Monday, July 25, 2011

Justin Joins the Service

This is happening.

I've done all the looking and thinking I can. I've examined all my options. The job market isn't co-operating fast enough to make anything real happen. And I am f@#king tired of not having income, among other things. I am joining the Army National Guard. And, perhaps uncharacteristically, I'm going in to Infantry school. Why? The enlisted training is 14 weeks. Most of the other jobs I wanted to do have 6 months of training. But OCS is in the game plan, starting in January if things fall in place. So, right now, the plan is to be a 2nd Lieutenant after roughly 6 months of actual service. Not bad, right? After OCS, I'll have a lot more flexibility on where I end up. But a combat MOS? More badass than you were expecting, right?

Yeah.

The biggest downer for me in this ISN'T near six months straight of marching and saluting (though don't get me wrong, that's going to SUCK A LOT OF ASS.) but that I'm going to miss my first season at CRF since I started. Frown. But I'm fishing for addresses. And I imagine that I'll be writing a lot of letters. Hopefully a few letters to a lot of people. But I'll take a lot of letters to a few people. Hell, I want to get smoked for the amount of mail I get; that's how much I want to be getting.

This will be the single most challenging thing I have ever faced. This is something I should have done ten years ago. But I am doing this. For too long in my life, I have not really amounted to much, not lived up to what I could be, what I should be. I've been allowing myself to be held back, or held myself back (consciously or unconsciously). But at the end, I'll be far closer to the man I'm supposed to be than I have ever been.

I hope I will hear from a lot of you guys. It's going to a big change from what I'm used to. I'm going to miss all of you guys.

And some of you will see. You'll see what I can do. You have not seen me arrayed in splendor.

don't underestimate the things that i will do

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Emotional Content Advisory

It's not that bad, really.

But I did watch my cousin, Ashley get married today. It was a very sweet, poignant day, all told. I imagine it was even more so for Ashley and Zack. All the girls were gorgeous and all the boys were well-dressed and groomed.

I have to take an aside here. My grandfather, my dad's dad, was able to make it to the wedding. My papaw has Parkinson's disease. I've known he's had it for several years, and people have said how remarkable it is that he's doing so well. But it is still so very hard to see him, to witness the measure of the disease's work. As I have grown older, it has never been my own mortality that I have had to come to terms with, but the mortality of those around me. I was very young when my granddaddy Bob passed away. But it was only a few years ago when my granddaddy Jim died. I was an adult and I had known no world were he wasn't around. So I have one grandfather left to me, and I am to bear witness to a much slower, much crueler process than the more sudden losses I had seen before. He is doing remarkably well. But I could feel my dad and step-mom aching for someone to help them, my dad especially. When my grandparents divorced, dad moved with my papaw. I can't imagine how hard it is for my dad. Papaw was pretty lucid. He didn't recognize some of the cousins at first, but when reminded, he seemed to. But he's so frail. Helping him in and out of the pews and down the aisles, I could feel how very little of him there is anymore. It hurts.

But Papaw was there. The family was seated and the service went without a hitch. It was...well, it was a Lutheran wedding service, full pomp. Communion, acolytes, bible-bearer, candle-bearers. For someone like me it was nice to see, really. It was neat. I enjoy some of the ritual trappings of my faith. I don't think High Mass is needed at every service, but sometimes an event is better served with a little bit of the pomp and ritual.

The real moment I got a little verklempt was when Ashley's brother, Ben, was the one to present her. Ashley is a little miracle in our family and she's been through and come through so much. When she was very young, three or four, she was diagnosed with leukemia. But she came through it all, this little tiny thing (she's still short. 5'0.5" tall) going through chemotherapy and spinal taps. And in that same time of her life (I think after she was declared to be in remission) her dad died suddenly of a heart attack. Congenital defect. So it was her brother that walked her down the aisle. It still gets me a little teared up. I'm not prone to emotional outbursts or displays, but I still feel. It was a beautiful little moment.

The reception was, perhaps, unremarkable, but not in any kind of bad way. The food was simple, but good. Tea and pink lemonade, a good cake. Some fun music, no macarena. It's always an enjoyable time when you get all of the cousins together, and nearly all of us were there.

There's a lot up in the air in my world right now. Trying to figure out my enlistment is a bit of a whirlwind process. What job do I want to enlist in, will I be able to go into OCS immediately, or will I have to wait? Can I find a Real Job before I'd enlist, or will I end up missing a call for an interview because I'm in Basic? Will I have to miss Faire? In the midst of all that, today was a good day. It was simple, it was enjoyable. It was family and food and uncomplicated.

I haven't written in a while. Not because I didn't have anything to write about, but because it seems like whenever I write about something I'm hoping for, I jinx it. So I'll just post this. You can't jinx something that's already happened.

And I have Windor's Toccata from Symphony V stuck in my head.