I had a realization today about the thing that makes me the most scattered: Impatience. It took Simon to help me see it.
Simon is probably typical of most 3-year-olds, in that he tends to flip out about trivial things pretty easily. They aren't trivial to him, but to someone little, they're his whole world. What I noticed today is that it isn't frustration that's causing him to flip out, because he knows he can get to the end result he's looking for. The problem is that he's impatient. He wants to get there faster.
That's when it clicked that I have the same problem. If I look at the things that I get bent out of shape by, they aren't things that frustrate me. I just don't want to wait for them. It's the reason I think Diana is crazy for knitting because it takes so long.
Imagine my surprise over this, because I'm not one who is generally looking forward to the next big thing. I tend to just go with the flow, more than I ever did before. But like Simon, it's smaller, daily things that I don't have the patience for. Just today, I observed this when dealing with someone who wouldn't just tell me what they wanted. I don't have the patience to play Clue with people like that.
I'm not sure what to do with this information, but I suppose identifying the personality issue is the first step in changing it. As a parent of said 3-year-old, I'm going to need a lot more patience going forward.