Choices and the Army

wildboom

Since my last post, I’ve been pretty busy with army training. I spent a month up in Grayling doing all sorts of training from two platoon live fires to riding in chinooks and Blackhawks. There were stressful times, cold times, sleepless times, and there were good times. It was a great opportunity to build team cohesion within the company through some good old-fashioned shared suffering. I know I learned and grew a lot as a leader from the experience and now I am looking forward to getting ready for a deployment.

Summarizing the training and looking back on it makes it seem ordinary and typical and the type of thing that army soldiers do, but each individual has their own story during the build-up to something like a deployment. I am excited, but that doesn’t stop me from being anxious about a lot of the uncertainties and certain challenges that lie ahead. Prior to even showing up for the first day of training I was feeling anxious and worried. The weight of leadership and letting my men down was consuming my thoughts. Thoughts like what if I’m being lazy or aren’t trying hard enough are constants. Before we went to Grayling I went to a bonfire with friends and the whole time I felt spaced out thinking about the imminent burden of leading 30+ through training and eventually into an overseas deployment in a kinetic area of the world. As I sat there by the fire I was a little frustrated by the thought that no one could relate or truly get what I was going through. At the same time, I’m glad they don’t have to. That’s the point of serving your country so that others don’t have to.

It’s funny the little things that happen in life that sometimes turn out not to be so little. I went to jiu jitsu the day before I started training and my coach there talked about experiencing emotions. In a jiu jitsu sense, there are emotions that make you want to not show up sometimes. There are emotions that make you want to quit when things get tough during a roll. Coach Carl, who has a master’s degree as a trained therapist, spoke about how these are just emotions. It’s the actions you take in spite of the emotions that really matter. It was just a jiu jitsu class and those were just some words, but the impact couldn’t have been better timed with what I was about to experience. Sometimes those small things really are just a part of God’s plan for your life. Since that moment, throughout training and now off training in another state there have been many challenges, but each of these challenges is an opportunity. I have a choice—the choice to listen to my emotions or to take action in spite of what those emotions are telling me. What I choose is who I become. If I choose to give up when my emotions are telling me things are getting tough that becomes a conditioned response. Likewise, when I push through and endure adversity when my emotions are telling me to quit that too becomes a conditioned response. Now when I face adversity and experience feelings telling me it would be easier to take it easy or quit I get excited, because it is an opportunity for me to shape who I am. Who I am is someone who perseveres.

I could leave it there and this would be a good blog post, but I don’t get a lot of time to write so I am going to take advantage. After some time in Grayling, I got to spend some time with my family. While visiting my family in Grand Rapids I also found a motorcycle that I’ve had my eyes on for quite a while. Like everything right now, the supply chain issues have made it really hard to find this bike and when I saw it I jumped on the opportunity to buy it and have since ridden it close to 500 miles before storing it for the deployment. I took one trip back to Pigeon to visit my parents and I took a detour on the way back to Saginaw through Port Austin to explore a decommissioned Air Force Station from the cold war era. Still adventuring whenever I can!

I also spent a lot of time with friends and family while I still could. I saw my Aunt and Uncle who I haven’t seen in far too long, spent time with my nieces, hung out at my parent’s house, and even got to do my high school friends’ fantasy football draft in person with the boys! To top it off I got to go to the Michigan vs Uconn game with my buddies and even saw my nieces there! It was really a great way to spend my last free time before heading off for a year. God has blessed me so incredibly with all the friends and family I have supporting me while I go do army things! If you’re reading this you are probably one of them so thank you for thinking of and praying for me!

B Co 1-125 IN – See you soon!
Choices and the Army

Until Later, AZ

wildboom

It seems just as soon as I got here I’m on the road again. It’s become a pretty exhausting constant in my life. There may have been one stretch in my life during COVID that I lived in the same place for a decent amount of time, but even that was broken up with army training and a road trip of over a month. Besides that stretch, I haven’t lived anywhere longer than six months since I was in college in 2017. It’s become a fact of my life, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. This time I am leaving Arizona for Army training in Michigan which will lead to more training in other locations and then eventually to a deployment which will help to continue the theme.

My time in Arizona was spent during the hot summer months, but I still enjoyed it as much as I could. Working outdoors I got to see lots of great sunrises and sunsets. Once during monsoon season, I got to see a desert wash flood to the size of a major river. I had driven past it several times and never seen anything it in besides dry sand so I never imagined that it would completely fill and flow so heavily that you could row a canoe down it!

I was blessed to make good friends at work and outside of work. With friends from church, I had pool parties, watched fireworks, went on hikes, ate Sonoran hotdogs, and went to a Diamondbacks game. I made more friends training at jiu-jitsu and doing the Murph workout on Memorial day at a Crossfit gym. It’s amazing I made such good friends in such a short amount of time, and I’m blessed to have people in Arizona praying for me and anticipating my return.

