Currently listening: "Videogames" by Lana Del Rey
Man, what a flashback. I am loving this song right now. It put Lizzie to sleep. We go so fast and then something stops us and we realize how tired we are.
Today I got a lot done, and then it came to a screeching halt all because of someone's misunderstanding/stupidity. You cannot control everything. The customer will *always* be right.
:*
ALWAYS.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
This is amazing
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/01/07/this-is-what-happens-when-a-kid-leaves-traditional-education/
This probably explains my frustrations with school right now. Just for the record, I have not quit, not am I planning on quitting until I get my degree. I just want to make that clear. I only wish I could, for my creativity's sake.
The video says it all. Watch and then comment if you like. :)
This probably explains my frustrations with school right now. Just for the record, I have not quit, not am I planning on quitting until I get my degree. I just want to make that clear. I only wish I could, for my creativity's sake.
The video says it all. Watch and then comment if you like. :)
Thursday, January 9, 2014
"Picky" Eaters
I am starting to realize that while most kids are picky, Emma is of a very special kind. I hear moms complain about how their kids don't eat healthy, yet when asked what they do eat, they spout a long list of things Emma would not touch with a 10 foot pole. She doesn't eat vegetables. No fruit. Come on, not even fruit?! I am serious. She will not touch fruit. She eats chips and cheese (nachos), Annie's cheddar bunnies, "bubble slushies" (which is just a lemon slushy I make in the Vitamix), Flinstone vitamins, and Chik Fil A. She also likes grilled cheese sandwiches. Basically, anything with cheese she will eat, and fruit-flavored candies and treats. Not the picture of health, I know. I buy her Pediasure from time to time, but those things are expensive! $10 for a 6-pack?! I just don't know what to do.
Some people say just wait, that if she's hungry enough she will eat anything. To those people I say that I have tried. It caused my baby girl to be a 38% on the weight scale to a 12% after I weaned her off breast milk. It's not like I just started feeding her junk, I eat healthy and I wanted her to eat healthy. She just wouldn't have it. It was after this that the doctor put her on Pediasure, because that was truly scary.
Now, my focus is getting calories in her. I hate that she only eats junk, but it's better than starving!
I have heard that you have to keep offering kids the food, and that eventually they will accept it. I do this. I offer her good food all the time... At four years old we are already getting into arguments about healthy food vs. unhealthy food. She tells me, "Healthy food isn't good for me. It makes me sick." I try to tell her that healthy food will keep her from getting sick. She tells me, "It's not nice." She then points to whatever junk food it is that she is asking for at the time, telling me, "That's nice."
This fundamental association with junk food being "nice" and healthy food being "not nice" really scares me. As any healthy person knows, being healthy is nice. It is nice to treat my body and it is nice to feel and look nice. When I eat healthy, I feel like I am treating myself and my body. It makes me happy. I always feel really sad and depressed after eating junk. I just don't get it.
I hope this is something that she grows out of. Lizzie eats fruits all the time. Vegetables not so much, but if I can mask it with fruit she will eat it. Lizzie I am not so worried about, she eats a wide variety of things. They both, though, have major sweet tooths that need to be curbed. I know that most people have a sweet tooth, but we need to start learning how to satisfy it with fruits and other healthy options before grabbing cake and candy.
I am hoping that she grows out of this.
Some people say just wait, that if she's hungry enough she will eat anything. To those people I say that I have tried. It caused my baby girl to be a 38% on the weight scale to a 12% after I weaned her off breast milk. It's not like I just started feeding her junk, I eat healthy and I wanted her to eat healthy. She just wouldn't have it. It was after this that the doctor put her on Pediasure, because that was truly scary.
Now, my focus is getting calories in her. I hate that she only eats junk, but it's better than starving!
