The Manly Arts

So I was drinking pink lemonade today and I got to thinking about some things.  What’s more manly, the fact that I can kill and clean an animal and take it from woods to the table or that I love drinking pink lemonade?  I have in the past mentioned how important I believe the manly arts are.  In fact, I believe they are slowly disappearing and should be saved with all expedience!  I would almost be willing to start a summer camp and charge metros a very large fee to wear plaid and learn how to chop wood and gut animals, how to properly handle rifles and pistols, the correct methods for grilling meat, and a myriad of other endangered arts.  I also believe that pink lemonade is one of America’s greatest inventions right beside the ice cream cone and movies.  I have heard way too many men refuse to drink pink lemonade because of its color and that’s fine, it leaves more for me!  Perhaps a man who refuses to drink pink lemonade is in fact no man at all, most men who I know that do enjoy a nice glass of pink lemonade also hunt, fish, and hold the door open for ladies.  I would say that if you want to judge a man you should ask him his feelings on this fine beverage.  If he is highly offended that you would suggest such a thing then perhaps he needs to own more plaid shirts or blue jeans.  I am announcing to the whole world that the art of manliness begins and ends with the willingness to choose a drink for its taste, not its color!  I think a manly man would be more than secure enough to say there’s a great many refreshments available but the pink ones are usually tasty and delicious!  Before anyone decides to judge me too harshly let’s remember a few things.  I can ride a horse or a motorcycle.  I can drive the heck out of just about anything with tracks or tires.  I am a highly proficient marksman with American and foreign weapons.  I can kill, cook, and eat just about anything with legs (you can’t spell meat without eat).  I would be willing to teach these things to “men” who don’t know how for an outrageous fee as well.  I’m just saying that when it comes to drinking on a weekday after 10am and before 5pm then there is no way you can go wrong with pink lemonade guys!!!!

Update

It has been several months since I have put anything on here. I could make all kinds of excuses as to how busy I have been but the truth is I could always find five minutes to write down my thoughts, I just didn’t.  To make up for my laziness I have over compensated in other aspects by signing up to do my first triathlon this summer. Also since my last post was about me coming home to start over I should probably say a little bit about how that is going.  I have adjusted well to life in the country, I do miss being in such a large community sometimes but when I get bored I have a pool, gym, four wheeler, trails to run on, and many other things accessible to me.  Being in the National Guard it is very difficult to qualify for 100% of the GI Bill but I have finally done so and decided that if I’m truly going to start over then why not do it by going back to school.  I have enrolled in school full time but I am more than a little nervous.  My last attempt didn’t go so well because I always worked full time while trying to go to school full time so my GPA is slightly lower than I would like but now that I won’t have to work while going to school I will have no excuses.  It’s also more than a little nerve wracking to be going to school in my (mid) 30’s.  I would much rather be seen as the unbelievably extremely attractive super awesome mature guy but I’m afraid it’s probably going to be more like the creepy old dude.  Oh well, if my biggest complaints in life are that the other kids at school don’t think I’m cool then I don’t guess I’m doing too badly.  There are many people in this world with real problems; I’ve seen many first hand who don’t even know they have it bad.  I have a lot of things I’m nervous about right now (I refuse to say afraid) but I believe I can do well.  I have a couple of triathlons this summer (itty bitty short ones!) and I’m going to try my first half-marathon this fall.  I will gain strength from my community of friends who always believe I can do anything and I will continue to wake up every day with a smile and hope for a happy ending (not the dirty kind).  I will be busy but I will make time to do the things that keep me happy and sane.  I will do my best to be a little better about my writing, perhaps it will coincide with some English assignments.  While I am nervous about the future I am also excited; I have realized that starting over just means I get to hit the reset button and do this whole thing with the experience to make the decisions that will keep my future awesome!

