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Published On: Apr 26, 2006 10:02 PM
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Published On: Apr 26, 2006 10:02 PM
Deployment Blues and Other Blahs
Y'know, one of the reasons I started this blog
in the first place was to cheer myself up.
I've been kinda down lately, and it's mainly manifested itself as a severe case of the bitchies. For a former attempt to excuse that as righteous anger, see Who took my self control? in this same folder. This entry is different; I'm beyond trying to excuse it. Now I'm just trying to explain it to myself so that I can fight it before I hurt anyone else.
I have been deployed for two years this July. Luckily by July I won't be deployed anymore, but still. In July of 2002 I went to Kosovo, and left there in December. In January of 2003, I went to Kuwait and stayed there until it got boring (once the war was technically over) and headed up to Tikrit, Iraq in June (just as the real fighting began). I left there in mid August, had about a month and a half, and boom! headed here to Afghanistan.
Let me explain a bit about deployments for the Red Cross: you are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Normally I only work 8-12 hours per day (depending on the deployment), but it could be more. Oh yeah, and it's every day. Do you know how much I miss weekends? I haven't had one in almost two years.
I'm not allowed to go off base. There's a rectangular area about 1/2 mile long and 1000 yards wide, and that's as far as I've been from one central point since I got here in October. If you've seen Muppet Treasure Island... you know where all the Muppets on the ship have "Cabin Fever" and they sing about it? Yeah. Like that. Only I'm slightly less furry than your average Muppet, I'm not singing about it, and their's actually looks like fun.
Other sources of stress: I have applied for graduate school to get a masters degree in maritime studies. I do not think I will be accepted. In spite of fantastic GRE scores, my transcripts from my undergraduate work and my first masters are just weird. Maritime Studies at ECU is in the history department. Now, nobody's actually said anything about it yet, but I'm guessing they'd like for a student to have a background in history. My transcripts show one history course, dropped at the same time I changed my major from history to whatever was next. That looks bad. How do you explain in an admissions application that you would have been happy to stay a history major, but you were going to flunk your first history course because your teacher was a religious fanatic who failed you on the first test because you didn't state in your essay that God led George Washington to free the United States of America? You think I'm exaggerating, probably. I'm not. After he handed the test back, he had someone read aloud their essay which was, in his words, "perfect." God was mentioned in every other sentence, I shit you not. I couldn't do that, so I dropped the class, and the major.
Last year I applied for graduate school at University of New Mexico. I was rejected. Quite impolitely. I contacted the graduate coordinator after I was rejected and asked why. She said to email the head of the department. He never answered. After the fourth email which started "Just in case all three of my previous emails vanished into the internet before reaching you..." I gave up.
That was hard for me, and it took me a while to realize why. I'd never been rejected for anything before. I was accepted to every college I applied to after High School (a 29 on your ACT and having been a Governor's Scholar tends to open doors); even the rich hoity-toity private one that I ended up not going to because, although I got a scholarship and need-based financial aid, it was nowhere near enough compared to the 15K per year tuition. That was the closest to rejection I'd ever experienced. Never mind that I was in Kuwait at the time living with 3 thousand Marines. It hurt. A lot.
So this time I've prepared myself for the eventuality of failure from the start. And that hurts even worse, knowing that I can allow myself to not have confidence in my abilities just to make me feel better after the fact. I think that this is a significant addition to the stress load. One of the ways I've prepared is to go ahead and accept an assignment to Fort Polk, Louisiana. If by some off chance I do get accepted to ECU (although it's been over a month since I last heard from them), then I won't be the first person to change their mind about "Fort Puke" at the last minute.
Let's see. I don't really consider the board a source of stress; more an outlet for it, but that's unfortunate as well. Bob believes I'm spending too much time on it, and yeah, he's probably right. However, I think I mentioned before the lack of things to do. Staring at the board for hours at a time helps fill that space of hours. Guess I'm going to have to find other things to do, since it's going to be closed for renovations for a couple of weeks.
If it were stressful here, I might humor myself by claiming to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or some variant that strikes while one is still in the stressful situation. I don't buy it, though. Not even as Post-trauma of being in Iraq, because I never found Iraq that traumatic, and Kuwait only slightly moreso.
I'm sure I haven't listed every reason here for why I've been an asshole lately. There are others -- I miss my Hall, I quit smoking, I SO want to get drunk (military regulations forbid personnel from drinking while on deployment -- this is one of the things forbidden in General Order Number One)....
I've just been unhappy. And worse, I've taken it out, in one way or another, on everyone in my life. While I do hope they allow me to make amends in whatever way I can, that can't be my first priority right now. Priority number one has to be this: making sure I get in enough of a good place mentally to where I don't do it anymore.
Well, time for bed, everybody. It's 1PM here in Afghanistan, and I have to be at work at midnight. Just like every other night since October. Hopefully I'll be more straightened out by the time I post this. I am trying.
