It's Time

It’s only fair that I balance out my previous post about things that I like out here with things that I miss back home. To be really honest, this doesn’t have anything to do with balancing, it has more to do with the fact that I’m ready to come home. But can you blame me really? I can only make so many different types of baked potatoes or go to the gym so many times a day. There comes a time when the grass gets so blindingly green over the fence that you’re willing to risk that electric fence and try to jump over. Too bad I don’t control that, and I’m obligated by some intrinsic set of morals that forces me to stay here until my time is complete.

It’s kind of like a jail sentence without that nasty criminal record and the crime that put you there. I’m sure jail is all candy canes and lollipops in the beginning. You get 3 square meals, cable television, a bed and probably some decent stories. But then you start to realize that you’re stuck, you can’t leave, you can’t do what you want and your cell mate starts looking at you with that sparkle in his eye. That’s when you realize that maybe that crime wasn’t such a good idea. But in my case there isn’t a cell mate, and there wasn’t a crime so it’s just me saying that spending a year chasing after militants is enough.

I’m sure in either situation you start to miss those free days when the wind was flowing through your hair as you cruised down the highway with your windows down on a warm summer day heading in no particular direction at all. That’s why this post was necessary, instead of that yin-yang excuse I was trying to sell earlier. Albeit my sales pitch could probably use some work, but at least I started off with it instead of jumping right into the sparkly eyed cell mate.

But let it be known that the aforementioned freedom is greatly missed, the freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and however I wanted. I miss sleeping in on weekends if I felt like it. Since there are no weekends out here, there isn’t much opportunity to sleep in. Along those same lines, I miss taking that sick day in the middle of the week even though I’m clearly well enough to wake up and make the call into work.

I miss waking up just before the sun rose to go out to Creve Coeur or Forest Park for a 4 to 12 miler. The air smelled clean as I trotted along enjoying the changing scenery with every passing foot. I traded that to spend an hour on the treadmill at the gym. I’m still there before the sunrises but the smell of drying paint is somehow less desirable than the smell of clean air.

I miss seeing friends when I wanted to, or staying in when I didn’t feel like doing anything. To have the option to say, “I think I’m going to stay home today” instead of thinking, “God I’m so tired of seeing these people.” I miss having a variety of people to hang out with, rather than seeing the same five or six individuals every hour of every day without any other options because everyone else on the FOB is hanging out with their same group of folks.

I miss real commercials, yes, REAL commercials. I’m not complaining about having television, since we didn’t have it in Afghanistan, but we have AFN (Armed Forces Network), which has been playing the same commercials since AFN’s creation. They’re not even really commercials. I can’t really describe them but they’re directed toward the military and created by the military. I can say that while I was in Australia I actually looked forward to seeing something being sold on TV. I’d take the Sham-Wow guy or Ronco right now…

I miss real conversation. Everything out here usually has something to do with the government collapsing or who’s to blame for the financial collapse. I like to point out that somehow people survived without either in the past and that I don’t plan on just disappearing if something bad happens, not that anything bad will happen. But that doesn’t seem to affect anyone else’s views, they apparently all have some kind of future machine that tells them the world is ending and since their lives are tied directly to the health of the government or the financial system those will end too. Maybe I’ll be the only one left, who knows…

There’s plenty more that I’m excited to get home to either do, or not have to deal with but those are just the things that stand out right now. So does anyone know anyone who’s hiring on the greener side right now?