Patience is a Blade

This morning I remembered that I had not downloaded the presentation I’m giving tomorrow to my iPad. And since the hotel WiFi is “unreliable,” it decided I should try downloading it from my room.

But when I turned on the iPad, despite having three bars of LTE, I couldn’t get anything to work. After trying for awhile, I finally managed to get connected to the hotel WiFi, and from there I was able to download the presentation.

Sorry to short-cut the story… but there’s a point.

I was feeling the frustration and even the panic of dealing with all of that. I’m tired, because author conferences can be exhausting. And I slept in, which makes me feel like I’m behind. The anxiety goes up, and my patience gets tested.

Despite this, though, I want to maintain the discipline of my morning routine. The multiple journal entries, the affirmations, the blog post. Video… I’ve had to pause video. The logistics of it are too time consuming for the week. So, a sacrifice. And a lesson… I’ll have to work out how to do that, in the future, to maintain my streaks and my goals.

But the point is this: I was already feeling anxious and stressed when I discovered that the WiFi thing was an issue. I was already feeling impatient, and still had the whole list of writing to do. And in the past, I would freak out about this kind of thing and just ditch something. Leave off on the routine and go find some WiFi somewhere.

Instead, I pushed through. I tried things, let them run for a bit, and tried other things. And in between, I wrote. I did the work.

Ultimately, as I spoiled above, I had success. The presentation is now on my iPad. But in addition, my journaling and affirmations are done, and as of now this blog post is being read by you, so you know how that turned out.

In one of my journals I wrote, “Patience is a blade.” I went into detail about how blades can be nicked and their edges dulled with use. And how we have to take it to the whetstone, where we grind away at some of the material of the blade, to smooth the burrs and remove the nicks, and return the edge to sharpness. That lost material, that’s the sacrifice we have to make. That’s us changing to accommodate the things we have to be patient over. That’s how we grow and get better, by letting the whetstone of annoyances and disturbances and irritations help us hone our edge.

I have not traditionally been a very patient man, but I’m learning. That’s the point. Learn, do, grow, and repeat.

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