I am thankful: 16

Today I'm thankful for patience.

Let's be honest here for a sec, I have no patience. None at all. Pretty much not a single ounce of it. I hate waiting for things and I get frustrated REALLY easily. It's a character flaw, what can I say. So for a short little story, my phone recently decided it didn't want to charge anymore. Guy at Sprint store says "it's a software issue, try charging it while it's off," of course that doesn't work, take it back in, he says there's nothing he can do and I need to order a new one which could take a few days to arrive. All on the day before I'm set to go out of town for Thanksgiving. And me being the most impatient person in the world gives the guy a little attitude before storming out of the store.

My first instinct in a situation like this is to call my dad and complain - but HAHAH jokes on me because turns out I don't have a phone to call him with now! So instead, I calmly go home and IM a friend to complain and he kindly offered to help me sort the whole thing out. Instead of getting seriously worked up (which I'm prone to), I somehow was granted a very minimal amount of patience that is allowing me to see this as an opportunity instead of a problem (granted, it's still a problem, I mean how am I going to wake up in the morning without my phone as an alarm clock?!). And the opportunity is to distance myself from this constant need to be connected through my phone. He and I are attached at the hip - I'm constantly checking it even when I know there's no messages, playing WordFeud, checking twitter, checking facebook, reading articles, not paying attention in class, and texting. It's bad. And I always try to find ways to justify it.

But the truth is, I probably need a couple days away from it so I can practice this patience and realize that there are more important things in my life than my smart phone, and there are other ways for people to communicate with me. Of course I can't (and won't) be giving up technology all together (what are you, crazy?!) and I haven't been off my computer since this went down, but... baby steps, people. Today I'm thankful for this small lesson in patience and for the break from my all-too-serious relationship with that phone.