Creative or inpatient

All week last week, I have been trying to be efficient at work so that I can go home when it's still bright out and spend some quality time with myself. I was able to cook, work out, draw and read almost every night- I was proud. However, I realized that I haven't been able to follow the recipe for cooking or the Zentangle book for tangling step by step. I had such an obvious tendency of preferring to create than to follow instructions. I made my delicious salad breakfast with spinach, yogurt, fresh raspberries, mixed nuts, and maple flavoured granola- simple perfect to start my day fresh. I also made a casserole dish putting together whatever I had in my fridge and pantry. It ended up being the most delicious casserole dish I have ever had. It came with peking duck and roasted chicken leftovers, broccoli, eggplant, mushrooms, bacon, pasta, coconut milk and chilli pepper, soy, cheese. The sauce was creamy yet not overly heavy, the natural flavour from Peking duck blended with coconut milk, it naturally became a Malaysian cuisine. I didn't even plan it. It was like a beautiful new-born baby, adding surprise and joy to the household.

When I first tried out Zentangle, the instruction was very clear that I should try out the examples. I took a quick peak of the examples and just started drawing away. All I cared about was the moment of focusing each stroke I put down and follow the path I was mindfully tracing. I was amazed how drawing is like a freestyle speech, where the speaker definitely does a better job when he/she is more confident; I believed that I was a creative person and went free-styling in tangling. The final result was not too perfect. But I enjoyed being in the moment and work my way through. That reminded me of my first couple weeks of internship in the summer. Everything was new, I had to push myself to believe that I can do this before doing every new task, and that really has been the best mentality to have at work.
Meanwhile, if my dad is here, I think he will take his rational eyes and point out my weaknesses. He would say: "Baby, you have to recognize that you are not a very patient person! You can't even draw a simple zentangle step by step. Your attention span is too short!" Growing up under my dad's Chinese style negative re-reinforcement education system, I have developed the tendency to self-criticize and self-doubt. When things are going well, I would automatically tell myself exactly what my dad would normally tell me. Sometimes that hinders my level of self-efficacy; but most times, it has been something very important to me, without which I might feel too good about myself. Anyways, back to the creative vs inpatient topic. I think I am both of those; however what matters more is that I don't have to be inpatient to be creative~In order to demonstrate creativity in arts or cooking or life in general, being calm and patient is key to achieve a lot of things without pity.

Thus, I do need to work on my patience towards things that doesn't go my way. Doing Zentangle step by step would definitely be my first step towards that goal.