I have heard that you have to keep offering kids the food, and that eventually they will accept it. I do this. I offer her good food all the time... At four years old we are already getting into arguments about healthy food vs. unhealthy food. She tells me, "Healthy food isn't good for me. It makes me sick." I try to tell her that healthy food will keep her from getting sick. She tells me, "It's not nice." She then points to whatever junk food it is that she is asking for at the time, telling me, "That's nice."
This fundamental association with junk food being "nice" and healthy food being "not nice" really scares me. As any healthy person knows, being healthy is nice. It is nice to treat my body and it is nice to feel and look nice. When I eat healthy, I feel like I am treating myself and my body. It makes me happy. I always feel really sad and depressed after eating junk. I just don't get it.
I hope this is something that she grows out of. Lizzie eats fruits all the time. Vegetables not so much, but if I can mask it with fruit she will eat it. Lizzie I am not so worried about, she eats a wide variety of things. They both, though, have major sweet tooths that need to be curbed. I know that most people have a sweet tooth, but we need to start learning how to satisfy it with fruits and other healthy options before grabbing cake and candy.
I am hoping that she grows out of this.
Friday, January 3, 2014
Duck Calls and Death
I go through waves of frustration and boredom from life. Shock at the horrible atrocities committed by those in control of us that we really have no control over, and shock that the American public and the world simply does not have the sense to care. American forces who were stationed near Benghazi were purposely left out of the loop when it came to information and therefore were not able to help. They could have prevented the second attack in the morning. They should have been given the chance.
Instead, they were purposefully left out of the loop. Why? Well, at a Democratic fundraiser last year, Obama said that he wished we had more disasters like the Boston marathon and the West, Texas explosion, because this is what brings people together to get things done. On one hand, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and I can sort of see what he is saying. People can be very productive when they work together, and that takes a common enemy or fear usually. (Groups this large do not form over common interests, and if they do, they just sit around and talk about it, they don't really do anything).
On the other hand, though, did he really just say that? That he wishes we had more disasters?? Does he want a scared public that will allow things to pass that shouldn't have been (like the Patriot Act?). When people are scared, they cannot think. They look for a savior. The government can basically pass anything giving them absolute power to cries of the public to, "Save us!"
So, that happened. And Hilary Clinton lied about the whole Benghazi thing. Then this marine came out as a whistle-blower to the whole thing and no one cared... This should have been larger than Watergate. People actually died, yet I never heard about it. Now, I choose not to watch a lot of news because most of it is meant to instill fear into your life, the other part is propaganda, and a very small part is actually usable information. I figure, if it's important enough, I will hear about it. Andy says he heard about it happening, but either way, it was nowhere close to the public outrage scale that it should have had.
When I think about what it takes to make it in American politics, I get very angry, then scared, then despondent. For anyone to make it to a level high enough to make any sort of difference, a wide amount of perversion and manipulation must be achieved. They have lied, gone against their conscience, been bought, and in Hilary Clinton's case, actually made sure that people died and then lied about it. It disgusts me that these are the people running our country, that are supposedly representing us. I suppose the idea of representation is as naive as the concept of a civil servant. The only people politicians represent are the people who pay them.
But what is the #1 "story" on Facebook right now? Friggin Duck Dynasty. I swear I am going to scream at the next person who brings up that stupid show. I really don't care if someone made rude statements about a group of people. Was it nice? No, and I'm sure if I were gay that I would be very offended, I am offended for them. Why don't we pay attention to the bill that was just passed that makes it legal for the government to kill its own citizens if it has reason enough to believe that they are a threat? Because that just happened. Oh, you didn't hear about it? We were all making duck calls. Some say that the timing of these two events is not a coincidence. I just know that a democracy is only as strong as the people that comprise it, and we have a long way to go.
Instead, they were purposefully left out of the loop. Why? Well, at a Democratic fundraiser last year, Obama said that he wished we had more disasters like the Boston marathon and the West, Texas explosion, because this is what brings people together to get things done. On one hand, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and I can sort of see what he is saying. People can be very productive when they work together, and that takes a common enemy or fear usually. (Groups this large do not form over common interests, and if they do, they just sit around and talk about it, they don't really do anything).
