Would you believe that, with as much as I struggle with it on a daily basis, that I have never written a blog entry regarding the topic of PATIENCE?! Yeah. I know. I'm super surprised, too. I have had the idea, but I didn't want to be repetitive, so I did the search... and NOTHING! Yeah. It seems like a pretty pertinent topic nowadays, definitely worthy of discussing. Sometimes my patience is tested on a super small level, something like the guy in front of me is driving ridiculously slow or the internet is craaaawwling and Facebook won't load fast enough. Other times, my patience is tested at some grand existential level, where I find it difficult to stay patient and calm because things aren't happening on my timeline. It happens when dealing with those BIG life issues: money, love, life, school, work, living situation, etc. Anyway you look at it, impatience is DEFINITELY still a character defect that continues to cause me issues.
A perfect example of impatience happened to me a few weeks ago. After the recent shake-up at work (see the post "Bad News Bears" for further info...), I started to throw my name (and my resume) out into the job market. Fairly quickly, a VERY promising job prospect appeared on the horizon. It was one that I had honestly never really considered (for myself) before. It was definitely a little more "corporate" than I'm used to, definitely further away than I'm used to looking and not necessarily up my alley or area of expertise... but I was thinking that I could've made it work. Plus, when I found out about the potential money that I could be making, I was TOTALLY on board. I went from being all social work-y and working in a service field to being Mr. Corporate Cloud... ready to make the big bucks. In talking with the recruiter, I was led to believe that it wasn't IF I was going to get hired, it was more like "WHEN you get hired, which position will they place you in?" The job was almost certainly mine, and so I became increasingly impatient while waiting for the results of my TWO interviews. The corporate recruiter who had stayed in touch with me during the beginning of the process all of a sudden went AWOL. No phone call and no e-mail. After waiting for almost a week, I found out that the answer was sadly (or maybe not-so-sadly) a big fat NO. I've been turned down for PLENTY of jobs before, but something about this was especially devastating. Looking back at it now, I realize that it's because I had started to make assumptions that the job was mine, quickly followed by making plans on what I was going to do with all of that money. I feel like I was kind of playing God, assuming that things were going to go MY way instead of sitting back and listening to what my Higher Power might have to say about the ordeal.
God: "Eh, John, do you really think you'll be happy doing this?
Me: "Shut up. Money."
God: "Now John, listen, it is really far away. How can you make that logistically work?"
Me: "Shut up. Money."
God: "Ok, I hate to have to do this..."
That news definitely pushed my impatience-o-meter off the charts, and it definitely didn't take long for that to start trickling into all the other areas of my life. I have definitely been short with friends, family, coworkers and everybody in between. STAYING positive has been a real struggle. After a few weeks, I think that things have definitely leveled back out now. With my school FINALLY over, that is one less thing that I have to worry about. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep doing the next right thing. If I can just NOT act like a super-impatient dick, I'm fairly certain good things will continue to happen to me. Despite the series of setbacks, I do have an overall optimistic outlook into my future. I can't quite put a finger on it, but I think I'm due for some good news sometime (hopefully) soon!
In other news, I unintentionally celebrated 16 months of sustained sobriety today. I say "unintentionally" due to the fact that I didn't even really think about it until after Megan sent me a "Happy Sober-versary" text. I think I'm getting to that point where it IS just a normal, every day thing. I don't find myself white-knuckling it near as much. Even when I took the big hit to the pocketbook because of the job situation and then followed by this big hit to the ego when I got turned down for the corporate position, alcohol didn't even cross my mind. Now, thinking about what kind of tasty food I was going to have for dinner sure did... but we'll work on that diet soon enough.
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