Timeline and an extraction from my past

A few days ago I found myself standing alone in a room: nobody there, no one else to listen to or see. Aside from realizing the emphatic and obvious notion of loneliness at that exact moment, I began to take notice of the very random and under appreciated objects, shapes, and colors most people and myself included, often fail to acknowledge. I analyzed the complexity of objects in the room and realized that one of the most common things in there was the heavy use of lines. I noticed that from these lines came particular shapes, most notably the formation of squares. I bet that if you take a break from reading this blog for a moment and look around you, you'll notice the same thing. There are lines everywhere and almost everything is shaped like a box or a square. This observation lead me to think about ranges. With so many shapes and different kinds of lines, other than straight lines, why is it that we seldom make use of them? Random, I know.

During the ensuing days leading up to right now, I told myself I would start an attempt at taking notice of the random and underappreciated things around me. Whether it's colors, common themes, or even people, I thought that observing the less-common might teach me something new, or something at all. As I stated above, I began to think about ranges as well, and how vast the ranges in things can be sometimes. Although not directly correlated, today during my lunch break I was reading through my Facebook Timeline. In case you haven't activated timeline on your Facebook yet, and you probably haven't, it's a brand new app that they're launching on November 2nd that aims to change your Facebook interactions with people and how you view their profiles. The cool thing is that you can look at the history of a person, if you will, through the major events that have taken place during the time that they've been utilizating Facebook. In my case, I created my account on March 12th, 2005 and I was able to go all the way back to that date and read any and all comments left on my page.

One of the various things I came across while going through my Timeline was something that I posted in December of 2007. At the time, I was about 6,000 miles away from home, in the middle east, and going through what in my eyes was the most trying and emotional experience I ever had. I briefly wrote about it in just my second blog ever, you can read it here. As I read through this Facebook status I published nearly 4 years ago, I began to reflect on the range of emotions we as humans are capable of. I can honestly say this was the one and only time I have ever felt the way I did when I wrote this, and to this day, it's still a horrible feeling I cannot describe. This was my best attempt at doing so:

"I never knew that I could hurt so bad

It’s like I was blind and never saw it coming

I never knew that I could hurt so bad

It's like losing a limb and you know you'll never get it back

I never knew that it could hurt so bad

It’s like all your favorite foods have lost their taste

As if the most beautiful things in life lost color

Today I found out what real pain feels like

It’s like you know it's there

But you can't see it...

It bites, it scratches, it beats, it yells, and worst of all it cries

I never knew that I could hurt so much

It’s like I was blind, and I never saw it coming

It's like your best friend stabbing you in the back

It's like you never had a best friend to begin with

It's like things show and you just feel so stupid for being you

I lost, when you made me feel like a winner

I cry, when all along you made me feel like I was the strongest thing in the world

It hurts so bad to know that space is what I need, and it's like space is what got me here in the first place.

Someone used to tell me that bad things only happen to bad people...I guess I'm a monster.

Maybe this is only because I've hurt people in my past

I don't remember hurting you like this though

It's like I just watched my life wash away

I had only began setting footprints in the sand, the ones I wanted to look back to decades from now and tell my grandchildren

You're the wave that washed them away

Right when I was learning to be a kind person

Right when I felt like I had reached my goal in life

You were it, you were my biggest accomplishment

I had never tried so hard in anything in life

I never knew that it could hurt so bad

It's like being weighed down to the bottom of the sea

Ironically, it's where I now want to be

You left me homeless, because you were what I called home

You left me senseless, because you gave everything aesthetic sounds, tastes, feelings, scents, and looks.

I was that island, and you passed me by...I was that island to discover. You know those words from that song...that's you.

How do I forgive, how do I forget? Is that even possible?"

Thankfully I haven't felt that way since that horrible winter, and I hope I will never feel that way again. The crazy thing of it all is that in retrospect, I'm amazed at how low I was feeling then. It's almost as if my life since then has been a complete high and I'm still on it. I'm not complaining though. Us humans are a complex species to say the least, and it's saddening that we're capable of making each other feel the way I did that day. I'm not excluding myself from that though, as I know I've done my share of harm too, but I suppose everything since then has been an effort to keep that from ever happening. Anyways, this is probably a completely random and worthless post, but I thought I'd share.

Viscosity, or the lack thereof

Livng in Germany, or Europe for that matter, has been an eye-opening and mind-shaping experience thus far. That was an understatement. During the last 10 months I have learned so much about world views other than my own, the way that mine are viewed by those around me, and began looking at the world I live in through a completely new perspective. In past blogs I've written about my explorations with neuro linguistic programming, existentialism, and of course the ever-present, new-found experiences and interactions with people that cross my path. This alleged mind shaping, I assume, is something that would prove to be quite irrelevant if I wasn't, or hadn't been conscious of it since its onset, and today I attribute it as the cause of the many changes that are taking place in the fluidity that is my life. Radical? Maybe. Liberating? Damn skippy! Then again, it depends on who you ask.

Those of you that have had the asbolute and utter pleasure of meeting me, or better yet, getting to know me here in Europe, :-P know that I refer to my occupation as merely something that I do from 9-5 Monday to Friday. Since my first day in the office, I established with my bosses and the people I work with my reasons for being here, and I told them that while I'm at work, they would have me at work 100%. Conversely, I made it clear that while I'm not at work, I'm 100% not at work. This equation seemed to work perfectly these past 10 months for both myself and my employer, the ever-mighty, ever-intrusive United States Army. However, I've always possessed the notion of the self, and notions of 'greater' institutions...but in my life, they're mutually exclusive. My learnings in existentialism and my education at university on demographics, cultures, and peoples have taught me about my perceived definition about the world, but more importantly I've learned the definition about who I am, the things that I believe in, my values, and my idea of the right and not right. Consequently, I came to the conclusion that the United States military and I are like oil and water, and that what this institution aims to achieve, how it goes about its achievements, and what it represents negates my own values and beliefs.