On the other hand, though, did he really just say that? That he wishes we had more disasters?? Does he want a scared public that will allow things to pass that shouldn't have been (like the Patriot Act?). When people are scared, they cannot think. They look for a savior. The government can basically pass anything giving them absolute power to cries of the public to, "Save us!"
So, that happened. And Hilary Clinton lied about the whole Benghazi thing. Then this marine came out as a whistle-blower to the whole thing and no one cared... This should have been larger than Watergate. People actually died, yet I never heard about it. Now, I choose not to watch a lot of news because most of it is meant to instill fear into your life, the other part is propaganda, and a very small part is actually usable information. I figure, if it's important enough, I will hear about it. Andy says he heard about it happening, but either way, it was nowhere close to the public outrage scale that it should have had.
When I think about what it takes to make it in American politics, I get very angry, then scared, then despondent. For anyone to make it to a level high enough to make any sort of difference, a wide amount of perversion and manipulation must be achieved. They have lied, gone against their conscience, been bought, and in Hilary Clinton's case, actually made sure that people died and then lied about it. It disgusts me that these are the people running our country, that are supposedly representing us. I suppose the idea of representation is as naive as the concept of a civil servant. The only people politicians represent are the people who pay them.
But what is the #1 "story" on Facebook right now? Friggin Duck Dynasty. I swear I am going to scream at the next person who brings up that stupid show. I really don't care if someone made rude statements about a group of people. Was it nice? No, and I'm sure if I were gay that I would be very offended, I am offended for them. Why don't we pay attention to the bill that was just passed that makes it legal for the government to kill its own citizens if it has reason enough to believe that they are a threat? Because that just happened. Oh, you didn't hear about it? We were all making duck calls. Some say that the timing of these two events is not a coincidence. I just know that a democracy is only as strong as the people that comprise it, and we have a long way to go.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Year Break From School
Hi universe.
I am going to be taking a year long break from school. This will be a time of self-reflection and giving back to my family. I am sick and tired of being in school 24/7, having to ignore my husband and daughters to write papers and having to do something that my heart truly isn't in. I have always seen myself as a person with a degree, possibly even higher degrees, but right now I don't really know what career, if any, I want for myself. Plus, I realize that the time I have with my daughters right now while they are still young is precious, and I don't want to waste it by being depressed over which major I have to choose, and then tired and cranky from the workload. It all seemed so simple before, but I have realized that school is having more of a negative impact on my life than a positive one. When I go to school I want to know that I am doing it for the right reasons and that I am studying something I am passionate about. I just don't feel that right now.
I will use this year to work on being a better wife and mom. I have been neglecting making dinners, and this will be a goal I will set for myself. I will have dinner on the table every night. Period. I don't even know what I'll do if someone offers to go out to eat, I'll probably just freak out. (lol)
I am doing this because of a fundamental disconnect I have with society. More and more jobs, even the low-paying ones, require ridiculous credentials including a bachelor's degree and 2-5 years experience in the field to even get your foot in the door. What kind of ridiculousness is that? Why should I pay a school ridiculous amounts of money just for them to give me a piece of paper? I eventually want a bachelor's degree, I just think that too many people are in college these days and the government is creating an education bubble, much like the housing bubble. More people are getting qualified for loans that can't afford them -> the bubble will pop soon.
How does this affect me? Well, if I wait a little bit, I might get cheaper loans. :D
Haha... Profiting off the bubble bursting, that is me, but the real reason I am doing this is for the emotional well-being of myself and my family. It is not worth the stress that it puts on me, and I'm not talking about stress from the schoolwork. I can do the work fine, it's the emotional guilt I feel from being in a major that I don't feel strongly about. It's about signing up for a job that I know I will never be exceptional at, and losing my self-value. I love love English, I love reading and writing and could eloquently put my thoughts into paper all day, but who's going to pay me to do that? Nobody.
