Everyday is a Winding Road

Another day where I have accomplished everything at work that I needed to 3 hrs before I'm set to go home. Yay for me!

I am still feeling overwhelmed by school and I am still behind but I am hoping to remedy that tonight. I go to school entirely online. I know there are some naysayers out there who say an online education is not worth the paper its written on and that many times what you learn is self taught- you know, read the text do the questions/paper/test. That part is true to some extent but when I was in the Army I did try the traditional classroom environment and ya know what? I absolutely frickin' hated it. The teacher was great, the class was something I was interested in (English) but I ended up pulling a B in a class I could have easily gotten an A in. For some reason I get really fidgety and distracted sitting in a classroom whereas online since I can do it on my own time every day and I feel like I'm still getting the feedback I need from the class and the instructor. Also since I've returned from Iraq I have some serious anxiety issues when dealing with crowds of people. Its just not something I would enjoy having to deal with. I don't think I'm missing anything by not going to a "normal" college. The only thing that concerns me about my choice of college is that even though it is accredited, with certain colleges (like GVSU) many of the credits I earn at Baker will not transfer there.

Another thing that I've come to realize in the past year or so is that I don't know if I really even want to stay in the clerical/human resources field. True, I make decent money but I don't know if its really what I want to do. With my 25th birthday just around the corner you'd think I would have made big decisions like "what I want to be when I grow up" by now but I'm just not sure if I'm heading in the right direction. I'm hoping this will be my year to make significant improvements in many aspects of my life and hopefully I'll be heading into 2008 a little more sure of things.

I have several ideas for what I might like to do but I'm not sure if any of those is right for me either. One of those is to finish out my bachelor's degree and apply for a direct commission into the US Army Reserves as an officer. This is a new thing they've come out with because they are short on officers in the reserves. Going this route I would not have to go to OCS. All that is required is that I have a bachelor's degree and that I attend the Officer Basic Course for whatever branch i go into. It has its pros and cons. The pros are that officers make good money in the military and if I was only a reservist I could quit my full time job and go to working part time somewhere because the money I would be making as an officer would more than make up for what i would lose by not working full time. The drawbacks to this plan would be that I could be moved to a unit that was far away from where I wanted to be and the big one that I fear more than anything is that I would be deployed again. I honestly don't know if I could handle another deployment. The first one did a lot of damage, not physically, but I am just not the same anymore. I think I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or at least some kind of anxiety disorder from the year I spent over there. Things are just not the same for me anymore. Its strange too because its not like I saw anything absolutely horrific over there, no charred bodies, I wasn't attacked by the enemy or anything like that but just the experience as a whole has left me changed. I used to be fine flying and now it scares the crap out of me. I freak out when I ride in a vehicle and other people are driving. I sometimes get the urge to cry for no reason and I get really freaked out dealing with lots of people now. Its almost like I can't be in situations where I don't have complete control. I used to love going shopping at the mall and now I just get extremely irritated and stressed out every time I go. It also feels like I am detached from my life, if that makes any sense. Life is foggy for me and I am not nearly as emotional as I used to be. My dad and my sister say I should go see the VA and get some help but I haven't convinced myself that I need to go that route yet. I keep thinking that maybe if I eliminate the other stressors in my life that it will make the issues that I have left over from the war better.

Anyway, I have also considered continuing on with school for a second bachelor's degree. I was thinking psychology but the field doesn't really open up until you have your masters. At least I would have something to fall back on in case I did decide to not do human resources mgmt. I thought about a master's degree but then I would have to stay in the business field and I don't know if I want to do that either. What I really want to do more than anything is to be able to work part time at Barnes and Noble and spend the rest of my time with Chucky. Not the biggest goal in the world but all I really want is more time with my son. He'll be able to start preschool this coming fall which really means that I'll only have two more years before he's in school full time and I'll have lost the opportunity to spend all day with him. Kids are really great at this age. On a good note, he loves his new daycare. He is genuinely excited to go there which makes me happy. It partially alleviates the guilt of having my kid spend most of his waking hours with someone else.

I asked Chris today if he would be interested in getting a membership to the Y in Grand Haven. He seemed interested until I told him that it would be $83 a month for a family membership. Now this does not seem that much to me because when you break it down weekly thats a little over $20 for all three of us to go there. Thats $990 annually. I thought it would be good for all of us because they have all kinds of programs for little kids that we could involve Chucky in and Chris and I really need to lose about 40 lbs a piece and get back into shape BUT HE SAID NO. To him that was too much money. Then he went blathering on about how we should use the money I want to spend on the Y to fix the electrical in our house instead. It does need to be fixed along with a myriad of other things but I thought it would be nice to sign up for the Y and get us out of the house. Apparently fixing things in our house which could be fixed anytime in the next 50 years since we will be living there until doomsday takes priority. Our house is an older home (it was built in 1964) and when we were getting ready to leave ft. campbell for good I had to come up to MI househunting by myself because Chris' unit would not let him have the time off to come with me. So I ended up looking at 10 houses over the course of 4 days and I picked ours out. Now I was only able to go through the house twice, and it was brief both times, and everything looked fine then. By the time we had it inspected I was back in KY and my dad went through with the inspector. He said a few things might need to be fixed down the line but everything looked good. Well here it is 18 months later and the house needs the electrical redone because the guy that lived there before us rigged everything so its not grounded right, and the house is still running on fuses (we go through tons of lightbulbs because our electrical is messed up). My brother who is an electrical engineer said he had no clue how the house passed the inspection of the electrical because it is seriously FUBARed. Also the house needs a new roof, and new windows(we pay a sky high electric bill because of the drafty windows) and appliance wise we've replaced the washer, dryer, and dishwasher and we're also in need of a new fridge and stove.

In hindsight maybe we should have rented an apartment for the six months when we moved back this way and took our time looking-too late now. Love the house but don't love all the work and MONEY we'll be putting into it. Maybe once Chris makes his next grade at work and he's pulling in more $$$ it won't be so bad.

Life could be much worse. I could still be stuck in Iraq......