Great Expectations

Today was a beach trip with my church and two other sister churches, and it was one of the best and worst days I've had this summer. Best because I love everyone who went, and nothing can beat spending time with people you call family before everyone heads off to school. Worst was because I was the one who officially "organized" it; I thought this entailed creating a Facebook event and maybe giving some people rides, but I'm too detail-oriented not to play a larger role in the event--and by now, I should know this about myself.

It all started Monday night, when my mom reminded me I needed to go in for a blood test before I left for the beach. It had to be that morning before we left, in order for the results to be done before I left for college. My morning had already been perfectly planned out, so I attempted to squeeze it in by only getting four hours of sleep that night.

After waking up and baking cookies to bring, I went to do my blood test. It took much longer than usual, especially because I had forgotten to account for the time needed to get gas, and I got home ten minutes past the time I should have left to meet the rest of my youth group for our carpool. Felicia, who got dropped off at my house, was sitting there in my kitchen waiting for me. I went upstairs to grab my stuff, expecting for my brother to be ready to go--only to find him in bed, still asleep. Finally the third time waking him up succeeded. We piled into the car, arrived at our carpool meeting place about twenty minutes late, to discover that there was a miscommunication between Parker and me and that she wasn't actually driving (and couldn't because the car she'd taken was 23 years old and not safe for long trips). That meant that we should have taken the minivan, not the Corolla, in order to have enough seats for everyone. Since our house is on the way to the beach, we headed back to our house to switch cars. But before we left, we discovered the tank in the minivan was empty and needed gas (ironically, part of what contributed to being late in the first place was filling the tank of the -other- car), so we had to stop on the way there for more gas.

Bryan also was unfamiliar with how to get to the beach we were going to and didn't have a formal GPS, so he decided to follow us. We arrived at New Haven without any problems, where we were picking up Christina from her church, at which point my GPS decided to freeze just when we were navigating all the one-way streets. I was driving from memory when we missed a turn, and that was the end of having any clue where we were. We were literally driving in circles for what must have been at least twenty minutes before Bryan saved us with his iPad, we picked up Christina, and finally got to the beach about a full hour and a half later than planned.

So many people said how much fun the trip was, but I felt like my day was partially ruined because of how miserably the morning went. And I was annoyed at myself for letting that happen. Granted, some things were out of my control, but there were also a lot of things that were my fault. I remember my manager told me that one thing you learn when you start your first job is how to prioritize and spend only the necessary time on a task to get it finished. What I need to work on is not trying to do too much perfectly and getting upset when it doesn't work out the way I planned.