I have also wanted to study psychology and business marketing. I think that would be interesting as well. For now, though, I am sick of changing majors and afraid of annoying my academic counselor. I don't feel like I have the flexibility to look at all the classes I have taken and see how they are stacking up between my top three majors to see how close I am to each. If I could have my way, I would get like four bachelor's degrees, but that is obviously impractical.
Another reason I need a break is because I really want to work on my shop, Nourishing Naturals. I have never been as excited about something as I was working on that. I have always wanted to work for myself and have my own shop. There is a real awakening in the consumer mindset over what we are putting in and on our bodies. Whole Foods was started as an alternative grocery store for those who wanted healthier alternatives. I want to be the Whole Foods of Sephora, the bath and beauty industry. I want to be the alternative.
Obviously I have a long way to go, but I am going to start with bath teas. Teas you steep in your bath and infuse with essential oils, salts, and dried milk powder (did you know that Cleopatra used to take whole milk baths?).
There are plenty of people who have been successful without a college degree, and plenty that are mundane with one. I don't want to be mundane, and I have to do what I think is right.
Here's to the Year Away From School. Here's to breaking free and thinking for myself. Here's to a mental break and time for self-analysis and discovery. I think I'm going to start a blog just for this endeavor. I am going to write about everything I am doing with my free time and how it has personally impacted me.
Here's to breaking free.
I am going to be taking a year long break from school. This will be a time of self-reflection and giving back to my family. I am sick and tired of being in school 24/7, having to ignore my husband and daughters to write papers and having to do something that my heart truly isn't in. I have always seen myself as a person with a degree, possibly even higher degrees, but right now I don't really know what career, if any, I want for myself. Plus, I realize that the time I have with my daughters right now while they are still young is precious, and I don't want to waste it by being depressed over which major I have to choose, and then tired and cranky from the workload. It all seemed so simple before, but I have realized that school is having more of a negative impact on my life than a positive one. When I go to school I want to know that I am doing it for the right reasons and that I am studying something I am passionate about. I just don't feel that right now.
I will use this year to work on being a better wife and mom. I have been neglecting making dinners, and this will be a goal I will set for myself. I will have dinner on the table every night. Period. I don't even know what I'll do if someone offers to go out to eat, I'll probably just freak out. (lol)
I am doing this because of a fundamental disconnect I have with society. More and more jobs, even the low-paying ones, require ridiculous credentials including a bachelor's degree and 2-5 years experience in the field to even get your foot in the door. What kind of ridiculousness is that? Why should I pay a school ridiculous amounts of money just for them to give me a piece of paper? I eventually want a bachelor's degree, I just think that too many people are in college these days and the government is creating an education bubble, much like the housing bubble. More people are getting qualified for loans that can't afford them -> the bubble will pop soon.
How does this affect me? Well, if I wait a little bit, I might get cheaper loans. :D
Haha... Profiting off the bubble bursting, that is me, but the real reason I am doing this is for the emotional well-being of myself and my family. It is not worth the stress that it puts on me, and I'm not talking about stress from the schoolwork. I can do the work fine, it's the emotional guilt I feel from being in a major that I don't feel strongly about. It's about signing up for a job that I know I will never be exceptional at, and losing my self-value. I love love English, I love reading and writing and could eloquently put my thoughts into paper all day, but who's going to pay me to do that? Nobody.
I have also wanted to study psychology and business marketing. I think that would be interesting as well. For now, though, I am sick of changing majors and afraid of annoying my academic counselor. I don't feel like I have the flexibility to look at all the classes I have taken and see how they are stacking up between my top three majors to see how close I am to each. If I could have my way, I would get like four bachelor's degrees, but that is obviously impractical.
