October 2022 Update: New horizons in familiar places.

      Since my last post things have changed quite substantially. My wife just accepted an IT job with TAMU and I am expecting to have orders to report back to Fort Bragg in Feb of 2023 and to move back to Bragg in Oct/Nov 2023 when my recruiting time is done. All my boys are walking now and Nico is babbling more every day. On top of all this my wife and I had our vow renewal ceremony as well!

     My wife applied for a job with TAMU after my father sent her the link for the application. It took a few weeks to get an interview, which she crushed, and a few more weeks to get the official offer. In this time between the interview and the offer we contemplated staying here in College Station on the grounds her new job met a certain salary. Sadly it did not come close. The plan would have been for her to work this job and I would transition into the Army reserves and work as a teacher. In doing this, I would more than likely have to rely on her paycheck alone for a semester while I started a teaching certificate program with TAMU. We prayed daily for God to show us what path to take with the answer in getting the job offer and a salary offer to meet our families needs. We are disappointed in some ways we won't get to stay but excited for other opportunities that God may bring us in the future move. For now, she will enjoy working there starting in early November and get about a years worth of experience.  

     The Army now has in place a market system for "choosing" next assignments. Basically, it shows the slots that will be available for the quarter of the year you will move. These slots are based off of your rank, military job specialty and any special skills you may have. I have many options before me and have been assured by the civilians in charge of managing personnel movement that due to my service as a recruiter I will get back to where I want to go. It doesn't get specific beyond what division or brigade you would be assigned too but my top 3 picks are 82nd aviation, 44th med (exactly where I was before recruiting) and 82nd infantry division; all of which are located on Fort Bragg. We still own our house out there and plan to move back into it should we get the chance.

      My oldest son went to pre-school for a few months but after seeing how a few bad eggs were influencing his entire pre-k class we pulled him out. He wasn't learning as much as we thought he would, mostly because of the curriculum, but also due to the few other highly disruptive children in his class. The pre-k program is free to active duty military and to those who are under a certain level of household income. The latter no doubt affecting the level of disruptions and negative behaviors in the class. For now he is at home with my wife continuing to be awesome. My middle boy continues to grow in his boldness physically and I fear will soon start to replicate my feats of strength and courage. These feats will no doubt lead to a rise in my blood pressure. Our youngest boy is now walking around with ease in the house and a little bumbly on the outside terrain. He says a few words, mostly "yeah!" when he wants something. For example, when I take a drink of my water bottle he will look at me, point at the bottle and say "Yeah?!". Upon receiving the bottle from my hands he confirms this with more of a statement "Yeah..". All boys are doing fantastic and growing faster than I want them too. 

     My wife and I have anticipated renewing our vows for a year now. The planning started last October and it actually took place on her birthday, 08 October. I took the opportunity to show my class and culture by wearing the appropriate tartan wool kilt. It cost almost as much as my wife's dress and looked slightly less fantastic. Gordon Weathered tartan went well with our fall theme with it's subdued colors. Matt, my childhood youth pastor, agreed to be the minister for the wedding of which he did an absolute perfect job. My wife and I had a few counseling sessions with him in the months beforehand and we really enjoyed the knowledge and wisdom that came from that. The actual day day and ceremony were perfect and honestly more beautiful than I could have imagined. My wife was absolutely ecstatic and only maybe once was upset. (An individual didn't stick to the plan!) This was quickly passed over and the festivities cheered everyone in attendance! The children, of which there were many, danced the short evening away as did my wife and several other guests. It was an amazing day that I will remember forever. 

     I also started hosting a bible study group in my house on Thursday nights at 2000 hours. Between 5 and 12 guys will show up and we study through the book of Ephesians. It's actually happening tonight and I really enjoy every day we do it. I was not really having a great day up to this point and just thinking about doing that tonight is lifting my spirit. God has really blessed me this past few months and I have tried to lean more on God for patience and trust in His decisions for my life. I just pray that I will be used by God in whatever place I go whatever job I do and to end my pride getting in the way of these decisions. It is much easier to make decisions using my pride than it is to rely on God's will and being patient enough to wait for an answer. However, the peace that is granted once you trust in God's goodness for your life is irreplaceable. Some days I remember this more than others; each day has it's own struggles after all and tomorrow is something I shouldn't worry too much about. 

