Scatterbrained

Posted in General on July 1st, 2009 by BigPerm

Here I sit, on duty on the ship, at an hour significantly past my normal bedtime and my mind is brimming with things I want to accomplish. I know I should be going to bed, but I don’t want to waste the time that I have right now with sleep. I know I’ll regret it tomorrow morning, and as soon as I post this I’ll be headed off to bed, but right now I wanted to accomplish at least one additional thing this evening before I retire for some sleep.

 

With deployment looming on the horizon, I am trying to set up a routine of tasks that I will accomplish each day for the ~180 days of deployment. It matters not where I’m headed, but more how I accept the journey and my reactions to the events that occur during that time. I carry a small notebook in my pocket to write down those occasional stray thoughts that pop into my head, but I find that when I carry it, nothing occurs to me to capture it on paper. I know deep down inside that it is the singular cause of my mind trying to wrestle everything at the same time, while accomplishing nothing.

Just Cause…

Posted in Fatherhood, Navy on April 20th, 2009 by BigPerm

Today marks the 3rd consecutive month since I last graced this blog with my presence. I had been planning to get back into blogging, but every time I commit to it I end up finding something else to take up my time. Being in the Navy is one thing that often keeps me from being able to get in front of the computer and come up with a decent post. Add in the new addition to my family and it seems like there’s even less time in the day after work. I’ll try to hit the high points of the last three months…

My son Joshua was born on the 27th of January. Days prior to that I was stricken with some intense muscle spasms in my neck. Something about my son being born made the pain in my neck go away. Perhaps it was the exchange of two types of stress: The stress of waiting for the boy to be born traded for the stress of having a new baby in the house. Either way, that week marked one of the best moments of my life. Now I love my daughter as equally as my son, but his birth was different in that I was there for the event, in comparison to my daughter, who was born while I was on deployment in the Red Sea during the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

February was a month of adjustment and change. It was almost like starting over with the new baby. I got the opportunity to experience all the things that I missed the first time. In addition to the new activity in the house, the hours at work increased as well in preparation for a 5 year inspection that it seemed that everyone was over-hyping the whole thing. Not an enjoyable experience by any means, and with any luck I’ll avoid going through that ever again in my career. Of course I may have just jinxed myself, but here’s me throwing caution to the wind.

March was a month that came and went, and held witness to some stressful times at work. The big inspection happened and when it was all said and done, it wasn’t everything that it was hyped up to be. Of course, big things like that hardly ever live up to their hype do they? In any case, the time came for me to start applying for orders, and after a few rounds I was finally selected for a set of orders. Now the reality will hit in a few months when I get those orders, but it’s definitely a nice step towards the future. I would be quite content with transferring now, but I’ll have to wait the remaining 6 months or so before I can try out something new.

Now it’s April and it’s more than half over. It’s hard to believe that the year is passing so quickly. It is frightening at times to look back and realize the time that has passed and you didn’t even realize it was happening. If you’re waiting for that opportunity to try something new, do it today before you never get the chance to.