Wandering Fool

Hola everyone. Today I departed for a military adventure--I deploy to Afghanistan in September and am now in a pipeline training status. Can't get too specific for security reasons, but I did pack my bags and flew away from home. Right now I'm in the Gulf Coast region for some preparation and training. Just got here and a little anxious and ambivalent about process. My plan is to stay flexible and do my best. Patience is a virtue that should serve me well in this process.

Anyway, I hope to use this blog as a way to track my progress through this deployment and see how I manage. I believe it will be useful to look back at a living history of this adventure and see how I work it out as a human. See what's different about me, my family and whoever else this may impact. The world is a mysterious place and the more I struggle through the less I know. Hopefully that means I'm finding peace. We'll see.

Anyway, first things first. I got the local plan and also locked into the nearest AA meetings. I feel pretty good overall. My family is much more anxious than I am and we are fortunate to have daily communications so far. It's pleasant to hear from them and know I can just call whenever I want--and to know they can do the same. I hope to have good communications when I get into the combat zone. There I go getting ahead of myself. OK, enough for today so I'll sign off. Best/jw

Mental Recession? and Facebook!

Hi everyone. So what's new? Well, I'm not depressed--so I've got that going for me. I was quite interested in Phil Graham's comments about our "Mental Recession." I must admit, politics and public policy are a considerable interest and I suspect this is probably the safest place for me to discuss--the water cooler tends to lead to arguments, etc. :) Anyway, I've rendered Sen. Graham's words through my obtuse mind and come to the conclusion that he's probably correct overall--although I give him very low marks for delivery. We "Americans" tend to magnify any bad news or bad trends and downplay the positive. I find it fascinating--maybe it's just human nature. My opinions for what they are worth--personally I'm working on improving my daily journey and making incremental progress.

On a lighter note, I have discovered face book. I asked my son to help me send a message to an old friend via face book and he said I should just get an account because it's the "adult myspace." With his encouragement I invested 10 minutes and immediately had cross reference contacts with about 100 people of lost contact. Ain't technology grand? I'm just proud of myself for overcoming my innate fear of technology and thankful I do listen to my son from time to time. That's it for now. Gotta go play in face book a while and see if it holds other wonders and miracles. Have a wonderful day!!

Greetings from Fallon, Nevada USA - Home of "Top Gun" in the Lahontan Valley. Being new, I guess I should introduce myself....on second thought I will hold off and just start with my objective for this blog; which is a way to appreciate and track my daily journal. More on these thoughts and more as I progress.

I guess I should start at the beginning, which is today 11 Jul 08. A good day so far, however it is morning still and my general goal is to remain grateful and patient. Simple, however maybe not easy--we'll see. Anyway, moving on. If anyone reads this, welcome! If not, it's cheap therapy and I'm eager to see how long this experiment might last.