Evolution

I’m in my 30’s and I’ve never lived alone, as much as I love going out into the woods hiking and camping it’s usually only for hours or two days at the most.  I’m about to return home after being intermittently (but far more often than not) gone for two years.  During this time I have been surrounded by thousands of people, living on small overpopulated bases with 20,000-30,000 other troops.  I’ve become very used to having people around me; I’ve lived with as many as four of us in one room during this time period as well.  I have to admit I’m more than a little nervous about the prospect of going home because I know it means finding a place to live which will most likely mean being by myself.  I suppose it’s normal to have a little bit of apprehension towards the idea of something new.  It’s not just the living situation either; I have to start over completely when I get home.  Obviously I’ll have friends and family around but I’m starting over in my 30’s and it’s a little bit daunting.  The last two years have been financial security, independence, a job, food, a place to live, all the while being surrounded by people in a community that always has something to do.  I’m leaving an entire world I’ve become accustomed to, cafeterias, laundry services, world class gyms, MWR’s, USO’s, and a myriad of other services that have just become a part of my daily life.  While I won’t miss carrying a weapon everywhere I go or putting on body armor to go to work those things have become a part of my daily life as well.  Now I’ll go home to a quiet little country community and try to find a new kind of daily life.  I guess starting over is an ominous sounding way of describing what’s about to happen.  Maybe I should think of it more as evolving.  So I’m in my 30’s and my life is about to evolve, I have no idea what new evolution will ultimately come about, I guess all I can do is make every attempt to be a daily inspiration to myself and decide that I can be happy.  It might take some adjusting but I think I can handle it.

Community

I’ll be leaving Afghanistan and heading home to my family fairly soon; while I’m excited about seeing my family (pets included) and friends, I’m going to miss some things here.  While there are obvious cons to living on a FOB in the middle of Afghanistan, there are pros as well.  One of the good things about living on a base is the community.  Here we are a giant community where we know all of our neighbors; we hang out and smoke and talk, drink tea and coffee, go shopping and eat meals together.  Everything is in walking distance and there are always people around doing something.  Several people recently moved out of my building and the whole place feels completely different.  We went from 30 people to 9 in our building and it’s a different atmosphere.  This type of community is totally different than when I’m at home on a farm where nothing is in walking distance.  Living on forward bases for the last couple of years has been nice, while I will certainly enjoy the peace and quiet of the farm I know I will miss being in a place where I can just walk outside and see the gym, store, restaurant (chow hall), church, and a myriad of other places to gather.  I think this type of community is what comes naturally to most people, the feeling of being a part of something.  It’s a wonderful feeling to have when you are so far away from family; it’s going to be one of the few things about Afghanistan I will actually miss.  I will go back to living on a farm and loving every minute of it, the woods and wide open space are probably my best environments, but every time I get in my truck to go to the store or visit friends part of me will be missing the community here.  

