patience is a....big frickin' waste of my time

Perhaps you know me only slightly, and consider me to be a calm & composed person, not easily frustrated by the small, imperfect details of life. Or perhaps you know me a little better and have discovered that, while I am (for the most part) a tranquil-soul, I have a mad streak of something that makes me wildly impatient for the silliest reasons.

For example:

I cannot listen to entire songs on my iPod. Literally cannot. Don't ask me why...I'm just in a hurry to make it to the next song, or I've gotten bored listening to the current one. I'm sure (actually, I know for a fact) that it drives the passengers in my car utterly insane.

I fantasize about punching people in the back of their heads when they walk slowly. Even if I'm not in a rush to get to class or a meeting, if there is someone in front of me taking their sweet time, acting like they own the sidewalk, I get pissed. Sometimes I'll aggressively step into the street, pass the annoying slow-walkers, and then cut them off - all while making some big huffing noise and being rude on purpose. I'm not sure that it's what Jesus would do...


Speaking of people being slow, elderly drivers set me off the most. I'm not even a very fast driver...I just hate people who go slower than me. The other day, I was taking an exit ramp off of 66 and this car in front of me was going TWENTY-FIVE MILES A FREAKING HOUR. I had to slam on my breaks, and there was not a single way to get around them. After hastily passing them when we were off the ramp, I looked into the car to see that the driver was an ancient man with thick glasses and one of those net baseball caps old men wear that sit impossibly high on their head. Seriously though...how do those hats work? It's like magic or something. Maybe they sell little lifts that fit inside the hat or something at stores only old men know about just for this purpose.

Maybe the reason I'm a mess at cooking and baking is that I don't have patience for reading recipes or for following them. My philosophy is: glance at the ingredients, throw things in as they make sense to you, cook for however long you like, and maybe something will work out. I mean, baking stuff just takes SO LONG. And preparing stuff to cook...geez la weez. Who wants to do that?

Also, learning things: I want to be good at it right away. I tried teaching myself a new song on guitar yesterday, but I gave up because...it was hard. Oh and because I cut myself somehow on a guitar string and my finger started bleeding? (I'm convinced that only I am capable of doing something like that). I just want instruments to come easily to me, and when they don't, I get frustrated. This type of impatience is something I've slowly learned to get over as the years has passed, though, which gives me some hope that I can start incorporating a greater degree of tolerance in other areas of my life. I mean, if I'd given up every time a song was difficult to me on piano, I would still only be playing the Mexican Jumping Bean Melody over and over again like I did in fifth-grade.

Also, (and I'm ashamed to admit to this one), I loose my patience for books sometimes. It's probably why having a list of stories I want to get to is dangerous for me, because it means that I read approximately 6 books at any given time. I start one, get too excited/impatient to get to the next book, and then start that one...and the cycle continues (although, I will say, it makes for a pretty exciting week when I finish all 6 books around the same time). Dear every author I've ever read - I'm sorry for not giving your piece the attention it deserves. Also, I'm sorry for sometimes getting too excited and reading the last sentence before I've even started the book, just because I'm dying to know what it is.

So yes, patience certainly is a virtue. Maybe someday when it isn't such an annoying inconvenience, I'll learn how to have some.