The best things about home…

As the wheels of the plane touch down and the reality that we might actually be home washes over us it is only natural to start to think through seeing those we care about most.  Will they be excited?  Will they have gotten used to us not being around?  The first impression of that meeting is not only the subject of numerous classic photos, but is a very meaningful moment for many service members arriving back home… 

The second I opened the door to home I had man’s best friend literally bouncing off the ceiling with excitement to see me… this my friends is what makes coming home worth while. In fact my little buddy was so happy to see me that the door could barely contain him, barely keep us apart.  Such loyalty and dedication was a blessing, this is what we as service members pray for, that when we arrive back home the world hasn’t decided to completely abandoned ship… switched directions and spoke out of both sides of their mouthes.  Sadly for some Vets, this is not the case as they arrive back home to empty bank accounts, broken promises and a feeling of having to start over.  

Only a few days after getting back home I was able to reward my Guido (part Chihuahua/ part Min Pin) by bringing him a friend.  Outside of Petco there were rescue dogs in need of a good home… when you see a dog as cute as this little guy boy is it hard to say no… and there you have it now Scout (he likes to stand up on his hind legs like he is scouting the area) who is Guido’s little brother.  Nothing makes arriving back home better than bumming it up with cheap gym shorts, doing projects around the house and then relaxing with the two cutest little balls of fur.  Thank you to everyone who commented on my posts while I was deployed… I will continue to be writing as complete the last 5-6 months of my military career and appreciate all of your support.

 

 

 

Playing the waiting game

So we have left a combat zone!  sort of I suppose… here we sit at Manas Air Force base in Kyrgzstan counting down the hours/days till our much anticipated flight back toward the modern western world.  As our excitement rose with the C-17 leaving Bastion airfield it has quickly been put on ice as we live through a handful of possibly the longest days of our lives.  Nothing is worse than anticipation, if there were grass here we would be watching it grow, yet all we have is this paint and that wall… might as well watch it dry.

Don’t get me wrong there is much to do here, there are two “movie theatres” and places to play video games and heck the whole base is a Wifi hotspot which I had forgot existed.  The chowhall is open 24/7 and you can pretty much get yourself fat and happy without much trouble.  If you wish to take the other route, the gym is actually pretty nice and if you dont mind running small circles I suppose you could run the fenceline and pray that there isn’t a wild cat sitting up on the Hesco barriers as you run by (has happened I’m being told).  But when all you want to do is finally be home, the hours can be relentless.  

Fortunately for me I am a workaholic and can always find something to pass the time, whether it be writing this now or researching grad schools, travel destinations for my post-deployment trip to Hawaii or just being a fixed object on social media… I keep myself busy.  Yet even for me I feel the urge to sit on my own couch, watch my tv and finally drop my pack… or maybe even unpack, as living out of a bag gets old quick (not sure how those global backpackers do it).  

I suppose I should be fairly official with this in some way, but I am formerly putting myself out to the world for employment/business opportunities as my military ride is now a solid six months from its expiration date.  I am interested in opportunities requiring a dynamic leader capable of bringing together a group of people to solve problems, accomplish milestones and generally raise the level of excellence in an organization.  I am well suited for start-ups and have the energy and drive to work my way to results as I learn to be more efficient.  I am as the blog states quite interested in green technology, most specifically alternative energies and creating more innovative and sustainable systems (whether it be a building, car or industry).  Formally I am educated in pre-medical studies and liked the practicality of kinesiology, yet the health field does not interest me as the business one does.  I have been working in Supply and logistics for the last 6 years and currently act as the “CFO” for my Squadron… managing a 2-3 million dollar a year budget, accounting for more than 80 million dollars in equipment and running an office of more than 15 Marines with everywhere from 1 year to 17 years of experience.    

Simply put I am looking for a challenge, whether it arrive in the form of a W-2 employment opportunity, a franchise or an upstart team of innovators where my work would result in the growth and development of a new opportunity.  I have thoughts of getting an MBA within the next five years but have received plenty of good advice in regard to arriving at an MBA program with plenty of real world business experience if I want to get the most out of it… so this is in short what I am looking to get a crack at, rolling up the sleeves and stepping into a role that matters, that is constantly changing, with a team that is ready to change the world or at least take a solid crack at it…

I suppose this rant is every bit as much for me to shape what I am looking for as it is to advertise to anyone following this blog that I am looking.  My Dad always said, “you miss 100% of the shots you never take” and him and Wayne Gretzky cant be too far off.  So here goes I am not tied to any one area geographically, I love to travel in fact, and I am ready to do something noteworthy!

Pete’s Place watching some cornhole

Cornhole, a military past time

Bringing home a piece of the Stan

As a deployment comes to an end there are all manners of “housekeeping” that present themselves in terms of taking care of your Marines and rewarding those who went above and beyond during the course of the 7 month period.  Evaluations, fitness reports and award submissions are a tedious but very necessary aspect of closing out a deployment and ensuring that invididuals feel that their work was appreciated by the powers to be.  Now it is hard to not want to award each and every Marine with something, especially after a deployment such as ours where we replaced more than 500 Marines with less than 200.  We brought our “A” team this is for sure and so many of these individuals stepped up and completed work that was either well above their rank, outside of their specialities or both.  