Another reason I need a break is because I really want to work on my shop, Nourishing Naturals. I have never been as excited about something as I was working on that. I have always wanted to work for myself and have my own shop. There is a real awakening in the consumer mindset over what we are putting in and on our bodies. Whole Foods was started as an alternative grocery store for those who wanted healthier alternatives. I want to be the Whole Foods of Sephora, the bath and beauty industry. I want to be the alternative.
Obviously I have a long way to go, but I am going to start with bath teas. Teas you steep in your bath and infuse with essential oils, salts, and dried milk powder (did you know that Cleopatra used to take whole milk baths?).
There are plenty of people who have been successful without a college degree, and plenty that are mundane with one. I don't want to be mundane, and I have to do what I think is right.
Here's to the Year Away From School. Here's to breaking free and thinking for myself. Here's to a mental break and time for self-analysis and discovery. I think I'm going to start a blog just for this endeavor. I am going to write about everything I am doing with my free time and how it has personally impacted me.
Here's to breaking free.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Nothing to Worry About
I think I just had an epiphany regarding the differences in my life pre-Navy and post-Navy. You see, before the Navy I thought I was the bomb. I was the best there was and no one could tell me different! This was probably why I was afraid to let people close to me, because I didn't want them to see what a mess I really was. As long as people kept a comfortable distance, I could keep up this facade of perfection. Sad, really, and I was...
While in the Navy, I had one of the worst experiences of my entire life, and up until now, I had let it define me. It will be a hard journey coming out from under the oppression I experienced there, and the labels, but now that I have defined my enemy I can defeat it. I have never tried so hard for anything in my entire life than I tried while I was at nuke school in the Navy. It seemed to come so easily to some people, but math just does not come easily to me. I am not dumb in any way, it just takes a few runs with technical things to get through to me, and the accelerated pace of the program did not allow for that. I would stay in the building until it closed at midnight every night to show my dedication to my job and duties in the Navy. I would study in the classroom, then go to quiet study and try to teach myself, then go try to get tutoring done, then go to group study and see if someone else could explain it to me better. The entire time I was one giant ball of angst and worry. I was afraid of failing, but I think my biggest downfall was my fear of what other people thought of me. I was a woman in a man's world. If you think women don't belong in the military, try putting her in a highly technical field where only one out of 11 people on base are female. The odds are stacked against you and I am extremely sensitive to any anti-feminist feelings, as well as the stereotype that women are bad at math and science. I think that this fear and desire took up so much room in my mind that I wasn't allowed to just be. I was fighting so hard to feel like I belonged there that I couldn't focus on the task at hand.
Boot camp was fine. I kept my head down and tried not to stick out ("the nail that sticks out gets hammered," is how the saying goes...). If anyone knew me before the Navy, I definitely stood out. I loved my free personality and wore it as a badge of honor. This new world, however, did not look kindly at rebels. It hated them and I had to hide myself for the first time behind an ugly light blue shirt and high-wasted pants. They were the ugliest things, and they do that on purpose.
The purpose of boot camp is to break you down so that the military can build you back up again into a tool, but I didn't let them do that. Boot camp was easy, boot camp was a joke. The real fire came at nuke school.
I got placed in a class led by Petty Officer English (he wasn't even a Chief! Oldest nuke PO I have ever seen...). By the time this class graduated from A school, he would have masted over half of his class, de-nuking most of them and having several (including myself) leave the Navy completely. In case you're wondering, this is not standard practice. Most Chiefs try to help the students placed under their care, not throw them under the bus.
My first masting came four weeks after I started A school. It was filed under, "failure to obey a direct order," which is basically a catch-all for any time you want to mast someone. My failure was that I could not do the homework no matter how hard I tried. I got into the program based solely on my ASVAB score, a 93, but was never given the Nuke test. Math and science were never my strong point, I knew that going in, but I figured that if I tried hard enough I could do it. I had never failed like this. I was smart enough that whatever I put my mind to I could accomplish. Until now.
