Is there a way to pick a point on a matplotlib scatterplot without stopping the code from executing?

Question

I'm trying to pick a point on a matplotlib scatterplot using "pick_event", set the value of a variable to the "x" coordinate of that point, and continue executing the code to work with that variable.

Here's the working code I have so far:

%matplotlib notebook
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = np.random.rand(10)
y = np.random.rand(10)
def on_pick(event):
    offsets = event.artist.get_offsets()[event.ind][0]
    global x1 
    if x1 == "null":  
        x1 = offsets[0]
        title = "X1 " + str(x1)
    plt.title(title)
    
x1 = "null"
plt.scatter(x,y,picker = 5)
fig = plt.gcf()
cid1 = fig.canvas.mpl_connect("pick_event", on_pick)
fig.canvas.draw()

This code works to select the x value, but I can't do anything with it besides changing things about the plot, such as the title. I would like to add something akin to the following to the code:

while x1 == "null":
    time.sleep(.1)#keeping the code running while I pick the x1 value, I expected that picking x1 would break me out of the loop
x2 = x1**2 #Example calculation with x1 taken from the picker

However, I can no longer pick x1 from the plot when I add this section. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could pick x1 from the plot without stopping the code from executing?

I've tried to subvert the problem by generating the plot on another thread, but I had no success. This was my first time trying to use threading, and I'm not sure that would solve the problem anyway.