"Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude - they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race."

lately i can’t help but feel like i’ve lost the fire. the stress of being an XO is definitely playing a part. i leave for a few hours to go as part of the advon for the battalion’s month long exercise on the big island. things like this are getting tiring, too. i think i just want a normal life now. a 9-5, boring lifestyle. 

"ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς"

12 miles.

I went through PRP for two weeks this month but because I failed the 12 miler ruck march, I will have to recycle the program before I can attend Ranger School again. I was really, really, low when I came in too slow. But it’s okay. I see the silver lining. I really wasn’t in that great shape and now I can train for a month before I go back to it. I’ve dusted myself off and I’m ready to try again.

Every setback I have, every extra hurdle I have to come across, only makes me more determined to get through this. There was an instructor at PRP who spent a total of 13 months at Ranger School. 6 Darbys, 6 Mountains, 2 or 3 Floridas, and like 3 PRPs. But he finished. He’s becoming sort of an inspiration for me.  

a wise talking caterpillar was riding on my hand but he became silent. he curled himself up and then seemed to melt into himself, so i set him down on the grass. as it happened, another caterpillar was waiting right where i set my friend down. they danced, then fused together, and from their intertwined mass flew a butterfly, which, i remember thinking was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen. the butterfly fluttered away, too far for me to reach but just close enough for me to follow. my sister and i chased after it. i shouted at the butterfly, to see if it remembered me. we followed it higher and higher up the skyscraper, until the butterfly led us to the highest floor. there, in a starry night sky, it flew into space.

…if only i could always remember my dreams.

I’ve only been in 3 years now, but as my time in service grows, I’ve noticed a few things…

Nearly all my friends are also in the service. Certainly all my friends in Hawaii are also service members. I still keep in touch with my oldest friends from back home but this is part of a disconnect I’ve been noticing from the civilian world: all my serious interpersonal relationships now, for the most part, are with fellow veterans. They can relate to my experience in Iraq. We can talk about things and understand each other that we can’t with civilians anymore…

There’s a part of the brain you don’t really learn about or really experience when you’re a kid. Going through school you learn to be booksmart and you acquire willpower and discipline as you study hard to get good grades in order to go to a good college. But there’s a type of mental strength that I didn’t really use or learn about until I joined the Army. In the profession we call it “intestinal fortitude”. It’s the ability of the mind to push through tremendous pain and discomfort and continue to the objective. Now of course, intestinal fortitude exists in the civilian world. But I think there is a distinction in the military because this is the factor that can determine a life or death situation. For example, a professional athlete can have an incredible amount of intestinal fortitude that allows him and his team to win championships. But there are few professions where your ability to accomplish a task can directly affect whether people live or die. To name a few: doctors, policemen, politicians, service members…

Don’t get me wrong. I had a great deployment. No one in my platoon died or was seriously injured and for that matter, everyone in our battalion made it back safely. I did not have the combat intense, apocalypse now type of deployment that many other veterans had to go through. But I do believe now that there is definitely a difference between a civilian and a veteran. Not that we should treat veterans differently, but there is something to those old “you don’t know, you weren’t there” stories you hear from old-timers.

lead from the front. lead from the front. 

for anyone who wants to be a leader in the army, this is drilled into you.

but who’s really going to be up front when it comes down to the wire?

sadly, i have doubts on some of my subordinate leaders. 

".
“Qui audet adipiscitur"

our new 1SG is…not good. tonight, he used some excuse of having to come back to the cantonment area to work out a detail with battalion. i had already settled the detail, but it’s pretty obvious that he just didn’t want to sleep in the field, with the rest of the company.

staying infantry would require an additional 3 year commitment, in addition to the 3 year commitment i have with military intelligence (which theoretically should nullified by not going into MI, but that’s not the case), which would put me at a total 10 year contract. No thanks…i’m not ready to say i’m in for the long haul. so MI it is…

life has settled into a pattern here. during the week i get up at 0430 and leave the house at 0500, working until usually 1800 (i could leave earlier but i hate traffic). this is the XO life, i guess. although really it’s just a really busy time because of upcoming training exercise at the big island. that leaves weekends for trying to catch up on sleep and basically vegetating during the day, and prowling for girls at night. it’s been incredible living here in honolulu, but i’m looking forward to leaving the island and moving on to the next thing. a lot of my friends have already left the island as well.

i keep having dreams in which i meet my…well, dream girl. last night she was a farm girl from minnesota. yeah, weird…i think it’s my subconscious telling me to find someone a little more permanent.

I’ve made a decision

and I’m going with it all the way. staying infantry. just need HRC to approve.

two week vacation back home in maryland is over. in a few hours i’ll be on a flight back to hawaii. i’m kind of dreading it because i’ve lost a lot of motivation. career-wise, there’s nothing to look forward to in hawaii. i have one year left in the infantry until i can switch over to intelligence, so i feel like i’m just marking time until then. i’m starting to get that restless feeling again. i want to hurry up and leave hawaii and move on to the next thing. but i know how lucky i am to be there, and that i have to enjoy my time there. we’ll see.

Platoon Leader: 25 March 2010 - 18 November 2011

And that chapter of my life is over. It contained my biggest accomplishment so far - leading a platoon of 28 men in Iraq and bringing them all back home safe. I learned what it means to lead. I got to know my men who were from all parts of the United States, each with their own story. It also left a bad taste in my mouth as I became disillusioned with the quality of some my soldiers and subordinate leaders who were less than stellar. All these lessons though, I shall take and ruminate on for a lifetime. 

I am now the executive officer for B Co. I have a lot to learn and a lot of work to concentrate on. In addition, I am focusing on going back to Ranger School early next year. I haven’t decided my next course in my military career, but I have all of 2012 to figure it out. 2012 is going to be a pivotal year.

do you ever get the feeling that you’re looking for something but you don’t know what it is?

do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and feel like something is missing?

i’ve always felt that once you become my friend, you are my friend for life. i am fiercely loyal. but over the years many friends have drifted away, or for some reason or another i’ve pushed them away. yesterday i found out that one of my oldest friends did something so incredibly stupid that i had to get involved to try to fix things. but my intervention was unwanted and in the end, i probably just made everything worse. and now i lost his friendship over it. 

it’s made me realize how precious good, stable, and true friends are. i only have a handful, and i cherish each one.