The award process is designed to be objective, taking a Marine’s accomplishments and comparing them to what their peers have typically done to receive an award of this level or that.  Needless to say the award process, along with many similiar processes in the military isn’t perfect and many factors manage to make themselves felt as the process unfolds.  Each commander brings with him/her past experiences, a determination of what they believe is most important to the success of the unit and a bias toward how awards should be or shouldn’t be handed out.  All of this in conjunction with the seniority of those individuals submitting the awards and the sway they may hold over the awards board that will ultimately decide whether this award or that award is worthy of being given all play significant roles.  Coming from a logistics support role, I have told my Marines numerous times that what we do is much like playing defense in football… no one notices you until you give up a big score, and if you do your job well it goes largely unnoticed.  This does not bode well for awards where the write up needs to sound about as sexy as it can in order to win the favor of the awards board (typically not comprised of many logistics support savy individuals) in order to be 1. understood 2. once understood it can be appreciated 3. awarded appropriately.  Case in point if I were to tell you how an individual maintained a 99% accuracy on a 50 million dollar equipment account, conducting 34,000 sub-custody transactions in the process, the numbers may sound large but not ever having done that work you have no idea if that is impressive or routine for a Marine in that position.  

In the end I made sure to express to my Marines specifically that their work was of the highest caliber and regardless of what awards got approved for them, they would have my respect and appreciation.  As a token of that appreciation I made sure to give each of them a flag flown over the compound here encased for them to send home for their parents to hang up or keep with them as a sign of the work they had done.  Years from now they may only have the stories and hopefully a few keepsakes from this deployment and I think a flag flown here will be one they will treasure as time passes.

 

From left to right: Cpl Micha Davis, Cpl Eriberto Bravo, Cpl Derek Bauer and LCpl Randy Garcia

From left to right: Cpl Micha Davis, Cpl Eriberto Bravo, me, Cpl Derek Bauer and LCpl Randy Garcia

 

I can see the finish now

There may be nothing worse than hope, ok well maybe there are worse things but man as we make our way through the last month of the deployment it seems the closer to the plane ride home we get the harder and harder it is to keep pushing on. For months we remained level headed, optimistic and even found ways to enjoy the time, but a little bit of hope, whether it be the thought of a cold beer as I sit overlooking the ocean in San Diego or the sight of friends and family, has suddenly made all of us acutely aware of each passing minute as it slowly crawls by. There must be some sort of mathematical equation to explain the ratio of time left deployed to the sanity of the individual, and if I stay sane long enough to make it on the plane home, perhaps I’ll work on it as we fly home.

My saving grace in this whole process is simply a noticeable uptick in the volume of work I have to complete each day. Our replacements are here on deck and in order for me to slap the table at the end of all this and go home there is a laundry list of items I have to complete. Without this burst of work though I don’t know how some Marines are managing. For instance many of our operational commitments diminish during this turnover period as the focus shifts to the internal tasks of getting the next unit set up for success vs. completing missions external to us. Many of the operators and individuals who have been busy the entire deployment with this work are now wandering around waiting for the time to clear customs and get out of dodge, but man the waiting is boring.

It doesn’t help either that most if not all of our personal morale devices (computers/video games/movies) are in the mail and enroute back to the states. I have read at least 10-15 books while deployed here, but when I get done with the today and see that all there is to do is read I honestly can’t get myself to crack a book for the life of me. Something about having options makes everything more enjoyable. I’m almost running out of Sudoku puzzles to solve and I’m scared of what I will do once they are gone…

On a completely unrelated note, for anyone who is deploying and will be turning over with another unit, here is a bit of free advice to make the process as smooth and painless as possible…

1. Everything the previous unit did during their time was not wrong and as the incoming unit it is easy for you to see the discrepancies, but remember you also can’t see the volume of work they were tasked with when they made mistakes or had to choose to do something one way or another. Pointing out all these mistakes to them is not beneficial, note them for yourself and fix or change what you want once you have officially taken over. The more you feel it is your job to point out their shortcomings, the less likely they will be to provide you the best turnover possible, which only hurts you in the long run as they will be back home sipping cool drinks and laughing at you…

2. You are new to theatre and we have been here for 7 months, you can know everything there is to know about your job, publications and manuals for the work etc, but that doesn’t mean it applies exactly here. So many times units arrive with the desire to make an impact, change the way things are done and basically show positive change… all these things are great unless your initiative is incorrectly placed. There are plenty of policies and directives that only apply in country and have been forged from several experiences of new units coming in changing things and then getting hit with the reality of the difference between garrison life and work in a combat zone. Listen to the unit you are replacing, even if they are a bunch of window lickers there is value in knowing which windows you shouldn’t lick…

3. If you are fortunate to be replacing a unit that still has any shred of motivation left in it and you are offerred a dynamic and informative turnover, do not ignore it/be lazy or generally just act like its not a big deal. That unit can just as easily say “ok here is your turnover binder, good luck”. The truly important things you need to learn from the outgoing unit are not the basics you already know, they are the specific nuances of how to accomplish something, the transfer of valuable relationships built over time and the small nuggets of wisdom that will keep you sane long after you are sick of sand…

As we prepare to pop green smoke and get the f’ outta dodge, I hope you have enjoyed sharing this experience with me as I describe, bitch and moan the process of a 7 month deployment. I will be starting much more heavily into the process of transitioning out of the military once home and the next 6 months should be quite interesting as I face some major life changing decisions. If you know a service member who is in a similiar situation, please send them the link to this blog and who knows it might actually help one or two, which is all I can hope for…