I am an American, born and bred. I believe in what our Pledge of Allegiance states, "liberty and justice for all." I would be a hipocrite to say otherwise considering my contributions to this country as a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen and as a combat veteran as well. I have served my country both at home through writing to my state's representatives, casting my vote on electoral ballots, and facing my country's enemies on the battle fields of war. It's fair to say that I have done my time. About 3 weeks ago I experienced something that I never had in the 26 years I've been alive. On this particular Friday morning I woke up to an epiphany. In this epiphany I came to the realization, perhaps more of a conviction, that what I am doing with my life right now (professionaly speaking) is leading me to nothing and will create absolutely no fruition for my plans I have in the future. If anything, all it's really doing is jeapordizing them. I woke up, showered, and changed into my uniforn like I do every other morning I prepare to go to work. The difference was that as I sat on my couch, listening to my soothing jazz music by Jaimee Paul, and lacing up my boots, instead of standing up to get going with my day I just sat there and began to think. The clock marking 0700 turned to 0800, then 0830, and before I knew it time had progressed to almost 10 o'clock. There I sat, thinking, contemplating, PLANNING, and waiting. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. I realized I would be in trouble with my supervisors and that at any minute my company First Sergeant would come knocking on my door. But at that exact moment it didn't matter, and I was fine with that.

When someone finally came knocking, it turned out to be my good friend Roy who is in reality my first-line supervisor. I expressed to him my newly-defined desires to extract myself from the Army. By the end of the day, I found myself in a heap of trouble and corrective actions pending to be taken against me, as expected. While this is something that completely goes against the Army's values and is highly punishable under military law, for me it became the catalyst of what I now seek to accomplish: a discharge from the United States military. When all is said and done, it is very likely that all of this will end in what is not the prettiest of situations, and I'm okay with that. Not only do I have a plan to make this happen, I also have several plans about what I am going to do after all of this happens. To me this is the most important thing of it all, considering I am not planning on moving back to the United States anytime soon. I've already filled many of you in on these plans, and I've promised you I would elaborate a little further on what I'm thinking about doing once I'm out.

My options, simply stated, are as follows: move to Brasil and begin pursuing my hospitality career, stay in Europe and begin working on my Masters Degree in hospitality and tourism, or wander (hence the name of this blog) around the world and figure things out through, again, working in the hospitality industry. In regards to the last option, I'm contemplating a move to either Honduras, Croatia, Spain, or Australia. Radical? Maybe. Liberating? Damn Skippy!

I've realized that no man has ever accomplished anything worthwhile without conviction and a true sense of what he wants. I know the things I want and what I want to get out of them, and the only thing in my mind stopping me from getting to them would be myself. I am not an obstacle, I am a provider, and through this I am providing myself with the opportunities to seize the things I want. It's comforting to know that I have easily one of the strongest support nets in my family and that if anything goes wrong I always have that to fall back on, but at the end of the day I'm doing this FOR myself, BY myself. If I so choose to begin my Masters, I plan on doing it through Erasmus Mundus. If I choose to move to Brasil, I am then presented with what may be one of the best opportunities in the world to advance myself professionally in my field with the upcoming Football World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016. Because of these two month-long events, this nation will be, and is, flourishing with an unprecedented international influence on the hospitality industry, the nation's economy, as well as its infrastructure which I plan to reap every available benefit from. I would be crazy to stay here and 'fight' for something that I have no belief in, and simply stated...waste my time.

It's obvious that none of this will happen overnight, let's be real, but preparation is key and this is only the beginning. Brasil or no Brasil, I have begun teaching myself Portuguese as it is one of my aspirations to begin learning a 5th language. Monetarily speaking, I have a few resources to cap into as well, but saving my pennies and being meager right now is key. I'll have to make some sacrifices. First thing's first though, and I'm going through the motions.

In any case, I'm looking forward to going back home on November 16th and doing something I haven't done since my time in college. In between every semester I would always set a few goals for myself while simultaneously reflecting on the ones I had declared during the prior academic intermission. Being home for 18 days will give me the opportunity to clear my mind, set some new goals, reflect upon the things I have accomplished, but most importantly, carefully and in a calculated manner, prepare myself for A Commencement Apres The Storm , the sequel. Some of the things I simply can not wait to do are to see my beloved family again: my mother, my sister Jaz and my two amazing nephews, and of course all of you, my friends. I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to do so again for a good period of time, so I promise to make the best of it.

Accomplishing all of the aforementioned tasks will not be easy, and I'm aware that I have chosen the hard way of doing things. Everything that is going on right now is in a way an eruption waiting to happen, but like freshly molten lava, viscosity always leads to a smooth and fertile surface that in due time leads to new life, exponentially more beautiful than it ever was before. Change only ever happens if we make it happen, and I do not shy away from it, I am not afraid of it. If anything, I welcome it. Here I go.

Just an update

Hey all. My apologies for neglecting my blog as of late. So many developments to fill you all in on, but somehow I haven't had the motivation to actually write it all down on here. I'm going through a phase of many uncertanties, obscurities, revelations, but most importantly significant life decisions that will shape the coming months, if not years, of my life. I've accomplished many of the short-term goals I had set for myself for the month of September, but admittedly could use more effort on others. Many new experiences, interactions, and things that I would do differently...but in the end, NO REGRETS. I'm out of town with work for the next three weeks and expect to be back around the 27th of this month. Until then, please message me, FACEBOOK me, and keep sending all the love I constantly receive from you all.

Peace and love,
Jay