Stoicism and the Carnivore Diet.

      The last few weeks I have gotten back to my usual reading habits. By usual I mean my reading habits I had pre-army life. I read quite a bit before joining the Army and even in the Army I probably read more than the average person does; averaging a few books a year. (More if audio-books count!) But as of the late I have devoted myself to reading every night before bed as I used to. This has benefited me in several ways: 1) I get tired quickly when I read in my bed and can fall asleep faster. 2) I go to bed earlier as... 3) ... I don't spend as much time on my phone. 4) I am exposed to thoughts and ideas that challenge me to think beyond my normal perspective and exercise some real philosophical filtering muscles. 

     Reading through Viktor Frankl's  A Man's Search for Meaning, I was challenged to see my life in a different way. To realize, perhaps, that a man's greatest satisfaction is living for something other than himself. (By that I mean for more than just simple self gratification portrayed well by so many reality shows on TV today.) By living and sacrificing daily for your family, your God and your work then perhaps you can find satisfaction by changing your perception of how you manage these 3 spheres. While he doesn't implicitly state it, I think that perhaps the underlying theme is a man can only be completely satisfied should he succeed in all three of these spheres and that a lack of spirituality is the cause for much undue dissatisfaction with life. The stories of his experience in the different concentration camps really made me appreciate the simple things in life a lot more as I attempted to mentally put myself in the shoes of the prisoners with him every night. I could almost feel the unrelenting Bavarian winter wind whipping through thin cloth onto my skin as Frankl went through memories of the nightmare he lived. 

      This has given me much to think about as a dive into a second round on the carnivore diet. I'm taking it slow and am going to eat according to the paleo diet for a few days/weeks until I am ready to go full carnivore. As I transitioned back into my normal eating habits I noticed my lack of attention span, energy levels and mental fog taking turns for the worse. My only vice while on the diet will be my morning espresso, americano or non-sugar latte. I invested in a rather pricy espresso machine but I did the math and in a few months it will pay for itself; this is based off my habit of going out for coffee only 3-4 times a week at local coffee shops to order a plain espresso. 

     I am currently finishing up Breakfast With Seneca by David Fideler. I am not new to the concepts and structure of stoicism but I am certainly learning a lot more in depth about the exact tools one can use to practice stoicism in a more practical and rational form. As I was reading through this book I often found myself substituting some phrases such as fate, fortune, destiny, etc with "God" or "Christ" as I think the way stoics and Christians claim to conduct themselves are often parallel in nature. I was thinking to myself of writing an essay for myself comparing the two and answering the question "How can Stoic teachings and practices benefit the Christian in the modern day" only to discover there is a whole book about that. I'm not sure if that is what I will read next but it's on my short list of books to slay. 

Updates

 It has been quite awhile since I have posted an update so here it is.

     It's a 21 May 2022, a saturday, and I had to go to work and make 100 phone calls to earn my way back to the weekend. That's how my life in USAREC is going. Not only mine but literally every person within the United States Army Recruiting Command; mandatory saturday prospecting. Granted I did make contact with plenty of people but nobody locked in an appointment and nobody really was too enthused to talk to me on the weekend with the exception of a retired Army Staff Sergeant who had a pleasant conversation with me about how the next 11 years of my career will fly by. I hope not. Not because I love the Army or because I love what I do, I just hope that my perception of time doesn't speed up as quickly as everyone says it will. I can already feel seasons melding into each other and years passing me by as if it were a freight train gaining speed before me; the end is nowhere in sight but it's inevitable nonetheless. 

