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.