Weakness

Sometimes you can be surrounded by all the people in the world and still be alone.  It’s a byproduct of keeping everything inside.  It’s not easy to let all your crazy out at once and some things are just better off if you shove them down deep inside and try to figure them out at a later date.  It’s not the popular opinion today but being a man still means certain things in society whether we want it to or not (which I do).  No matter what the ladies are reading in the magazines these days they still want a man to be strong.  Women still want a man who can change a tire and doesn’t cry at the drop of a hat.  I think it goes both ways too; women keep certain things locked away for the sake of us men not thinking they’re an emotional wreck.  I still firmly believe that a man should be strong and independent, have certain “manly” skills like changing a tire and grilling the perfect steak.  I think men should open doors and pick up the check.  I also believe that people have to keep some things bottled up; the problem is when you never open up at all.  I have a big problem with this myself, I tend to keep the big things buried deep inside and it makes me flip out about little things.  I still carry around stuff from years ago and haven’t ever let it out.  I simply don’t know how to let it go and at inopportune times these things will rear their ugly heads and begin shaping my current state of emotion.  I’m not as bad as I used to be but from time to time I jump at sudden loud noises and I’ll shake for a few minutes afterwards.  I don’t really tell people why, I just deal with it, bottle it, and shove it back down where it came from.  I still have bad dreams from time to time and because I don’t think anyone wants to hear it (because I think it’s a bit silly) I wake up a little shaken, look around, and then shove it back down.  It’s a part of our nature we will most likely never let go of.  It’s a way of protecting ourselves from what we think society will see as a weakness.  How easy is it to truly open up, most of us have at some point or another in our lives been given a reason not to trust.  There are things we learn growing up that define the way we look at weakness and that in turn causes us to decide what we hide from the world.  Insecurity, paranoia, self-image, everyone deals with these issues.  We may deal with them in a different way but we still deal with them on a daily basis.  We act a certain way and reveal only so much of ourselves because we don’t want to be looked at as different.  The military has been working very hard the last few years to change this image but it’s an image that started thousands of years ago and won’t go away easily.  Sometimes it might just be easier to bury things than to deal with them but how do you know what or when?  I’ve been to literally dozens of funerals for friends and family and have not cried at a single one.  It’s not because I’m so strong, it’s because I didn’t want to.  I’m not made of stone, I just learned growing up (from tv, movies, and people around me) that men don’t cry.  The problem is keeping too much bottled up can be very lonely, you can be surrounded by people and still feel alone because you are the only one around who knows what is going on in your head.  As much as I’d like to be an emotional wreck some days I just think it’s too important that I know how to make great barbecue, shoot a gun, and drive a tractor.  Incidentally those are all things that get me to relax and forget the world even exists and that’s the key.  You don’t have to open up to everyone about everything; you just need to have an outlet.  Everyone needs a quiet hobby you can do all by yourself that makes you forget about everything but what you’re doing.   

Regret and Guilt

Fun fact, nobody ever tells you about the regret when you’re trying to become a better person.  It’s strange really, things that you had thought were long forgotten sneak in and remind you of things you did that you wish you hadn’t, or that you had done differently.  Regret and guilt are necessary though.  There is no need to become a better person without them and using those feelings as a lesson or a tool is one of the ways you have to improve yourself.  The whole process of trying to improve yourself is that there is something you don’t like.  When trying to be a better person it’s almost always associated with guilt or regret.  They seem like bad words but they’re really just a sign that you might be evolving as a social being.  The tricky thing is to not allow yourself to get bogged down by it.  You have to keep looking forward and moving forward.  Make apologies when and where they are necessary but most of all just try to remember that things you have done or the person you were is the past.   The person you will be is guided by those regrets, the memories of the missteps or the steps not taken.  I have found that I spend what seems like half my waking time dealing with regrets about the past.  I am constantly second guessing myself about decisions I just made or am about to make.  Even in my sleep my dreams will often times remind me of things I wish I had done differently.  If I didn’t truly believe that it was a tool to help me remember to be a better person I would just go mad.  I had a very short period where I was really depressed because it seemed like I just couldn’t stop thinking about who I had been and wondering if it was the reason I had gone through troubles.  I wondered if I had done enough in my life to make up for my past.  I spent years just trying to do things that I thought might be able to balance the scales but then I began to wonder if just being a good person was enough.  You have to believe that you are a good person though or you’ll never feel like you’ve made up for the past.  That’s the tricky part about regret and guilt.  You need them, you have to use them, you just can’t let them linger or they make you crazy.  If you don’t believe you’re a good person you’ll never stop trying to fix the past and then the entire future will slip by.  Just spend every day trying to move forward in the best way possible. 

