Patience

I’m currently amidst a… career change at the moment [I’ll blog more about it later, I promise]. At these moments, I always find myself being drawn to my original career choice. When I was six, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. While most kids grow up and their aspirations change from “President of the United States” to “Astronaut” then to something mature and realistic like… “Lawyer”, I clung to my answer of “dolphin trainer”. You have no idea how many times someone laughed in my face. Why are you even going to college?!? Don’t you just need to go to like… clown school or something for that!? (VERBATIM what someone said to me once. How sweet, huh?).I learned to generalize my answer, depending on how well I knew the person, how comfortable I was with them, and if I thought they would laugh at me. I would then give one of three answers 

1.  “Um, I’m not really sure yet
2. "I really want to work with animals 
3. "A dolphin trainer”

Then I went to Hawaii. I wanted to post pictures of me hugging/training dolphins on (very specific) people’s facebook wall with a two word caption: Suck it. 

I swear, in my head, this story was a lot more brief than I am making it out to be. ANYWYAS. My point being, I am on the job hunt again and now being drawn into a career of training. Weird, but there are not a whole lot of dolphins in Sacramento. But do you know what there are a lot of? Dogs. Super cute dogs. Reallyyy fluffy and adorable dogs. I do not have wedding fever or baby fever or whatever fever… but I sure as heck have PUPPY FEVER. 

I recently did an epically looonnnggg online application to be a dog trainer (it literally took me two hours. They requested the all addresses that I have lived at for the past TEN YEARS. I have lived in two states, two countries, and five different counties in the last ten years. Seriously?). A huge portion was a behavioral test, evaluating my temperament and personality to be a dog trainer.

I can tell you the most important quality to be an animal trainer is… PATIENCE.

NOW. My upstairs neighbors kept me up for an hour last night. The sleepy, grumpy two year old inside of me wanted to thump on ceiling, the confrontational side of me (so many stories about that) wanted to go upstairs, knock on the door and ask them to “step lightly, please”. Anddd then I thought about what a trainer would do. Well I can’t exactly spray someone (a stranger/t-rex, no less) in the face with water (although the satisfaction of doing that is sooo tempting). And since I’m well versed in positive reinforcement, the way to say “No!” to an animal is to give a LRS (Least Reinforcing Stimulus)… Which pretty much means ignore it. Turns out John was right. I hate when that happens. 

Click HERE for an awesome video. Apparently my blog hates certain youtube videos... The video is like 90% accurate. And hilarious. 

I don’t even understand how one person (or even two people) can walk around their apartment that much. It seriously sounds like they are conducting speed walking training up there. How do you just spend HOURS and HOURS just walking around your apartment?!? It NEVER STOPSSS. 

But, alas, I am an eternal optimist. Two good things to come out of this… This is my chance to work on my patience. As Morgan Freeman/God says (in the movie Evan Almighty… don’t you love it when I quote scripture?) “If someone prays for patience, do you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient?” I’ve been given many opportunities to be patient. Maybe I should actually seize one? 

Second good thing… I am SO much more considerate of how I walk around the apartment now. My calves were actually sore the other day because I was literally tiptoeing around the apartment. 

Now, since I ALWAYS have “FRIENDS” on in the background, I just had to include one of my favorite moments from the show. Again, this blog hates me and I couldn't post the actual youtube clip that I wanted to... but this blooper reel will do.

Have a great weekend minions!! Until next time J