it hangs, causing problems. I read that you should be able to idle and make requests, but this api doesn't allow for that. I may have to use polling instead. Any ideas or best practices would be great. thanks!