If only I could have gone to my room to study. If only I could have Googled it instead of having to rely on the Navy's outdated black and white user manuals that read more like gibberish than usable information. I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO STUDY THE WAY I NEEDED TO STUDY. We had to put NOFORN (stands for no foreign eyes or something like that...) at the top of all of our school papers and anything with this label was not allowed outside the building. All studying had to happen in the building and this was probably my downfall. My whole educational life I had done my studying on my bed in my room. This is where I felt comfortable, this is where I could be alone and think. Being surrounded by strangers all the time, having to sit straight up and conform to military dress and posture at all times while trying to learn difficult material was just too much for me. There were some worksheets that I simply could not do, and I got masted for it.
This is why I get so mad at people who think they know everything. This is why I hate the millenials who are doing everything "right", who look perfect and know all the perfect things to say because they have groomed themselves into being profitable bullshiters. I hate them because that was me pre-Navy. That was me before I was broken down. That was me before I ever failed anything and was told that I was nothing. That was what I used to be. My success was all in my head, which is where it needs to be to come to fruition, but every dream has now been plucked out. I don't even know what to be any more.
I was reading this article "13 Ways Successful People Improve Themselves" and I couldn't even read past the first point, because this is something my pre-Navy self would have read. I would have eaten up every word and immediately started applying them to my life. But now? I have other things to worry about. I am everything I was afraid of becoming, a mother who is too preoccupied with the needs of others to be able to make anything out of herself. Is this selfish? Probably. What all those self-help books don't tell you, though, is that sometimes by sacrificing you find your true value. You find that by making little people and pouring your heart into them every day that you are building the foundation they need to feel safe and secure in a crazy world. The way that I treat my daughters affects the way they see and will treat themselves, and therefore how they will treat the people they meet in the world. A mother's influence is so important to a child. If a child does not feel loved, nurtured, and taken care of, they will never be able to become much of anything in the real world, because they will constantly be looking for things to meet those basic, essential needs. It may seem like the work I am doing now is mundane or boring, but it is essential.
I still live with the shame and guilt that was placed upon me in the Navy. Something changed me then. I never had time to get back to my pre-Navy life, because right after I left the Navy I got pregnant and got married and had my life completely shaken again, more breaking down and building back up. Only now I kind of miss the girl that I was. I miss the girl that would soak in every word from her Vogue and Lucky magazines, then scour catalogs and websites for the same looks within her budget. I miss the girl who loved running because the air in her lungs made her feel free. But there were many things that that girl was missing, too, mainly how to love herself and others. How to be vulnerable and honest. These are things that I have learned lately, I am just wishing to be more in the middle of the two extremes. A little of both, a compelling mix. I want the youth mixed in with the wisdom. Is that so hard?
So the reason that I could not read that article on setting tiny goals for myself to lead to something great down the road is because I have no end in sight. I have no dreams, they have all been plucked out of me. The best I can hope for now is just a good life for myself in the girls. I have dreams such as travelling the world, going on a Disney cruise as a family, I have plenty of dreams for things I want to do with my life, it's just that none of them are related to a career! I used to dream about being a successful businesswoman or something along those lines, but now I see that all I wanted was to impress others. Where is the fulfillment? I want to adopt a young boy. I want to be happy. Always, at the forefront of my mind, this desire for happiness is the greatest goal of my life, and isn't it all of ours? We set goals for ourselves because we think they will make us happy, when what do we have in our lives already that we told ourselves the same things? We need to stop, look around, and be thankful and content for what we already have and the people we get to share them with. This is true happiness. This is why all this chasing and grasping for riches is like grasping for the wind.
Now, this is not to say that you shouldn't try. I am getting my degree in IT because I find it interesting and see much job growth and interesting jobs. A recent job posting I found in the DFW was for an entry-level web developer at a facility that boasted a gym with free personal trainers, coffee bar, Whole Foods delivers lunch every day, great conferences and 401K plans with matching contributions, and health insurance that includes visual, dental, and chiropractic! CHIROPRACTIC! Are you kidding me?! I will work anywhere that includes chiropractic...
