Displaying items by tag: patience

Typically during the last weeks of the old year, people set goals or intentions for themselves to carry through into the next. The most common ones include weight loss, exercising more, saving more money, watching less television or social media, or drinking less caffeine. Some less common ones might be being more mindful, starting a meditation practice, or getting more sleep. 

Sometimes we say we want to work on ourselves, but it’s normally in a vague sense of, perhaps thinking more positively or communicating more effectively with the people in our lives. We even may set our sights on altering a personality trait that has been our vice for a long time. Granted, we can’t change everything about ourselves, nor would we want to completely. However, we can work on cultivating more positive attributes from what we already have, or amplifying those areas where we may lack. 

Rejection happens to everyone. It can come in the form of being overlooked for a promotion or being turned down by a potential date. Rejection happens to me quite frequently. This type of rejection is not work related, relationship related, or health related. It’s the rejection that comes from literary magazines where I send a piece of myself, of my writing, to potentially be shared with a bigger audience. No one else, except for me, or a few close people I choose to share it with, know about it.

When I was five years old, my mother enrolled me in a local majorette’s group for kids my age. I whined to her that I didn’t like it and wanted to quit, but she “forced” me to go so I could learn how to twirl and toss and spin a long metal bar with two knobs on either end like her. She was the “best in the school,” said my grandparents. But I was not like my mother. I was uncoordinated, dropped the baton, and had a hard time paying attention. During the parade my group marched in, I carried the banner with our group name on it because I wasn’t good enough to walk and twirl with the others. I quit after the parade.