2010 for most was one of, if not the, worst year of their lives. All across the board we had very little to be happy about. Political bullshit, economic paranoia, and random events that were less than favorable seemed to leave the same bad taste in everyone's mouth. Everyone hopes that 2011 will be better and by all accounts, so do I. My personal 2010 was a year consumed and wasted by my own stupidity. I dropped the ball in 2010 or I would have been the exception to most of society and had a fairly prosperous and fun 2010. Let's recap from the top.
Late 2009 (November) I got engaged. What a stupid decision. I knew it though. I knew it was a stupid decision, I knew it wouldn't work, and I tried to talk myself into believing that it would. I succeeded. I convinced not only the people around me, but myself that it would work and was a rational idea. I knew it was far from logical but tried to ignore that and be normal for once. Thought maybe not everything in life had to make complete and total logical sense. Thought there might, for a split second, be more to life than making the numbers add up correctly. What I found, is that 2 and 2, no matter how much you want them to, will never equal 5. So I paid for this stupid decision for 3/4 of 2010. It was an economic blunder of seismic proportion relative to the income I had vs the debt I literally accumulated overnight. I have written more on the outcome of how I paid it off and the methods behind all of the madness before so I won't rehash the details but just know, it was not fun. Lots of work, very little play, lots of saving, no spending. In the end though, I recovered with a few months left in the year and then took a deployment to make up for lost time.
After the engagement recovery there wasn't much left for me to do. Did a lot of reflecting. I stress self reflection in most every blog. The benefits of self reflection are immeasurable. You cannot possibly have any idea where you are going in life till you understand where you have been. I spent a couple days on the river and the lake this past year. Definitely worth it's weight in gold. Grabbed the kayak, the camera, just relaxed and took in life for a few hours. Nothing more peaceful than being out on the river or lake and having nowhere to go.
In addition to the few days I spent kayaking back home, I spent a week in the mountains with the family. Family vacations are awesome. If you don't get to enjoy your family, you're missing out. Spent some much missed time with the bro and rest of the family. They are already talking beach this year which means I will definitely be there.
2010 other than the lessons it taught me was a waste of my effing time. Spent most of it doing nothing but recovering from the financial blunder that I will never forget. Until I do something that trumps it twice over.
2011 I have high expectations for. Notice I didn't say hopes, I said expectations. At the end of 2010, the last 4 months or so, life started to turn around. I was out of the blunder, paid most of my debt off and starting towards a productive and prosperous new year. So far that plan remains unchanged. Before my birthday I should be financially stable enough to do w/e I want again. I am going to transfer out of the military and back home as a reservist I think. If all goes to plan I will be at Ohio University by the fall quarter 2011. Can't spend anymore time in this comfort zone of inactivity. I am to the point in my life where one good year could change my life. One good internship, one good contact, one good stroke of luck (preparation meets opportunity) and I will be set. This is what I've focused most of my life on; It's almost time to reap the benefits of such labors.
In a way I regret everything the military brought me. In other ways, I will be sad to say goodbye to it. The military allowed me to act on my emotions rather than numerical data and survive the consequences of such stupidity. Had it not been for the military in that situation I would have been in deep crap for a long duration of time. I met some good people and I've met some worthless people. It's been a good learning experience, a two year journey that I won't soon forget, or wish to do again anytime soon.
This hasn't been a lot of insightful information or even all that interesting to read. Definitely fails by comparison to my previous end of the year rambles. In conclusion I will leave you all with this. Take the time to evaluate your mistakes. Don't just realize "yeah that was a mistake" but know why you made it. Understand the mechanics of where you went wrong and how it happened. Replay the bad times in your life over and over again so you don't forget them. If you forget where you've been, you might as well have never known. My granddad told me recently to go do something while I was here, it would "take my mind off where I'm at". I replied simply "I don't want to forget where I am, or what it feels like to be here". I want to know, I want to be tormented by my mistakes or bad times so I remember them well enough to never be there again. I'd rather be bitter about life and avoid mistakes than I would happy and ignorant enough to make the same mistakes twice. It's been said, I've quoted it before, I'll quote it again.... Only a fool learns from his own mistakes when he could have learned from someone else's.
For 2011 I wish you all peace and prosperity... if you find those, you will have a banner year of epic proportion.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
2 years ago...
Somewhere around this time, two years ago I wrote a blog about why I was joining the military. After going back and reading it I find it imperative for my personal records as well as the blogosphere that I do a “long term road test” of how things actually turned out.
As usual, the reality of life and the vision of living were two different things. They always are. Pictures are always embellished and nobody looks as good as a playboy model. Welcome to yet another perception > reality reference. Seems to be a pattern throughout all I’ve ever known, however, that’s not why we are here. So let’s continue.
I would like to start with the money aspect of the military. Let me start by saying they don’t pay for shit. No matter whom you have talked to, who you have heard it from, or what you have seen, it’s an illusion. What the military pays for, is “everything”. Food, House, Salary, and Education are all paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Sounds like a good deal right? Let’s break it down.
Food- The military deducts $300 a month from my pay using the justification that the chow hall is “free”. No, it’s not. It costs $300 a month from my check. That’s not free. That’s a service I pay for. It would be like AAA billing you once a year for a membership then telling you that you can call for their services anytime you like. Well, No Shit. You’re a member, why would you expect anything less?! Same concept applies for the military chow hall.
