Patience is a Virtue
I am not a patient person. Not even slightly. To say my expectations are unrealistic would be a huge understatement. When I order food in a restaurant, anything longer than a 20 minute wait and I’m wondering if they’re having to grow the vegetables from seed. As far as I’m concerned, technology should now be advanced enough to read my mind and load the webpages I want so that they appear the second I open my laptop. So, when instead I boot up my laptop and am presented with a green screen with the words “Please wait” which stays there for nearly 30 minutes, I have to resort to meditation in order to avoid apoplexy.
After five minutes of deep breathing and watching the spinny wheel I am ready to throw my laptop across the room. I’d have forced it to boot down and restarted it, but for the fact that it specifically says on the screen: “Do not shut down your computer”. Whilst I may be off-the-scale impatient, I am not an anarchist.
While I grind my teeth and try to channel the inner sanctum of a Tibetan monk, the screen taunts me with update after update, each “100% Complete” notification a beacon of false hope, and I am forced to contemplate the fact that this is an all-too-obvious reflection of my love life.
“Please wait.”
“We are reconfiguring your settings.” Excellent. If you could reconfigure my waistline, white roots and deflated boobs while you’re at it, that would be helpful. But there’s only so much Microsoft can achieve via wifi, and I fear that once again my expectations have outstretched its capacity.
“Please wait.”
I have been waiting Microsoft. I have been. And despite regular suggestions that my knight in shining armour has arrived, it seems that the moment they reach the top of the tower they spy a helter-skelter back to the bottom which is far more tempting than the weary-looking princess who is “Ohm”-ing through gritted teeth in the corner.
Clearly, when it comes to patience, I am lacking a virtue (or two). Must try harder. All good things come to those who wait, right? Or not. The idea of passively waiting for my Prince to arrive is alarmingly outdated.
I quite fancy the helter-skelter myself, actually. I’m not quite sure why I’m sat in a tower waiting for a knight. It’s very unlike me. There’s a whole world out there. I’ve caught glimpses of it recently and it looks pretty inviting. So I’m going to grab a cushion and take my chances on the slide. Let’s just hope I don’t flash my knickers on the way down. Who knows what’s been waiting for me at the bottom?
Postscript: I realise keep saying this. I keep professing to be throwing myself “back out there” (whatever that means). If there was literally a helter-skelter option, I’d take it. Sadly, it’s not that easy. I’m comfortable. I’m eating my way into a sumo team. But I am rethinking things and getting there, albeit slowly. Patience is a virtue, after all. I’m such a hypocrite.