All I am saying is that I need to shake off this label that I am a failure. I am NOT a failure, I am a child of God with a purpose and a plan for my life and I will stand up and take it. I will not be silent, I will not be complacent, I will not quit. I will keep going until my name is restored to myself. I will keep going until I have a job that I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of. I will keep pouring myself into my daughters to make sure that they are good people. Life is like water, and where there is stagnant water there is death. You have to keep moving. You have to keep pouring yourself out to see what happens. All you can do is your best job, and if you do that every day, you should have nothing to worry about.
While in the Navy, I had one of the worst experiences of my entire life, and up until now, I had let it define me. It will be a hard journey coming out from under the oppression I experienced there, and the labels, but now that I have defined my enemy I can defeat it. I have never tried so hard for anything in my entire life than I tried while I was at nuke school in the Navy. It seemed to come so easily to some people, but math just does not come easily to me. I am not dumb in any way, it just takes a few runs with technical things to get through to me, and the accelerated pace of the program did not allow for that. I would stay in the building until it closed at midnight every night to show my dedication to my job and duties in the Navy. I would study in the classroom, then go to quiet study and try to teach myself, then go try to get tutoring done, then go to group study and see if someone else could explain it to me better. The entire time I was one giant ball of angst and worry. I was afraid of failing, but I think my biggest downfall was my fear of what other people thought of me. I was a woman in a man's world. If you think women don't belong in the military, try putting her in a highly technical field where only one out of 11 people on base are female. The odds are stacked against you and I am extremely sensitive to any anti-feminist feelings, as well as the stereotype that women are bad at math and science. I think that this fear and desire took up so much room in my mind that I wasn't allowed to just be. I was fighting so hard to feel like I belonged there that I couldn't focus on the task at hand.
Boot camp was fine. I kept my head down and tried not to stick out ("the nail that sticks out gets hammered," is how the saying goes...). If anyone knew me before the Navy, I definitely stood out. I loved my free personality and wore it as a badge of honor. This new world, however, did not look kindly at rebels. It hated them and I had to hide myself for the first time behind an ugly light blue shirt and high-wasted pants. They were the ugliest things, and they do that on purpose.
The purpose of boot camp is to break you down so that the military can build you back up again into a tool, but I didn't let them do that. Boot camp was easy, boot camp was a joke. The real fire came at nuke school.
I got placed in a class led by Petty Officer English (he wasn't even a Chief! Oldest nuke PO I have ever seen...). By the time this class graduated from A school, he would have masted over half of his class, de-nuking most of them and having several (including myself) leave the Navy completely. In case you're wondering, this is not standard practice. Most Chiefs try to help the students placed under their care, not throw them under the bus.
My first masting came four weeks after I started A school. It was filed under, "failure to obey a direct order," which is basically a catch-all for any time you want to mast someone. My failure was that I could not do the homework no matter how hard I tried. I got into the program based solely on my ASVAB score, a 93, but was never given the Nuke test. Math and science were never my strong point, I knew that going in, but I figured that if I tried hard enough I could do it. I had never failed like this. I was smart enough that whatever I put my mind to I could accomplish. Until now.
If only I could have gone to my room to study. If only I could have Googled it instead of having to rely on the Navy's outdated black and white user manuals that read more like gibberish than usable information. I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO STUDY THE WAY I NEEDED TO STUDY. We had to put NOFORN (stands for no foreign eyes or something like that...) at the top of all of our school papers and anything with this label was not allowed outside the building. All studying had to happen in the building and this was probably my downfall. My whole educational life I had done my studying on my bed in my room. This is where I felt comfortable, this is where I could be alone and think. Being surrounded by strangers all the time, having to sit straight up and conform to military dress and posture at all times while trying to learn difficult material was just too much for me. There were some worksheets that I simply could not do, and I got masted for it.
