Amanda…

Tonight I wanted to try something a little bit different. It’s been quite a while since I’ve written in my personal journal so I decided I would share what I wrote tonight along with a typed entry… In my own unedited handwriting. Enjoy…

When I bought my Harley it was for me and no one else. I spent one too many days deployed in a war for the most ridiculous reasons anyone could really come up with. It was a treat to myself for everything I did trying to get to the next level in my life. When I came home to open a restaurant it was my dream. My goal. Thing is, I was doing it for others. The major motivating factor in why I decided to sell my bike as well as my restaurant is that no one really cares. I mean, I got a lot of pats on the back and atta boys for doing what I did but I never once felt like what I was doing was being appreciated by anyone else except my pipe dreams of what it would have accomplished if I would have stuck with it. I would go home at night with an occasional piece of ass that was really only giving it up because of the apparent money that I was making. I didn’t really mind it much. Just as the stereotypical ‘old man’ doesn’t care if his twenty year old girlfriend is only after his money, at least he was getting something that men half his age could only dream about.

The extreme depression I was faced with while having my restaurant was nipping at my heels. I had no one to back me up and no one to wake up to saying ‘let’s do this!’ My worth to anyone else was about as good as nothing when I couldn’t give anyone what I would barely want to give myself. Holding on to the Harley was a bit of a subconscious idea that someday soon things would turn around for me. Maybe someone would come into my life and actually want to be a part of something with me and not just a cookie cutter relationship. If someone did, maybe I could consider settling down somewhere and starting a life that ‘we’ could be proud of. I’d be up for that whole compromising bit and even give up some of my freedoms for someone who wanted to prove they were not only worth it, but that actually cared about a relationship with me.

Today marked a change that I have to make for myself. Getting rid of ‘stuff’ and getting rid of the past. I’ve done it and it’s time to dance. I hate the notion of having to make the next move in my life alone but I guess it won’t be all that bad. Will it?

Ticking…

I have four weeks (three-ish actually) to finish some pretty monumental tasks. It’s come down to this… As stressed as I am about things, I feel like I’m in the calm before the storm. I’m hoping to finalize a deal for my bike tomorrow and that will be my personal mark that things have better change in my life. I bought my Harley while I was deployed and it symbolizes something extraordinarily important to me. I decided to give my life for something bigger and better and I treated myself to something I otherwise could only have dreamt of. It’s taken me a long time to realize that it’s time to reset my priorities and I don’t have to live my life the way I have been for well… my whole life.

I told an extremely close friend of mine recently that if we don’t step up our game together, then we might as well part ways for good. As much as I’m guilty for this, I hate half-assing my way through life. Simply feeling tired at the end of the day is no acceptable way to determine the impact I’ve made with my time here on earth. Just as a materialistic item such as a motorcycle shouldn’t define my supposed accomplishments, my level of exhaustion is no excuse for not accomplishing more in my life.

To purge myself of dead weight and the past is difficult. I grew up loving ‘things’ and not life.

To the gym…

So last September I made a pretty decent life change. I decided to go to the gym, eat better, hadn’t been drinking etc etc… I went nearly every single day for about three months straight. Unlike many of the idiots that go to the gym to use the equipment as conversation pieces, I actually made good use of my time and worked my ass off. In fact, I got my bench press up over two hundred again and was able to do about thirty pull-ups between sets.

Then fatigue set in. I wasn’t getting sleep to save my life and was way more tired and irritable than I should ever have allowed myself to become. I went to play in a racquetball tournament at the gym and quickly rolled my ankle two games in. It literally sounded like I was stepping on a pile of peanut shells. Soo, I was down for the count. The very next day at work I went on a delivery (with a massively swollen foot) and sliced my knuckle wide open and had to get eight stitches. Blah blah blah… even I’m getting tired of writing this…

Anyways, I haven’t been to the gym in months and it shows… I feel like crap and stomach fat is entirely way too easy to gain and not so easy to get rid of once its there. It’s pretty much a sorry excuse that I don’t start going back to the gym now, but I can’t wait to start settling somewhere and I can have a routine that includes ‘gym-time’ and I can feel a heck of a lot better about myself.

Maybe someday soon I can find some motivation to write some more meaningful things as well… until then…

The Square…

Is it bad that the most excitement I got was figuring out a new way to complete the square to solve a quadratic equation? My life has come to this. I once stood in the face of enemy fire and jumped out of airplanes yet now I stress about solving elementary math equations and I’m still too nervous to approach a girl and ask her out…

I guess it comes with the territory though. All the ‘has been’ that I’ve been in my life is exactly that. Now I’m a struggling student and though all my past experience gives me the character I need to trudge through this craziness, it does nothing for giving me an advantage over simply working hard to achieve something.

All I know is life better get damn good real soon… I gotta start dancing again…

Instrumental…

So today was the second most important day in this whole flight program. I passed my instrument rating check ride. For anyone outside the aviation world, it’s basically a rating that allows me to fly in the clouds… sort of. Anyways, passing this stage signals the light at the end of the tunnel. All I have left is the commercial stage which should only take a handful of weeks. Passing that will be the release of a shitload of stress for me. No more timelines with the VA or required classes and I can start looking at living a life that I want to live for myself instead of for what I think others want from me.

So, I could probably write a whole lot about this entire experience in flight school but tonight is a mini-celebration for me. I can go to sleep knowing that tomorrow I won’t have to wonder what curve-ball ATC will give me or what time I’ll arrive at the missed approach point when I forget to start the timer…

Now that the stress of this particular stage is done, some issues I’ve shrugged off lately has come into my view again. People. As I’m writing this, I decided I’m not going to write anymore tonight because the matters at hand require me to be extremely crude and judgmental. I’ll spare us from that…

Time for some tea and some logbook time verifications.

Sunday

Another cop out today… I got nothin. Absolutely nothin. Hopefully after tomorrow morning ill have rid myself if a ton if stress and will be in a much better state if mind… Stay tuned…

True funk…

I’m in it… my head is about to explode from the seemingly unnecessary stress in my life. It’s not real stress though. Maybe I’m just whining…