This post from Austin Phillips has been delayed by logistical issues. It was timestamped 0216 30Jun09.I was given a personal day today so I decided to use it and attempt another entry. Nothing new is happening; with the pullout we will wait, observe and maybe my blog will get interesting. I would not hold your breath.
So this week is going slower than usual and I am fairly certain it will never end. You think that your energy would be high if you're not doing anything, but it is not. Just having to be somewhere from a start time to an end time will drain you physically and mentally. I would much rather be gainfully employed and have a feeling of accomplishment instead of this scenario.
People find different ways to deal with our current situation; some people literally just sleep and work, sleep and work. I am trying to decide if by sleeping more this deployment will be over faster. One would think, but I would have to buy stock in Nyquil to make it work.
I find it best to find ways to utilize (waste) my time. Reading caught my attention in Egypt and I find it a fine utilizer of time, but I will choose working out over reading any day. Going to the gym is a great outlet for aggression, and there is plenty of aggression on deployments. Things that form aggression from my stand point:
1. Being around some of the same dullards day in and out.
2. Watching rules mutate and deform as they are passed down the chain of command.
3. Micromanaging
4. Incompetence
To be quite honest I could expand this list but you get the idea.
The aggression caused by some of the daily activities recycles as fuel for me to miss sleep for the gym, and can/will cause me to take on tasks that seem ridiculous: eating 50 hard boiled eggs, drinking 1.5 L of water in 12 seconds without puking and Triathlons.
December 6th, the Laguna Phuket Triathlon (pronounced poo-ket, but guess my phonetic translation), Thailand. This brings me to a major point of this deployment; I am not coming back to the states for my R and R, but using my leave to travel Asia. I am also not using my leave for as much drunken debauchery as before, but to compete in my first triathlon. This brings up a few different issues that I will address in later blogs. I don't want to dish up all the information in my first two entries. Thanks for reading
- Austin
Photo: The training table.
