Recently free.

Well, so much for those regular postings. Should have done them every other week so they would have lasted longer. :P

No project this week, just some thoughts. I've had a lot of life changes recently.
I moved back to the United States. Spent some time in California at Camp Pendleton for outprocessing.
Collected my DD214.
Moved to CT, where my husband is.
Helped him finish moving apartments, before he left for two weeks of training.

Did I mentioned I got my DD214?
For the non-military folks out there, that is one of the most important documents a servicemember will ever recieve from the government. You recieve it at the end of your contract, it is your one and only proof that you are no longer in the military, and under what honor you got out under.
So here I am, taking my first steps back into the civilian world.
I'm technically still active duty, until July 20th. Then I'll be in the inactive ready reserve (IRR). So I do nothing military, but I'm still on call.

Four and half years of being in the Marine Corps....It's crazy to think about. And since I've had nothing but free time recently, I've done a lot of reflection.

There are things I am going to miss about the military. Quite a few actually.
There are more things I won't miss though, hence why I didn't stay in the military.
I've done enough complaining and ranting in the past four years that I won't start that up here.
I suppose I'm really just feeling weird.
My first several weeks at bootcamp I felt like the whole thing was a bad dream. None of it felt real. I honestly expected to wake up at any moment. And here I am, reliving that feeling. It's so different from what I've been living the past handful of years that it feels surreal. I haven't accepted that I've entered a new stage of my life.
Probably because it scares me. I joined the military for a hundred different reasons. One of the big ones was that I felt trapped in my current life and it was an escape. It was a life changing learning process.
I don't know if I regret doing it or not. There are a lot of things I lost and missed out on while I was active duty. But the things I've done, and seen, and learned are great themselves.
One of the biggest things I got out of the Marine Corps was learning about myself. I was forced into situations and my actions and reactions taught me things I never knew...about who I am and how I view/do things.
Everyone has a self image in their head, of how they are, and how they want to be viewed.
I did, but it was conflicting, going back and forth. I didn't really know myself.
And now I know myself a little bit better.
There are a lot of things I could have done better and excelled more at.
But honestly, there were a lot of times when I didn't want to. There were times where I knew I could be strong, but I chose to be weak, and there were times where I did my best to be as strong as possible and I crumbled.
There were times when I knew I was being a failure, but I'd rather play it off as "I don't care" attitude then admit my own struggles with things I wish I had a natural affinity for, because I can't bring myself to change who I am fundamentally.
But I stayed true to myself, and my personal feelings and beliefs. I didn't try to become something I'm not. Even though I would pretend.
And whether anyone will ever truly grasp this, but I did care.
I cared about a lot of things more than anyone who ever worked with me will ever know.
I would think the greatest thing I learned, the greatest gift the Marine Corps could have taught me:

I like me.

It took me quite a while to come to this realization, and I went through a lot of struggles dealing with an image of a person I was trying to become. And I realized why I couldn't, because I actually like who I am. (Or at least a majority of myself)
A lot of people have issues accepting who they are, or trying to be something, or someone else. I can't do that.
Honestly, I'll never know what those who I worked for thought of me, or what those who worked for me thought of me. I set some pretty poor examples of leadership sometimes, but I also had times where I felt like I kicked ass at my job.

A SSgt once said at a NCO Call (Non-commisioned officer's get together and have discussions about things). "Some of the worst moments in your military career turn out to be some of your best memories."
While I don't think this is true, there is some truth to the statement. The hardships I went through, I can look back on the fact I still did it, I can talk about it with an attitude of ease. The people who where there, or weren't there but did the same thing share that understanding with me.
It's hard to explain in writing I just realized. But after the shit is done and over with, it's another memory, another experience. For Marines the crap you go through brings you together and tightens your bonds to each other (I think its why they drag us through it sometimes).

My time as active duty is over, now I have to focus on the anxieties of "real" life.
College, finding a job, affording things, having a place to live.
But in the same sense, I know after my time in the Corps, I can probably tackle any challenge.

Exhausted.

This past week has been a most trying one for me. Even though the month itself had been great leading up to it. Excluding work, course. I always have to exclude work, since it rarely goes as well as I'd like it to. But I've definitely started a very steep downward stumble. I look forward to the moment I hit rock bottom, so I can know for sure it's over and start back up. But if I manage to stop midway and start back up again, I'm okay with that too.

So, my thirty day challenges. It's very difficult to stick to the actual challenge plan. So my rest days are the days I work. So it will take me more than thirty days to do this. But I think the fact I'm doing it is enough. I enjoy these because I can do them anywhere for the most part, and it involves nothing complicated. However, I don't like doing them in my barracks room when my room mate is present. It's weird to me. So I'll go to the gym and do it there later. The biggest issue I have with the challenges is during the squat challenge, I get BORED. That is my downfall in all I do. When I go to the gym, I'll have to stop and leave because I get bored, I'll get bored of a project I'm working on, a book I started reading (not non-fiction, normally it's something I'm reading for education), school, homework, writing and so on. When I get bored of something, nothing can help me continue except sheer willpower, and depending on the day, I'll be low on that. So when I'm doing squats and I get past 80....I start to get REALLY bored now. I'm not looking forward to the last few weeks when I do close to 200+ squats a day.
But I will keep at it. I need to be able to do pull-ups by next year. That's my goal, the one thing I'm going for, after I can do my pull-ups for the PFT, my fitness goals will change to more accurately reflect what I REALLY want. Which is I smaller, toned body. I hate that I can't wear non-form fitting clothes without looking in a mirror or photos and all I see is a fat body underneath. I've never hated a part of myself so much as I hate my arms. I know I'm stronger, I feel it, but I don't see it. So I need to fix that.

