I can’t tell time.

I’m gradually beginning to realize that I’m really bad at telling time. I don’t mean looking at a clock or watch and recognizing what hour and minute of the day it is. I mean that I don’t have a great concept of how much time has actually passed—by a little or a lot.

Any past experiences, even if they were this past season or earlier this year, feel wildly far away.

Growth, or lack thereof, has a funny way of distorting the weeks and months for me and I find myself expecting much more of myself than is fair for the amount of time that’s passed in actuality.

I noticed this most prevalently this past winter when I went through a severe bout of skin issues that I struggled to get a handle on.

In the sweep of revamping my skincare routine, I put my skin through too much too fast, and all at once. I paid an enormous price for it.

As I was scrambling to reverse the negative effects this overhaul had on my skin, I realized that I expected a reversal of the state of my skin fairly quickly. I wasn’t naive enough to believe that overnight results were possible, but until I began tracking my day-by-day progress, I gave a new product a mere few days to prove itself when it really needed a few weeks or more. In my haste to recover my deeply troubled skin, those few days felt like an eternity and so if they didn’t show any promise, I dumped them and switched to trying something else.

I don’t recommend playing trial and error on your face. This led me to switch up products multiple times a week which put my skin in the worse state I’ve ever experienced in my life. I suffered severe, painful breakouts at an alarming rate.

As I stuck with one routine and tracked each day, however, the process reflected a deeper tendency of mine: I am incredibly self-impatient. Once I know better, once I find something new, once I learn a better way, I expect to adjust immediately. I expect immediate growth. I expect immediate change. I go all in, headfirst. It might take me a while to research and decide, but once I do, I’m all in.

As if I’m a machine, I expect myself to fully and perfectly implement new tools, strategies, and concepts into my life like clicking a button. I don’t give myself, my body, or my growth much time because I always feel like I’m running out of it.

I’m working on not letting the anxiety of the scarcity of life, the fear that it’s moving too fast, or the shame that I’m using it unwisely drive me to judge my progress so harshly.

I’m trying to be better at honoring my limitations instead of despising them.

I’m trying to take more pitstops, look back, and be proud of the things I’ve accomplished thus far—and know that I don’t have to be afraid that by doing so, I’ll sacrifice momentum towards my goals.

I really hope to live a full life and am actively working to identify the tendencies I’ve developed that keep me from living it.

Self-impatience is one of those tendencies for me.