     I have once again slipped back into one of my old flings of a hobby: photography. It satisfies my thirst for a creative outlet and for the need to be in an emerging field... mostly. I am not the worlds greatest writer but I dream of telling a story with every picture. Perhaps that could be a book one day, my pictures with the story to match. I have a friend who taught me what I know about photography and helped me get started. He and I had a conversation and he said something I knew to be true but had never paid much attention to or perhaps took for granted: "When you take a picture, you are capturing a historical moment. It will never be replicated again...". this is true of every single picture taken. It was estimated that in 2021, 1.72 Trillion photos were taken which is 54,000 every second. Each one unique and unrepeatable. In a book I am reading called "after Photography" the author explores the benefits and the consequences of photography going from analog to digital. Many good points are made about the ability to make infinite perfect copies of a digital photograph, and thereby diminishing it's value... perhaps. The infinite ability to edit and manipulate a digital photo was apparent even before the book was written in 2009; many examples of the consequences are listed... Regardless, my photos will never be edited to such an extent and I doubt that many copies of my photos will be used or viewed by anyone but a few followers on my Instagram page. For now I am enjoying taking photos when I get the chance and practice most nights while my bigger boys play in the driveway. 

     We have two snakes now. A red corn snake and a pastel hog-nosed snake. My wife bought the red corn snake for our boys and the semi-venomous hog-nose for herself. We enjoy watching them slither and eat the weekly meal we provide. The corn snake is easily handled and has given us many smiles. the hog-nosed snake is new and very temperamental. Often he hisses at me if I look in his cage too closely.

     I recently did a little over a week on the carnivore diet and here is what I found: 1) The diet is extremely simple and made meal times very easy, especially if I cooked a few pounds of burger meat before hand. 2) The monotony of eating only meat, mostly beef, is excruciating. I powered through cravings but it was intense. 3) I lost a lot of water/sugar weight. In the first week I was down almost 10lbs. 4) I had more consistent energy throughout the day and black coffee made me very jittery without carbs to help me absorb some of the caffeine. 5) It sucked overall with the cravings and the initial loss of energy but my body felt pretty good; lean and fast. Will I do it again? Probably, especially if I ever find myself with so much joint pain that it interferes with daily life or that I am gaining too much body fat. 

     That is all for now. 

War.

      A few days ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. On my social media there are dozens of videos of air strikes, mortar rounds, helicopter strikes and other forms of military violence taking place in populated civilian areas. One can only imagine the number of civilian deaths/casualties. One can only imagine the many more to come on top of the military members who will undoubtedly die defending the country that gave them life. Why is it in this moment in time I feel more of an urge to fight than ever before? To do something, to feel a part of something...

     The last few years I have been torn between the option of living as comfortable as possible or taking a huge leap trying out for more elite Army units to serve in. The struggle comes between spending time with my family, serving God, serving the country and let's face it, my own pride/satisfaction. My family is the only reason I am still in the Army. Had I never met my wife or had kids for that matter I would have been long gone from the Army. My faith has always been in the forefront of my mind. I am sad to say, but I know that I could be more devout. I know that I could always give more. I tried to give more but the struggle between my work and my family life often left me feeling I had no time to incorporate my faith. I have come to find over the last year or so while on recruiting that my faith should be practiced on a moment by moment basis, and that I don't need to dedicate vast amounts of continuous hours in order to achieve a relationship with my God. (I could expand more but I could easily write a novel.) I joined the Army for college money mostly but I also wanted to at least say that I gave the military and the country 4 years of my life to do whatever they wanted to do with me. Send me to war, respond to a hurricane, or anything in between I let the Army do just that. Now it is a little different; I feel a much bigger sense of patriotism and obligation to serve the country that has given me so much. After all, tax-payer dollars put me through online college, covered all my families medical bills and paid every last penny of my paycheck. I am thankful for that and want to say I saw my military career through to retirement. Lastly, and most certainly not least, my own desire to feel satisfied in my work and my pride in being a cut above has a large part to do with my yearn for trying out for the next level. 

     Why is this important right now with the Ukraine crisis escalating by the hour? Because I feel that if I were a part of one of these special units that I would have the most opportunity to be a part of the solution or at least the response to what is clearly an international injustice. Just as the towers fell in 2001, the invasion of Ukraine has revealed an international adversary that Americans should feel compelled to deal with through swift and decisive military action. 