Leadership

I’ve been reflecting on life lately.  I’ve been thinking about where I am in life and where I wish I was and as luck would have it the two are mutually exclusive.  I enjoy where my life is and where it seems to be headed but it’s certainly not where I saw myself as a child.  I could blame all my past mistakes or all the lessons not learned.  I could blame it on listening to the wrong people but the truth is that I have never been where I thought I was and would wager I’m not today either.  Okay, geographically I know exactly where I am but metaphorically speaking I probably am nowhere near where I think I am.  As I look back on my life and think about where I was at different phases in it I realize that I never had a clue about where I actually was.  I always saw myself as a leader, I was cool, I was funny, I was popular.  None of those things make a leader, they are more conducive to a follower.  Don’t get me wrong, leaders can possess all of those qualities but people who focus on those qualities are not leaders.  People who want to be cool and popular tend to make their decisions based on what others will think of them.  Those are the people who choose their clothing, activities, what they say, their jobs, basically everything based on what others will think about it.  Those people are followers, slaves to public opinion and popularity.  A true leader will make their choices based on what they actually enjoy doing.  A true leader will make decisions based on what’s right not what’s cool or easy.  The funny thing is that a lot of people who weren’t cool or popular in high school become very much so in college and beyond.  Being a part of the herd is not always cool, sometimes you have to make choices that are not popular because they are the right choices.  When I look back in 20 years I’m positive that I will laugh at myself for ever having worried about where I am now.  I don’t know where I’ll be in 20 years but I’m sure it’s where I’m supposed to be and hopefully I can remember from now on that I’m not really cool or popular, I’m just a guy trying to make the right choices.

Patriotism

Well, today I have been thinking a lot about the occasional patriot.  You know them, the holiday blow hard, that drunken and boisterous guy who on holidays decides to tell everyone how great America is.  I get a ton of emails around the big patriot days.  Why don’t I get any emails telling me how terrible the Japanese are around December 7 or why isn’t February 23 “Punch a Mexican Day”?  That was the first day of the siege of the Alamo for you non-patriots!  How about “Shoot a Yankee Day” April 12^th, or “Kick a Brit Day” April 19^th (Fort Sumter and Lexington/Concorde)?  Here’s the deal, I’m glad that people want to be patriots and appreciate our service men and women.  What I don’t want is to be bombarded with emails about what happened and where I was when.  I was laying on my couch nursing a hangover by drinking a beer when it happened.  If you want to be a patriot on just a couple of days a year that’s great, cook a burger on July 4^th, but leave me alone on 9/11 please.  If you want to be a holiday patriot do our service people a favor and go to the airport in Bangor, Maine.  They have a group of full time volunteers that spend 8 hour days there shaking the hands of returning members of the military.  Go to Camp Shelby, Mississippi and say good-bye to the young men and women who are leaving and may not get to come back through Bangor.  If your thoughts are to pick a day to express your political beliefs wait until it gets a little closer to voting time.  Don’t get me wrong, I would never want to belittle anyone’s sense of patriotism or pride.  It’s a great thing; it just gets a little exhausting sometimes to be on this side of it.  I remember being on the other side and swelling with pride for my family members on those special days.  On this side of it I get humbled when people express such pride and gratitude.  I also get disappointed on occasions as well.  My first deployment the sendoff was full of pomp and ceremony, there were parades, proud families, and strangers were all around to see the heroes on their way.  The second deployment had families everywhere crying, mothers sad to send off their little boys and girls for the first time.  My last deployment I said my good-byes to my family and went to work, those of us leaving got on a bus and went to the airport as a few people in uniform watched us drive away.  I love to see the pride that most people have in being an American, but when a years’ worth comes out on only a couple of days it gets exhausting.  I’m not asking anyone to not remember what happened, what I’m asking is that you remember those who struggle on a daily basis with the loss of friends.  I didn’t know anyone in those towers or anyone who was at the Pentagon that day.  I have known people since then who didn’t return to their families.  I have known people who came home with fewer body parts than they left with, severe depression, mental disorders, and many other problems.  On a daily basis the majority of people in the military don’t even remember September 11^th, we remember other days.  My wish isn’t to ask people to not be patriots, my wish is that people would be patriots every day.  Visit a veteran’s hospital, donate time and or money to Operation Homefront, Wounded Warriors, or Disabled American Veterans.  We as members of the military ALWAYS appreciate the thanks and love of the citizens of our nation.  I would never want anyone to think otherwise, but please remember that there are those in your own community who still won’t have their legs, arms, eyes, etc. tomorrow either. 

