Orange Juice Cereal – Breakfast of Persistence

I broke my blog yesterday. Well my friend made me break my blog. I was woken up by her text informing me I needed to permalink my urls. Whatever that means. No, she made sure to explain why I needed to do so, and included a helpful link to how to complete the task. I am above average computer savvy, and if I don’t know how to do something I will tinker and Google until I figure it out. My boyfriend is my IT department, he supports my desire to blog and kindly did the work to put my blog on a server and get me “set up”. While he is helpful, and a go to person when there are issues, I want to learn and understand this blog stuff on my own. So permalink url – I got this!

Click here, click there and bam DONE. I’m on separate IMs with friend and boyfriend. I quickly ask my friend to check a link for me. At the same time I proudly let boyfriend know of my new blog geek tech savvy status. Except well…404 Error. Yeah, as friend is telling me the link didn’t work. Boyfriend replies “can’t do that on the fly, it will give your links errors”. Yeah, now you tell me. And hey if you’re my IT why wasn’t this DONE when you set up my blog? And where’s my owner’s manual? I can go zero to frustrated in seconds. He actually teases me about how “someone so motivated and determined can get frustrated so easily”. He then says, “I’ll fix it tomorrow…off to class then work.” TOMORROW? I quickly, undo what I did and asked friend to check link and whew my blog was back to working order. I apologized to boyfriend, *slapped my hands* for messing around with my blog and told him I’d go eat my orange juice cereal.

Orange juice cereal? Yes, orange juice cereal, the breakfast of persistence. Ok, really the breakfast of impatience.

When I was three (yes I have a VERY good memory of my childhood, of everything really), my dad was making me breakfast one morning. He had poured me a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice but something distracted him before he could put milk on my cereal. Since I could not pour the gallon of milk by myself (I might have spilled that and made a mess), I opted instead to pour my glass of orange juice on my cereal. Liquid is liquid right? Of course, my dad was not happy and would not let me waste the cereal so I had to eat it, orange and all. To this day I do not like orange juice.

So I started thinking, WOW, I was that impatient at age 3? Patience is not a virtue I have, I know this, it’s weird to look back and see evidence of such trait when I was a toddler. I struggle with finding a balance between if you want something make it happen, and “anything worth having is worth waiting for”…I mean which is it? I know it depends on the situation. And it is a balance. Most of all try to gather as much information as possible and make an informed decision. My frustration typically stems from me doing JUST THAT and things still not working. Tech stuff is the worse, I once took a website design course and it put my laptop in a lot of danger of going out the window on several occasions.

Yes, I can be impatient but it’s because I’m doing the work to get things done, so I want it done and I want to do it correctly. I’m not just sitting around waiting for good things to come to me, I’m seeking them out, inviting them in. I’m researching, I’m learning, I’m trying. When I think of all I’ve learned through the challenges I’ve over come I realize with every struggle I build upon my skill set.

My mentor once said of me “a challenge is just Sarah’s next accomplishment.” True. I might get frustrated, I might need to ask for help and guidance but in the end I will succeed.

So maybe every once in awhile I have to “eat my orange juice cereal”, wouldn’t it be worse to go through life hungry?