Life in the Staff Tent

Do you ever just take a pause and try to figure out what it is exactly that you're doing?

I spent about 3 hours just clicking through Wikipedia today, and that's when I realized, somethings gone wrong.

And for real, don't get me wrong, all those exciting things you see in movies and recruiting ads and commercials, about jumping out of planes and driving around in tanks and sailing the high seas, well, sure, someone is doing that somewhere. It's just the odds of you doing that at any particular time? Not good.

But I guess I shouldn't complain - I spent all summer like a pack mule sweating through some twisted daily cross country endurance circuit training from hell, carrying radios, machine guns, ammunition of all kinds, spraying bug spray until my watch melted, expending thousands of live rounds, double tapping, dashing, hitting the dirt, crawling to a position of observation, crawling to a position of fire, getting up, bounding, repeating for hours. So sooner or later, I was going to end up killing time in an office, putting off writing my very first set of personal development reviews for my very first subordinates.

And this really should be interesting. Because it was interesting to teach my first course, to have real subordinates, to come up with a real plan and watch it unfold; to react on the fly to changes and incidents - to teach, to evaluate, to fail soldiers off a course, to congratulate others on a job well done. OH, and to employ a worrying and unprecedented number of fire extinguishers. Thank you, thank you.

Yes, I am grateful for the opportunity that I had, especially to teach a leadership course - partly from the experience of running a very officer-intensive course, but also from being so far out of my league, a lowly second lieutenant teaching corporals with up to 3 tours in Afghanistan - "Listen boys, I don't know what you think, but I was playing a video game the other day and..." Yeah. Avoiding that was a challenge to say the least, but I think I pulled it off, well, really, that depends on who you ask. Point to improve - administration and staff work, yikes. It's a good thing I have strong field soldiering and interpersonal skills, because my paperwork is crap.

The whole picture seems to change though, from the staff tent, versus the hootch. The field used to be something I dreaded, then it became a challenge, because I wasn't just trying to survive but pass leadership and practical evaluations. Eventually, I came to love the field, to thrive in the difficulty and excitement. But, that all goes down the shitters when you've got a generator, a heater, and everyone's playing Guitar Hero in the corner.

What this all comes back to is, this is my first time facing the actual reality of the military. Because there isn't always going to be a course, or training, or a war to get prepared for. There's a reason that administration is a principle of war; this shit has to get done no matter what, because it matters. Everyone involved in the training system is making a valuable contribution to their country, it's just, it's so damn boring. But I won't always, in fact, I will rarely be doing the exciting field stuff, from now on. I've got a few more months back in Gagetown next year, running and gunning in the LAVs, and after that, paperwork and admin will be the majority of my routine.

This is going to require a major life change.

Because being an exhausted, worn, transient scoundrel of a soldier doesn't really fly when you're really working 8-4. And being a workaholic is great on a platoon attack or defending a FOB, but it's not so fulfilling when you're updating personnel records. I had 4 days off in a row this week and I nearly shot myself out of boredom. And that's a dangerous joke to make in this profession.

I think I finally figured it out, why people have kids - to have a reason to want to go home every day, to make going to work and coming home every day important, other than staying up all night in your underwear and not sleeping and reading Hemmingway novels over and over.

Of course, thinking of settling down just makes me think about Ontario which makes me think of Ottawa which makes me think of ex-girlfriends which just makes me nostalgic and homesick in general.

7 more weeks in Manitoba, then hopefully, never again. 7 weeks and the day I head home is the 2 year anniversary of when I started on this path, having no idea what I was getting in to.

And of course, nothing is ever as simple as you make it. There's reasons to stay here, so there's reasons I'll be pretty torn up when I leave. But if I'm an expert at anything now, it's keeping my head up, watching my arcs, and marching forwards.