House- When you first become enlisted you are a “first term airman” which means you live in dorms much like you would if you were to go to college somewhere as a freshman. First term freshmen get to stay in the dorms, usually mandatory for the first year. Well with the military, that “freshman” phase lasts till you are a 3year Senior Airman. Means if you have been in less than 3 years, suck it up, your 15x15 cubicle is what you are going to call “home” for quite a while. Get used to it. Only way around it is to get pregnant or get married. Both options are worse than just living in the cubicle for 3 years. Once you get to leave base, they give you a housing allowance (around $1,000 a month) plus the $300 you spent on the chow hall put back in your paycheck. Now that isn’t bad. However, that happens at your three year mark, not until. They do it that way because re-enlistments are at the 3-3.5 year mark. So they make sure to put you in a good frame of mind when “election season” comes around. It’s all political and has nothing to do with being in “your best interest”.
Salary- I made more money working 30hrs a week at walmart and doing contract mowing in the summer. It was a sweet gig, far sweeter than the military is. Required you to think outside the box, something the military discourages with commanding fear and threats.
School- It’s true the military will pay for your school while you are in. However, think of this. If anyone has ever been in school and worked a job at the same time they will remember this. Finals week comes around, you have work, you have 3 finals due, you either swap shifts, call off, or do w/e you have to do to make sure that final gets done. Work is not that important that you can afford to tank a final over it. After all, your work starts and ends daily, the class starts and then ends, 2-3 months later. Who wants to go through all of that again just for one dropped ball? I almost had an incident with the classes I had taken; our leadership decided we were all going to do a bunch of extra random bullshit because a couple people we worked with were too uneducated to count correctly. We all got punished because of the ignorance of a few. Welcome to the military as a whole. If one person screws up, everyone gets to pay for it. It only took one person to walk out in front of a moving vehicle before everyone had to wear reflective belts so we would look like neon rainbows when a car’s headlights would hit us. Instead of holding people responsible for their stupidity the military makes provisions for it. Decides it wasn’t the dumbass’s fault that walked out in front of a moving vehicle, or even the person driving who hit the person. It had to be the fact that “they just didn’t see them” . Well, now we all light up like Christmas trees at night because of someone else’s dumbassery.
Naturally, I have issues with all of this. There isn’t a part of it that doesn’t piss me off. However, there is nothing I can do about it. While I accept it, I don’t condone it.
The only good thing about the pay and benefits of the military that hasn’t disappointed me is that, you don’t “have” to buy much of anything. If you can be content living in a 15x15 and eating the same food over and over, your food and roof over your head are taken care of. Granted, it’s not much of a way to live; however, it is free and beats a cardboard box and ramen noodles. Living like that allowed me to pay off a fairly large deal of debt in just over a year. Most of which was brought on by my own stupidity; more on that later maybe.
I talked a great deal about experience when I was out and the ability to go to school when it was over. That “supposedly” hasn’t changed but more on that later.
There were so many things I was right, but wrong about. I said I would come back with a better understanding of “how life works” but I had no idea it would work the way it did. Well, let me rephrase, I hoped it would have operated differently than it does. Deep down I knew everything in life was driven either by personal gain or government agenda. I just didn’t think it would be so blatantly obvious to even the mildly educated. I also claimed I would come back unchanged. My brother actually commented on how it better not change me. I laughed and confidently said “no worries”. That’s not how the cards fell though. I did change. I changed from a person who wasn’t easily shaken, confident, and respectful of people who deserved it to someone who lives in a constant state of anxious insecurity, paranoia, and limitless frustrations with the standard of life and work I purposely surrounded myself with. It was a dumb decision. Looking back, If the GI Bill actually works like it’s supposed to, it will have been the only military benefit that was ever as “cut and dry” as it was described to me. IF it works as I’ve been “promised” it will still be worth it, however I had to revamp the plan to make it worthwhile.
All in all I thought this experience would be better for me than it was, however, that’s not the way it happened. It did however turn out to be just what I expected it to be, just very little I hoped for it to be. A stepping stone to Ohio University is an understatement… If I play my cards right, it will damn near build me a bridge from Point A to Point B. From there my future is solely in my hands… which is the way I like it. I used to have a theory about team vs individual sports. The team sports weren’t something that interested me; too many people could screw up a victory for you. Individual sports were different. If you lost, it’s because you lost. There’s no “I” in “team” but there is an “I” in “failure” and in “win”. Which slot you fill is entirely up to you, I never saw the need to share a win or put blame on failure; there is an “I” in both for a reason. One person is all it takes to accomplish either.
My life has been undefined for the past 4 years. It’s time to redefine what I’m about. Not to prove it to others but rather to remind myself. Four years without an “identity” is a long time feeling faceless. I joined the military for various reasons hoping for a variety of benefits. None of which have actually happened and only a few remain to still be seen. It’s time to lay the cards on the table. When you know you’ve been dealt a bad hand the best you can hope for is not to get caught in a raise, as it stands I might be able to slide an ace out my sleeve, pack up my chips, and walk away from the table with nothing more than a few dirty looks from those who’s money I just won. In the end it’s not what cards you were dealt; it’s how you played the hand. The military was more of a wild card than I figured but when you set out to use every aspect of a system, it’s only logical you get a couple failures. As it stands, I still made out like a bandit in the grand scheme of things. I just wouldn’t do it this way again. The miscalculation doesn’t prove I’m normal, but it does prove I’m human.
-brandon
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