Despite working outside in the heat all week, I still often went on hikes and explored Arizona’s nature in my free time. One of my favorite trips was going to Mount Lemmon in Tucson. It was 20-30 degrees cooler up the mountain and there were trees! After going so long without seeing trees that really made me happy!

I left Arizona and drove over 2,100 miles in two days to get to my family camping trip in Pennsylvania. It was a brutal trip with one night of three hours of sleep at a truck stop, but it was absolutely worth it to see my family and especially all four of my beautiful little nieces. It’s crazy to think my oldest niece is already 11! I missed Thanksgiving and Christmas for my work training and this upcoming deployment will have me missing them for a second straight year. That coupled with the fact that I live on the opposite side of the country and can’t visit them whenever I want really made me realize how precious these moments really are. It’s so interesting to see my nieces developing their own personalities and it’s also interesting to hang out with my brothers as adults. I really admire both of my brothers, but on paper, they are very different. Clifton is an electrical engineer working for a software company. Jon is a musician in a band and a worship director at a church. Despite those differences on the surface, it blows my mind how much we have in common and how we view life through a similar lens. I think it has a lot to do with my Christian upbringing from my parents. What we view as most important in all of our lives is a constant and I think that gives our relationships a mutual foundation and a greater appreciation for each other. I’m very thankful for great parents who raised us right. I am just so blessed to have the family that I do!

The camping trip was filled with hiking, paddle boarding, campfires, card games, and a lot of laughter and fun. When it came to my last day, I started to get quieter and more introspective as I knew my departure was approaching. I had to leave before everyone else so I could get to my army training and when I left, I gave out hugs to everyone in the parking lot of a hiking trail while trying to keep my emotions in check. It felt different than any other goodbye because I have very little control over when I can see my family again. The army will change its plans on a whim, and I will tag along for the ride. It’s a lot easier knowing I have the full support and prayers of my family behind me.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” – Proverbs 17:17

Until Later, AZ

New Home in Arizona

wildboom

I have now spent about a month in Arizona working at my new job here. I feel I arrived at just the right time to ease myself into the extreme temperatures of summer especially since my job duties are performed primarily outdoors. We are starting to get days approaching 110 degrees! Before I started work, during my first week here, I was lucky enough to have two of my Army classmates come and hang out and help me get settled.

The three of us went to a comedy club and did some bar hopping in Phoenix. We went to Tucson and ate delicious Sonoran hotdogs after hiking some trails in Saguaro National Park. We made it up to Lake Pleasant as well and did some cool hikes with some amazing views as you can see if the photo above. It was really great to have some good friends around to explore and settle into a new place with. This area appears to be a magic spot for fast food as well. Texans swear by their Whattaburger and Californians swear by their In-N-Out and I just so happen to live in a town with both!

Work has been an absolute blast and I am learning every day. I wish I could share a little bit more about it here, but a lot of what we do is sensitive so I won’t mention a lot but the picture below is just one of the many times I have had amazing views and hikes while getting paid!

Getting to this point though was a journey and with many new friends made along the way. There isn’t a whole lot I feel comfortable saying about that here since this is a public platform, but I am so appreciative of my friends and I know every one of us is excited to be out finally doing the job. During training, we had our opportunities to build some morale with some cookouts, hikes, and workouts. The best is yet to come!

I’ll wrap up with some stories from my personal life. For starters, the motorcycle in the picture below was stolen on my first ride out here in Arizona. I went out on some BLM land out in the desert with fun trails and great mountain and desert views and I was having a blast until it decided to break down… I ended up having to push it over a mile out to the road and then I went to get my truck and I came back an hour and a half later and it was gone! I filed a police report and looks like insurance is going to pay out at least something so that is good. It was a pain in the but with all the problems it had running sometimes, but it was my first bike and it was a fun one! I’m just excited now to buy a better one!!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some personal thoughts. Sometimes I get caught in feelings and the best way for me to reason through them is to open up the notes app on my phone and just write. This is something I wrote lamenting on my time working in the military and in the government. I’m not sure what provoked it, but some days I feel like a square peg trying to get jammed into a round hole.

“Spending so much time in environments of teaching or training to the lowest common denominator has ruined me. Rules and ceremonies meant to keep the lowest denominators in check have stifled my creativity and my intrinsic drive to achieve for myself. Instead, I have learned I can get away without my max effort. I just need to reach a predetermined bar set by someone else with no knowledge of my capabilities. What could I be without the expectations that I would go awry without such rules to keep me in check? Where would I be if I aimed at what I thought I was capable of rather than what others told me I needed to achieve?”

I think specifically the last line, “Where would I be if I aimed at what I thought I was capable of rather than what others told me I needed to achieve?” is very poignant. I don’t think I am guilty of this in all aspects of my life, but sometimes I do get caught in this trap especially at work or in the military. Just having that thought on paper is a good reminder I am not what the standards are, I can be more than that. You have to have something to aim at, and sometimes other people’s targets aren’t based on who you actually are or what you’re capable of. Instead, it’s up to you to aim high.

New Home in Arizona