I've been kinda down lately, and it's mainly manifested itself as a severe case of the bitchies. For a former attempt to excuse that as righteous anger, see Who took my self control? in this same folder. This entry is different; I'm beyond trying to excuse it. Now I'm just trying to explain it to myself so that I can fight it before I hurt anyone else.
I have been deployed for two years this July. Luckily by July I won't be deployed anymore, but still. In July of 2002 I went to Kosovo, and left there in December. In January of 2003, I went to Kuwait and stayed there until it got boring (once the war was technically over) and headed up to Tikrit, Iraq in June (just as the real fighting began). I left there in mid August, had about a month and a half, and boom! headed here to Afghanistan.
Let me explain a bit about deployments for the Red Cross: you are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Normally I only work 8-12 hours per day (depending on the deployment), but it could be more. Oh yeah, and it's every day. Do you know how much I miss weekends? I haven't had one in almost two years.
I'm not allowed to go off base. There's a rectangular area about 1/2 mile long and 1000 yards wide, and that's as far as I've been from one central point since I got here in October. If you've seen Muppet Treasure Island... you know where all the Muppets on the ship have "Cabin Fever" and they sing about it? Yeah. Like that. Only I'm slightly less furry than your average Muppet, I'm not singing about it, and their's actually looks like fun.
Other sources of stress: I have applied for graduate school to get a masters degree in maritime studies. I do not think I will be accepted. In spite of fantastic GRE scores, my transcripts from my undergraduate work and my first masters are just weird. Maritime Studies at ECU is in the history department. Now, nobody's actually said anything about it yet, but I'm guessing they'd like for a student to have a background in history. My transcripts show one history course, dropped at the same time I changed my major from history to whatever was next. That looks bad. How do you explain in an admissions application that you would have been happy to stay a history major, but you were going to flunk your first history course because your teacher was a religious fanatic who failed you on the first test because you didn't state in your essay that God led George Washington to free the United States of America? You think I'm exaggerating, probably. I'm not. After he handed the test back, he had someone read aloud their essay which was, in his words, "perfect." God was mentioned in every other sentence, I shit you not. I couldn't do that, so I dropped the class, and the major.
Last year I applied for graduate school at University of New Mexico. I was rejected. Quite impolitely. I contacted the graduate coordinator after I was rejected and asked why. She said to email the head of the department. He never answered. After the fourth email which started "Just in case all three of my previous emails vanished into the internet before reaching you..." I gave up.
That was hard for me, and it took me a while to realize why. I'd never been rejected for anything before. I was accepted to every college I applied to after High School (a 29 on your ACT and having been a Governor's Scholar tends to open doors); even the rich hoity-toity private one that I ended up not going to because, although I got a scholarship and need-based financial aid, it was nowhere near enough compared to the 15K per year tuition. That was the closest to rejection I'd ever experienced. Never mind that I was in Kuwait at the time living with 3 thousand Marines. It hurt. A lot.
So this time I've prepared myself for the eventuality of failure from the start. And that hurts even worse, knowing that I can allow myself to not have confidence in my abilities just to make me feel better after the fact. I think that this is a significant addition to the stress load. One of the ways I've prepared is to go ahead and accept an assignment to Fort Polk, Louisiana. If by some off chance I do get accepted to ECU (although it's been over a month since I last heard from them), then I won't be the first person to change their mind about "Fort Puke" at the last minute.
Let's see. I don't really consider the board a source of stress; more an outlet for it, but that's unfortunate as well. Bob believes I'm spending too much time on it, and yeah, he's probably right. However, I think I mentioned before the lack of things to do. Staring at the board for hours at a time helps fill that space of hours. Guess I'm going to have to find other things to do, since it's going to be closed for renovations for a couple of weeks.
If it were stressful here, I might humor myself by claiming to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or some variant that strikes while one is still in the stressful situation. I don't buy it, though. Not even as Post-trauma of being in Iraq, because I never found Iraq that traumatic, and Kuwait only slightly moreso.
I'm sure I haven't listed every reason here for why I've been an asshole lately. There are others -- I miss my Hall, I quit smoking, I SO want to get drunk (military regulations forbid personnel from drinking while on deployment -- this is one of the things forbidden in General Order Number One)....
I've just been unhappy. And worse, I've taken it out, in one way or another, on everyone in my life. While I do hope they allow me to make amends in whatever way I can, that can't be my first priority right now. Priority number one has to be this: making sure I get in enough of a good place mentally to where I don't do it anymore.
Well, time for bed, everybody. It's 1PM here in Afghanistan, and I have to be at work at midnight. Just like every other night since October. Hopefully I'll be more straightened out by the time I post this. I am trying.
Posted: Mon - March 15, 2004 at 05:22 PM