Dreaming

I have been spending a lot of time dreaming lately.  I’ve been dreaming of going backpacking when I get home, I love being out in the woods.  I haven’t been able to go camping or doing anything more than day hikes in a few years.  It’s the whole idea of getting away from civilization that draws me in.  I don’t live in a city and while I see some social benefits to it, I personally don’t find it appealing.  I’ve always wondered why more people don’t venture out into the wilderness on their days off.  For me and my puppies it’s the best part of the week.  When I did live in a city I felt cramped, one of the things that made me feel better was the greenway system.  I would take the dogs out to the greenway and the national battlefield almost daily.  Over the years the woods have become more and more solitary, this is good for me because I like being out there by myself (and the puppies) but it seems a bad omen for children.  I have taken my daughter out on trails for a couple hours at time before and she seemed to enjoy it.  Like I said I enjoy the solitude but on some level I think it would also be nice to see parents taking their kids on day hikes and going camping.  I really wish more people would get into it.  Not everyone is cut out for one and two week excursions into the wild but there are so many parks and battlefields and greenways that everyone should be able to enjoy the outdoors on a weekly basis.  It’s therapeutic, it makes your whole day better which in turn makes other peoples' day better which then causes less fighting and then there is world peace.  I just wish I could see a more active society.  Adults get so busy with their jobs which they have decided are actually their lives, this trickles down to the children who in turn become serial killers.  Kids don’t even pass notes in class anymore, they text each other.  Skype and Facebook have taken the place of walking down the block to visit a friend.  I have actually seen two grown men in the same room have a conversation over instant message.  Is it so terrible to walk outside?  Our busy adult lives have attributed to lazy, depressed, overweight children.  The worst part is just that these children have become normal, overweight children are normal.  I am not exaggerating when I say that weekend walks in the woods can cure diabetes, probably not type 1 but who knows.  It obviously takes more than just a couple miles in the woods on a Saturday but it’s a start.  If we can begin to teach our children how important the outdoors are and how beautiful nature is it might just change their outlook on life as they grow up.  I dream of taking my dogs on hikes and trips.  I can’t wait to stand on the summit of a 14K peak in Colorado with them.  I realize this isn’t for everyone, I’m just suggesting that if everyone would do more walking in the woods that all of the problems of the world could be fixed.  You hear that?  Walking in the woods could possibly cure cancer and end world hunger, stop being lazy and complacent America!!!!

Perspective

It’s funny how most times our worth (both internal and external) is derived from or reflected in the people we choose to surround ourselves with.  Old sayings abound with the wisdom of birds of a feather.  What used to inspire people to seek betterment through befriending people they wanted to emulate has over the years been more interpreted by some to not reach too high.  When I was younger the people I spent the most time hanging around were the people I thought I was worthy of being around when I should have been choosing the people I wanted to be more like.  I had a very low sense of self-worth.   I felt I wasn’t good enough to be around a better class of people.  This attitude was also reflected for the most part in the girls I dated in college.  I let many great women go because I was afraid I might ruin her, I didn’t want people to see these girls with me and think less of them.  As I got older I began to realize the folly in this.  I have always been a person with a good heart even if I didn’t see it.  There have always been people around me who had faith in me and knew the type of person I had the potential to be.  Perspective is a very weird thing, while I had always thought I wasn’t good enough to hang around certain people or date certain women these friends always seemed to have this sad feeling because they knew I was too good to be hanging around the people I did.  It’s a difficult thing to look at yourself and give an honest assessment.  In my eyes my brothers are still these giant men that make me feel just a little bit smaller when I’m around them.  Not in a bad way, just that being the youngest and smallest growing up that’s just how I still see myself around them.  You can’t judge yourself necessarily by the company you keep either.  While you look around and think you are surrounded by people better than you there may be someone out there who thinks you are better than anyone else.  I don’t know how to fix self-image; if I did I’d be rich.  All I know is that the right perspective can change everything.  Instead of choosing the people you think you are worthy of try to choose the people that you wish you could be a little bit more like.  Remember that people see what they want to see, some may see your heart, others may see your past, and others still may see your potential.