Everything Is About To Change

Well, hopefully.

No wait, I take that back. Everything I know is about to change. The people I look up to at work, my professional heroes if you will, are all leaving to go to other bases to do other jobs. The people that are left that I know I feel an odd kinship with because I've known them for so dang long. You know how you feel at high school your first year when you don't know anyone but as time goes on and you become a senior, hey, all of a sudden it hits you that you know EVERYONE?

That's what it's like.

But without the people that I'm learning how to grow and mature from as an NCO, I don't want to be here for too much longer. I want to move on and do a different job at a different place myself. Maybe find some more heroes (you can never have enough).

Anyway, so there's a possibility that I might get a different job going someplace else and if that's the case I'm more than ready for it. I hear people say Georgia's not a bad first duty station and I'm inclined to disagree. There is a lot to do but it's at least a 30 minute drive and with little to do in the immediate area, that just leads to trouble.

For other people, I mean. I'm fine.

But yeah, folks tell me to stop complaining because it could be worse. Look buddy, I've been living on bases my whole life. This is not a "first" anything for me. This is merely one more base that I spent way too long at and now it's time to move on.

This makes me scared of retirement, this constant need to move every few years.

And I want to see the world - well, most of the world, anyway. More importantly I want to show my family the world, especially my kids. Being exposed to different cultures is what made me how I am for the most part, I believe. Those and the movies that raised me. I plan to have a different parental strategy, but different cultures is a must because I don't want my kids to become ethnocentric or xenophobic.

So while things WILL change for me at work with the loss of my mentors, I'm hoping they'll change a lot more than that!

As a side note, one of my mentors wore his Blues yesterday with his ribbons and no kidding, the guy has a million of them and he's in my career field. Now, I have something like 14 ribbons right now after less than five years and that's pretty good. I'm nervous about getting them if I get a ground job since their ribbon racks are usually so much smaller. I know it's a shallow thing, but I'm a sucker for getting ribbons and medals so this guy had me thinking twice about cross training into a ground job, but I just keep saying "the locations are better the locations are better the locations are better..."