A Journey to Patience

I’m going on a trip; a journey, rather, a journey to Patience. It’s not really a destination, I know, but, “they” always say it’s the journey that matters, anyway.

There are two traits I’ve inherited from my biological parents. There are probably more, but, I know for a fact that these two I can attribute to them. One, courtesy of my Mother, is vanity (although my Father has told me he is pretty vain, too). The other, which has caused me no end of trouble in my life and has led me to the conclusion that I need to take this particular journey, is impatience.

In other words, I have no patience and I’m fairly certain that I never have had any. Even as a small child, I’d get extremely frustrated over the smallest things. I could go from a sunny, happy cooing toddler to a raging little brat in zero to five seconds. Of course, I could also just as easily return to my sweet state in the same amount of time. This hasn’t changed much in 45 something years. Just ask my husband. There is a reason I bought a cap at Disneyworld a few years ago with an emblem of an angry looking Tinker Bell and these words stitched below, “Moods subject to change without notice”.

But, wait, that’s menopause, not impatience. Shit, I’m screwed.

When we got our dog Lucy a few years ago, we should have named her Patience; then, I would have had some patience, anyway. Ok, so I stole that idea from my former boss, Ed; another person not known for his patience. He was giving a speech to a group of college hires one afternoon and was, to his credit, doing his best to make it a bit more personal so that he (a very tall, imposing man who didn’t usually crack a smile) wouldn’t scare the crap out of them. He was disclosing some tid-bits about his life; his own college years, why he decided to go into engineering, his rise to VP-dom, and the fact he loved to sail and was finally able to buy a boat which he named Patience; and so he quipped, “And she’s the only patience I’ll ever have”.

The realization that I must do something about my impatience AND my quick temper flare ups (which are likely related most of the time although the temper can rise with or without any situation requiring patience) has been floating around in my brain for about a year. Yeah, it used to be a lot worse back when I was working 12 hours a day but, you’d think after eight years of not working (unless you count my less than half-time, heck, less than quarter-time job doing consulting work for one company as working, which I don’t) I’d have cooled my jets by now down to a really low boil or a slight simmer when matters start to torque me off. And, in fairness to me, I probably have managed to do so about 60% of the time.

It’s the other 40% that causes me some concern; mostly because I don’t want to look like or come across as an out of control bitch. Or, Rumpelstiltskin; that fairy tale character who got all pissed off because the queen figured out his name right before she was going to have to give her baby to him and he got so enraged that jumped up and down so hard his right foot drove into the ground and he sank up to his waist, which only infuriated him more such that he grabbed his left foot with both hands and ended up tearing himself in two. Hey, that’ll teach ya to not be able to control your temper; talk about a split personality, ha ha ha. Seriously, when I get into a fit and start losing it, I know that is exactly who I must look like to anyone who may be a witness to this silly behavior.

And, oh BTW, he isn’t even a major fairy tale character. There are likely many, many children (and adults) who have no idea who he is. So, on top of it, why behave like an evil, unnoticeable, inconsequential bad guy?

And it IS silly. That’s probably the primary reason why I want to change it. I don’t want to be a silly person. I’ve strived too hard to NOT be a silly person; I don’t want it to take me down in the end, after all.

So, this is a long, rambling way of saying that I’m embarking on a journey to Patience and I figured I may as well chronicle it; who knows? This may be “the” thing I write that I finally try to publish. You know, the “How to go from Asshole to Sweetheart in 30 Days” concept Father and I came up with like, seven years ago and I’ve still done nothing with (that’s another blog entry). In any event, this chronicle will probably be hysterical to read, at least to me.

Mrs. B