Visibility
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
-Wainwright
I was right. This job is horrible. No time to sleep, no time to read, and very little time to work out, even if I had the motivation. People pull me in a lot of different directions, and the pace is very different. Instead of the constant low level of work of my old position, this one is highly unpredictable jerks and stops of feverish, frenzied activity and boring downtime. But never enough downtime at once to feel like you've really gotten a break. I drink a lot of coffee, and I am convinced now that command is having extra meetings just to enrage me.
I am feeling the melancholy just like everybody else. It seems like the whole unit is just pissed off and lethargic. Nobody wants to do their job, and everybody seems quick to anger. I don't know if this is common toward the end of a tour. I do know I hate it.
The one reason I'm glad I moved to this new shop is that I only have four or five people to worry about now. Which will make things much easier when we get home. If I'm lucky, I won't have anybody at all to go bail out of jail for getting drunk or beating up their wife's boyfriend; whereas with a whole platoon, you're almost guaranteed that at least a couple people will come home to infidelity or some other type of marital problems.
The heat is now, officially, on. I thought it was before, but it wasn't. The hair-dryer, scouring winds I remember from Kuwait have moved up here along with the choking heat. It's impossible to go to the bathroom around noon. Dust storms blow up almost every night or morning, and visibility is often very low. Sand gets in your eyes and makes them tear up, and the tears just catch more sand, so pretty soon you've got mud caked around your eye. Taking a shower just makes you realize how much everyone around you stinks for a couple of hours, until you've sweated through your clothes a few times.
I wish I could just drink some kind of potion where I wouldn't remember the next couple of months. I'd like to just go to sleep and wake up at home. A year is too long to be over here.
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
-Wainwright
I was right. This job is horrible. No time to sleep, no time to read, and very little time to work out, even if I had the motivation. People pull me in a lot of different directions, and the pace is very different. Instead of the constant low level of work of my old position, this one is highly unpredictable jerks and stops of feverish, frenzied activity and boring downtime. But never enough downtime at once to feel like you've really gotten a break. I drink a lot of coffee, and I am convinced now that command is having extra meetings just to enrage me.
I am feeling the melancholy just like everybody else. It seems like the whole unit is just pissed off and lethargic. Nobody wants to do their job, and everybody seems quick to anger. I don't know if this is common toward the end of a tour. I do know I hate it.
The one reason I'm glad I moved to this new shop is that I only have four or five people to worry about now. Which will make things much easier when we get home. If I'm lucky, I won't have anybody at all to go bail out of jail for getting drunk or beating up their wife's boyfriend; whereas with a whole platoon, you're almost guaranteed that at least a couple people will come home to infidelity or some other type of marital problems.
The heat is now, officially, on. I thought it was before, but it wasn't. The hair-dryer, scouring winds I remember from Kuwait have moved up here along with the choking heat. It's impossible to go to the bathroom around noon. Dust storms blow up almost every night or morning, and visibility is often very low. Sand gets in your eyes and makes them tear up, and the tears just catch more sand, so pretty soon you've got mud caked around your eye. Taking a shower just makes you realize how much everyone around you stinks for a couple of hours, until you've sweated through your clothes a few times.
I wish I could just drink some kind of potion where I wouldn't remember the next couple of months. I'd like to just go to sleep and wake up at home. A year is too long to be over here.
posted by Battler03 at 9:20 PM
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