I live a life of excess: excess fun, excess food, excess laughs, and excess love. One of the few things I lack is patience.
I was never a big fan of foreplay, and if a song doesn’t interest me within the first 25 seconds after pressing play I’ll skip to the next one. I always force the timer on my toaster before it pops up automatically, and God forbid I actually wait until my food cools down before taking the first bite.
Everyone tells me “baby-steps.” Shit, I tell everyone else “baby-steps” too … and then I’ll turn around and complain that I don’t have a six-pack after only a week of eating right and putting in work at the gym, and even worse beat myself for not being completely out-of-love with someone in a record of three weeks. I’m the kind of person that wants to speed walk before learning how to crawl. I like shortcuts, and efficiency. I believe that “good things come to those who wait … but faster to those who don’t.”
During my Hawaii trip last year I made it a point to jump Pele’s Chair. I’m a poor swimmer, and have never even jumped into a pool. After some intense Googling and YouTubing though, I decided to man the fuck up, and face my fear. When I got there, things looked exactly as they did in pictures and videos; calm currents and shallow waters, but one would’ve sworn I was jumping off of “The Rock” in Waimea Bay with the way I was freaking out. Then I saw a six year old jump in head first, and managed to find my balls somewhere in my bikini bottom and walked the plank – literally. I took baby-steps all the way to the very end of the pole, then thought to myself, “If you don’t learn how to swim now you’ll die.”
So I jumped. I felt my feet touch the bottom of the ocean and freaked the fuck out for a second but saw the sun and managed to kick up and reach the surface. And the first thing I saw was my pretty little Q holding a neon green floaty for me that I of course was too proud to use at that point, and the first thing I heard was my lovely Hayati and the rest of the girls cheering me on from the rocks nearby. My nose hurt from the salt water, but that was the worst of it and it didn’t stop me from doing it again. Three more times as a matter of fact.
And that’s the thing, sometimes you just gotta do it. It’s easier to recover from baby-steps, but sometimes you just need to take a giant leap of faith. Otherwise, you’ll spend your whole life tippy-toeing around what needs to be done because you’re scared. Your friends won’t always be able to hold your hand throughout life, but good friends will always be there to pick you up if you fall. Great friends on the other hand will push you in the right direction and meet you on the surface.