Staying Patient

Three months into the school year my mom and I decided to plan a trip to Florida to celebrate my upcoming graduation. I never realized how much work this entailed until I had to start planning and purchasing. I started by booking the flight, followed by the hotel, and lastly, an appointment to get my first tattoo. Once these tasks were completed I soon realized that I still had to wait a month before I could get on the plane and go. 

Patience has never been my strong suit, especially when it comes to something as exciting as this. I did however manage and showed patience by not getting packed and ready for the trip immediately and by not trying to switch the dates to an earlier flight. Some of the things I did to help me with being patient were: leaving my suitcase upstairs until closer to departure, and not buying random things I thought I might need while in Florida, even though I wanted to and it was all I could think about, and keeping my mind busy on work and school to help as a distraction. I thought to myself ¨is this something I should be doing right now¨ and decided that I still had plenty of time to think about the things I wanted to bring to Florida and put together a list of what I should and shouldn’t take with me. Going through all this made it so that I didn’t go over the weight limit and I didn’t overpack, which is what I would have done if I started packing a month in advance. The truth is, I would never think I’m bringing enough.

An additional way that I showed patience in the planning of this trip was by not changing the date of my flight to a sooner one so that I could spend more time there. Every time I plan a trip I always want to plan it for a couple of days after I start looking at where I wanna go. I’m not sure why but I just got way too excited for the trip and can’t wait any longer. I showed patience by leaving the flight I purchased alone and just waiting instead of leaving sooner and having to change everything around.

In the end, it was a great trip. I’m thinking next time I may buy tickets closer to the departure date so I can avoid all this.

“Lake Okeechobee Florida Sunset Sony A6000” by Captain Kimo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.