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

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