     In my military career I have always felt like I had missed out on whatever was going on. When I was in AIT, right before I was supposed to graduate, President Obama says that the war is over and troops are going to be drawn down. He clearly didn't know I had been training the last 6 months to go to war. I have missed several deployments over the years. Either the unit got diverted to something else, I was having a baby or even that I was a secondary and wasn't needed. I have always been at the tail end of everything and my fear of missing out is pretty big. While I pray for peace and yearn for the evil in this world to stop I stand ready to fight it when I can. I also know that the evil will never stop; it has been here since man stepped foot on the earth and it shan't cease until we have left it. I just want to play my part of serving justice, however small my role may be. Even if I am to become a member of the unit, do hundreds of missions and perform until my 30th year in the Army I know that my part in the grand scheme of things will be miniscule when one looks at it from the context of an era. Nonetheless, my life will have meaning. I will make it have some sort of meaning if no one else but myself and my God wills it for me. My life will be satisfying because I will attempt, with all my will, to make it satisfying, God willing. I pray that I make the right choices and for all the right reasons. 

      God, help those who are fighting for freedom and strike the heel of those who would oppose the innocent for the sake of resources. Protect the innocent, that they may stand up in victory when the time comes. Soften the hearts of those who are hardened, may they turn from evil. For those whose hearts are evil, may they be stopped before committing evil deeds. I ask for the world leaders to make the right decisions, no matter how hard they are or what opposition may come. I pray for my decisions to be in line with the straight and narrow I am called to walk and that I would not stray. God help us all. Amen.

2022: New Year, Same Old Me.

      It's true, we have all finally made it to the long awaited 2022. As if the passing of a single calendar day, emphasized by the rolling of another tick that is a year in the 21st century could have any significance. Perhaps if one makes it significant then it holds some sort of weight, but I have chosen not too hold such things within my mind. Resolutions? Not for me.

    I will continue to be the same person that I have always been. Will I get in better shape this year? I will certainly try after my long hiatus from the gym being the station commander. Will I be a nicer person? I certainly will try, but sometimes I will fail and go nuts on someone in traffic texting on their phone. Perhaps I will change my dieting habits this year and stop reaching for so many sweets? Unlikely. I will try to eat less processed foods/fast food and go for more meats, fruits and veggies. I have always like the idea of becoming a carnivore or sticking to the paleo diet, but it seems like a lot of work. Just today I find myself reaching for my usual sweets with a pretty bad craving for them. I made a mashed sweet potato instead. It filled my stomach but did little to suppress my craving for processed sugar... perhaps I will try the paleo diet this year. More to follow.

     The point is, I don't feel like mentally committing to a gargantuan life change just because the new year rolled around. The new year means little to me other than the adjustment period when I continue to write the old year down on papers I sign instead of the new year. This will last a few days/weeks. If there are changes I want to make I will make them when I want, and I certainly won't hold myself to a goal of doing some thing or abstaining from some thing for an entire calendar year. With 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year you are bound to fail and with a failure will come added stress and self-doubt, of which I have no time for. Instead I'll just start small and try to eat less cookies!

     Something of some significance to me is that just before the new year started, I began drinking real, caffeinated coffee again. It is fairly significant to me because I quit all forms of caffeine and tobacco in November of 2011, which means that for 10 years I had no significant intentional use of caffeine. Every sleepless night followed by an early morning was fueled either by rage, hatred or a dull sense of duty to keep my job. Now I'm back on the horse and not really because I want/need the caffeine; I clearly operate fine without it. I just love coffee and Decaf really doesn't taste the same or come in nearly the same variety. Did the real coffee help fuel me during my last days as a station commander? Absolutely. I certainly was able to power through morning work super well. But the evening crash is a little much. I'm getting used to it though. I may quit the real coffee later this year, but then again, I may not. No pressure! Hope you, dear reader, have a great year as well, whatever year it may be!