This is why I get so mad at people who think they know everything. This is why I hate the millenials who are doing everything "right", who look perfect and know all the perfect things to say because they have groomed themselves into being profitable bullshiters. I hate them because that was me pre-Navy. That was me before I was broken down. That was me before I ever failed anything and was told that I was nothing. That was what I used to be. My success was all in my head, which is where it needs to be to come to fruition, but every dream has now been plucked out. I don't even know what to be any more.
I was reading this article "13 Ways Successful People Improve Themselves" and I couldn't even read past the first point, because this is something my pre-Navy self would have read. I would have eaten up every word and immediately started applying them to my life. But now? I have other things to worry about. I am everything I was afraid of becoming, a mother who is too preoccupied with the needs of others to be able to make anything out of herself. Is this selfish? Probably. What all those self-help books don't tell you, though, is that sometimes by sacrificing you find your true value. You find that by making little people and pouring your heart into them every day that you are building the foundation they need to feel safe and secure in a crazy world. The way that I treat my daughters affects the way they see and will treat themselves, and therefore how they will treat the people they meet in the world. A mother's influence is so important to a child. If a child does not feel loved, nurtured, and taken care of, they will never be able to become much of anything in the real world, because they will constantly be looking for things to meet those basic, essential needs. It may seem like the work I am doing now is mundane or boring, but it is essential.
I still live with the shame and guilt that was placed upon me in the Navy. Something changed me then. I never had time to get back to my pre-Navy life, because right after I left the Navy I got pregnant and got married and had my life completely shaken again, more breaking down and building back up. Only now I kind of miss the girl that I was. I miss the girl that would soak in every word from her Vogue and Lucky magazines, then scour catalogs and websites for the same looks within her budget. I miss the girl who loved running because the air in her lungs made her feel free. But there were many things that that girl was missing, too, mainly how to love herself and others. How to be vulnerable and honest. These are things that I have learned lately, I am just wishing to be more in the middle of the two extremes. A little of both, a compelling mix. I want the youth mixed in with the wisdom. Is that so hard?
So the reason that I could not read that article on setting tiny goals for myself to lead to something great down the road is because I have no end in sight. I have no dreams, they have all been plucked out of me. The best I can hope for now is just a good life for myself in the girls. I have dreams such as travelling the world, going on a Disney cruise as a family, I have plenty of dreams for things I want to do with my life, it's just that none of them are related to a career! I used to dream about being a successful businesswoman or something along those lines, but now I see that all I wanted was to impress others. Where is the fulfillment? I want to adopt a young boy. I want to be happy. Always, at the forefront of my mind, this desire for happiness is the greatest goal of my life, and isn't it all of ours? We set goals for ourselves because we think they will make us happy, when what do we have in our lives already that we told ourselves the same things? We need to stop, look around, and be thankful and content for what we already have and the people we get to share them with. This is true happiness. This is why all this chasing and grasping for riches is like grasping for the wind.
Now, this is not to say that you shouldn't try. I am getting my degree in IT because I find it interesting and see much job growth and interesting jobs. A recent job posting I found in the DFW was for an entry-level web developer at a facility that boasted a gym with free personal trainers, coffee bar, Whole Foods delivers lunch every day, great conferences and 401K plans with matching contributions, and health insurance that includes visual, dental, and chiropractic! CHIROPRACTIC! Are you kidding me?! I will work anywhere that includes chiropractic...
All I am saying is that I need to shake off this label that I am a failure. I am NOT a failure, I am a child of God with a purpose and a plan for my life and I will stand up and take it. I will not be silent, I will not be complacent, I will not quit. I will keep going until my name is restored to myself. I will keep going until I have a job that I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of. I will keep pouring myself into my daughters to make sure that they are good people. Life is like water, and where there is stagnant water there is death. You have to keep moving. You have to keep pouring yourself out to see what happens. All you can do is your best job, and if you do that every day, you should have nothing to worry about.
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