I've also wandered astray from some other goals I set myself towards. I know this is normal, especially when things suddenly change and you're adjusting, or stressed. Which I've been experiencing both for some time now. I spend a lot of time feeling dazed and lost, almost as if I'm continuing on half asleep. When I'm at work I'm a different me. I've managed to start creating a self that is what I need to be at work, but its draining to be that person all the time. So I have a different me that I'll be when it's just me, by myself. I often wonder if either one is really me, or just aspects of a single individual. I recall as a teenager wondering about all this, and find it strange that years later I still have similar thoughts. But I was once told that you don't truly know who you are till after 25. And I'm not there yet, so it makes sense.
Life is about self-discovery. The most important things you learn are often about yourself. There are things about you that you may not even know, or be aware of. There are thoughts and decisions you've never had to make that you won't know how you'll be until that exact moment comes upon you.
We all have a thought of how we'd like to be, but how honest that is, is entirely up to debate. I find self-discovery confusing at times, because I have a nack for seeing both sides of things, I find it easy to try and picture myself thinking like another, to better understand them. Or I think a certain way because I'm supposed to, which is all part of being in the military.
I don't think that means I'm not me, I think that all helps make up who I am. But when I look at myself I have issues deciding on things because things that don't affect me, or my life directly, its difficult to have a stance on.

Maybe one day I'll figure it all out, probably won't be this lifetime though.

I have so much I should do, others want me to do, what I want to do, and in the end I tend to do what absolutely needs to get done. I'll never be able to fully have that marine mind-set, but when I put on my cammies I'll have it for that moment. When I'm working on my school work, for a moment, I'm a scholar. And so on, with everything else.

I have so much I want to dedicate myself to, but when it comes push-to-shove I'm exhausted and just bow out. I can't just pick one thing and that be it. I want to do everything, know tons of information, be physically fit, have my dreams come to life in front of me.
But the one thing I truly work towards everyday is to be with my husband again. When that happens maybe something will change inside me. I can't make those kind of predictions. But I need to find balance in my life. This is something I've just realized.

What I seek
is balance.

Dedicated.

Over the past few months I have started changing. Or trying to, physically. I started a gym regiment that for once in my short Marine Corps career I've somewhat managed to stick to. And I'm getting stronger, I can't see the results on myself, but improper dieting will hide a lot from you. And since I don't have a kitchen and most days of the week the chow hall isn't an option for me...I don't have many options.
But I made the decision I want to actually become fit. I want to look fit, feel fit, and be fit. I want my level of struggling to be beyond anything it's been before. I want to be able to hop on the pullup bar and bust out twenty like it's cool.
And I'm going to dedicate myself to that.
This is something I should have done years ago, but I didn't have the mindset for it. I was too unfocused on what needed to be done. I couldn't see the future, and my current path was clouded. Well luckily for me there was a break in the fog and I'm able to get myself on track.
So I'm going to do my best to keep up with this fitness thing, and try not to just stuff myself all the time on my days off. I still love to eat Japanese food and there's no way I'll cut that out, but when I eat meals, I'll try to make them healthier. I've already started incorporating spinach into a lot of what I eat, AND into my shakes I drink after the gym. Small steps, but it feels like a big leap. If only eating healthy wasn't SO EXPENSIVE!
but I digress.
To start out with my current challenge I'm embarking is the 30 day squat challenge. I'm on day three, and my legs and I aren't speaking currently. No joke.
Day 1, which was Sunday, I did 50 squats.
Day 2, 55 squats
Day 3, 60 squats.
Went to the gym to do legs today, couldn't do it. Anything involving the use of my thighs is not do-able currently. Thank the Gods tomorrow is a rest day for the squats. I need it.
Yes, I am still attending the gym on a regular basis. On days I work, since I can't leave the shop during the entire 24 hours I'm going to develop a Shift Workout Plan. That way I can still get some physical activity in during that time. The other days I will go to the gym and follow my workout plan, occasionally throwing in an extra exercise or two just to mix it up.
If anyone wants to know the plan I'm doing just comment and say so, I'll post it, if I don't discuss it in later posts.
This is my everything blog, I want to post so much on here, but I'm too busy doing stuff to do so. Which is a good thing. But it makes the blog dull.
Oh well.
Pull ups are more important.
And oddly enough the fact I'm going to the gym now is motivating, and it makes my peers and my superiors look at me in a different light. I'm not longer a lazy disgruntled complainer. I'm a motivated leader who is trying to improve themselves so I can inspire my juniors to the same. I may never be a good runner, but I won't give up trying.
And neither should anyone else. If you want it, go for it. Find that reason within that makes you want to succeed. We'll all experience failure at one point or another, but what separates us is that we'll pick ourselves up and keep trying.
Because that's what living is about.