This year, has quite possibly, been the most active year of my life. It has been full of life altering decisions, and choices that I have come to look back on and ask why I came to that decision. All in all, the decisions are made and there is nothing I can do about it except to add it to my chronicles. As this review has become a tradition of mine, I just hope that I can adequately script my adventures in the short amount of time that I have to do them in.
The year started easily enough, with my standing broke and unemployed in Alaska, living with one of my best friends and his family. I spent my days listening to music, making my own, playing computer and video games, and occaisionally looking for a job. I did chores around the house from time to time, and enjoying being a bum. All the while I remained unsettled and yearning for something more. My leave date to college in Denver was approaching, somewhat quicker in the end than I expected. I left I believe on March the 28, of 2002, for Denver, Co, and Westwood College of Technology, Denver North Campus. I decided that I would see how I would fare in college, get an education and get a job, make a living. I left a few loose ends, but nothing very serious. The day that I was to leave, possibly an omen now that I look back in retrospect, it snowed a foot and a half or so, of fresh, beautiful powder. When I arrived in Denver, I went through a slight adventure, but arrived nonetheless and began school. I quickly found a job and started to make some good money, while I kept up my studies. I shortly thereafter found my misfortune at my choice and became incredibly unhappy in my selection of not only college, but location and job. I bought a car, and was making payments on it, yet I still quit my job. I eventually quit my schooling after I was suspended and I deducted that my Program Director was trying to kick me out of the school completely.
It was about here that I joined the Army.
How many people in my life would have ever looked upon me as one of the people who would stand up and join the United States of America Army. I certainly never would have, even while I was in the joining process. I was a punk in high school, against any sort of convention and order and government. I was all about the overthrowing and redirection of the government. Yet there I was, holding my right hand up at a right angle, with my arm horizontal to the floor, and my forearm perpendicular, taking the oath. Why I joined, I still do not know to this day, and I gave up wondering if I ever will. Yet I joined, yet a punk I still am with my disheveled visions of our government and my ill feelings to our society, but nothing will hold me back from being the best soldier in our Army. I WILL be the best of the best. For anyone who ever doubts, has doubted, or ever will doubt me, I will always overcome, and prove to you that I can and will do it. I have proved every single doubt wrong thusfar in my life, and I am not about to start now. I may not be patriotic, but NO ONE will ever doubt me.
When adventure and life look your way, why not pick up the call and answer with a hearty "I WILL!!" I managed to scrape together a little over a grand and I took me and my car and all my posessions on a road trip from Denver, Co to Naples, Ny to see the love of my life. I traveled roughly 2000 miles in less than 3 days just to see her. Randi, my most beautiful Randi. I gave my soul and my heart to her so long ago, and I told her once that I would travel across the world just to see her for an instant. I stayed in New York for 3 weeks, renting an apartment there. I became really close with the family and the whole town pretty much. I was known as the guy who wore a cowboy hat and played guitar on the bench on main street. *the town pretty much consisted of main street and that was it, very small community, many many people knew who I was, when I didn't even know them. I was a small celebrity before I got there, from the tales Randi would spin :) gotta love it!* I fell into even more love with her than I was before, yet I kept my focus of the unknowing, and relenquished myself to Fate yet again. I still do not know where the two of us stand in life, but if we are destined to be no more than the best of friends throughout life, then I will stand there with that in my heart, yet I always pray for the best. I want to marry her, yet life likes to lay my road out in turns.
I was back in Denver for 6 days before I shipped into boot camp, on November 20, 2002. As it stood when I left MEPS, I was an E-1, with a 14E MOS, and my Airborn status still unknown. Boot camp is 9 weeks with 2 weeks of Exodus in the middle, so a total of 11 weeks, plus 1 week of reception. My AIT is 35 weeks, and if I am lucky enough to get my airborn, then that will be an additional 3 weeks. That will bring my training total up to 50 weeks. I should exit training as an E-3.
Here I stand in my conclusion, with 4 hours left in the year. I leave to go back into boot camp (BCT) in 2 days. I sit and listen to the poetry and epicity of Bad Religion as they soothe my tempered soul. I am 19 years old, and I have traveled across the United States of America 2 times and back already, both times broke. I still don't know what I'm doing in my life, or why I'm doing it. Why not throw caution to the wind and put everything up to the essence of Fate? Maybe an idea of an everlasting God? Maybe everything is based off of a chaos structure, with no set pattern except for the fact of procreation? Yet another year has ended, yet still does life continue without a single pause for breath. Do not ever fall behind, because this is a marathon race in which we can not catch back up. It reminds me of an analogy I just made up, "I rode the train once, in which every other person rides, but I stood up and fell off, now I travel down my path walking, losing sight of the tracks." -Christopher Scott Bernhardt