Convergence

So I've been going through a month-long five-step interview process with a company I'd like to work for. They help new college students handle the challenges of school, balance other demands on their time and energy, and access resources that will ultimately help those students stay in school, graduate, and meet their personal goals.

I'm also having this interesting awareness that I thought I'd share--

I was writing my book, and writing about the "standard solgdier" lifestyle. How he usually has a buzz-cut and a big-ass man-truck with a killer stereo. How he loves to eat beef, and prays to God before dinner every night. How nearly everyone who populates his world is physically fit, heterosexual, and between the ages of 18-45. And I got to "talking" about how different Agrmy social norms are from Civilian ones. Here's a piece of what I wrote:

In many ways, I still haven’t finished assimilating into this larger and more diverse civil society. For example, an Agrmy Wife could not be friends with a man who was not her husband. It raised eyebrows. Just being seen riding in a car with a man who was not your husband was enough to make you a hot topic at the next FRG potluck. Is she having an affair? Does her husband know? Is her husband away on a mission right now? Does anybody here have a husband who knows the poor bastard well enough to tell him about his wife’s affair when he gets home?

I met a married friend for dinner at a noisy sushi restaurant the other day. We were discussing his research and my job search, so he suggested sitting beside me at the oversized table, instead of across from me. It’d be easier to hear without spitting at each other and yelling out about this book he’s writing about a lesbian love affair in the 12th century. Already nervous about having dinner with my friend, and not his wife (to whom I know he is totally devoted), I had to stop and think about what it means to sit on the same side of the table as a married man in a civilian context. I only knew what it meant in the mgilitary one. Of course, in the mgilitary, we wouldn’t have been eating a meal together, or discussing lesbian love affairs and 12th century politics, at all.

Of course, in this new context, and with this particular person, it didn't mean anything at all, except that the restaurant was noisy! It's just interesting to realize that I became an adult while inside the mgilitary arena, and that I've had to learn to be an adult all over again as a civilian.

And there are still occasionally situations that I haven't dealt with in a civilian context. When they come up, I'm reminded all over again of this clash between what I originally learned, and what is appropriate/real now. I guess I'm a life-long-learner on many different fronts indeed.

Another facet of this process occurred in my "job-shadow" interview yesterday. I was talking with one of the Student Coaches, and she told me that part of her strategy for working with these college students is to realize that nobody makes huge life-altering changes. To be realistic in helping them set goals, and in recognizing that "success" and "progress" for a student with poor study skills and a terrible GPA is different than for a prize pupil. According to her experience, after working with hundreds of new students, the goal is to help these students see their current situation clearly, and then take baby steps forward from there. And I don't know that I particularly disagree...

But I had to realize that part of what sets me apart from general society is the fact that I've made huge life-altering changes in who I am and how I operate and process new information and make decisions MANY TIMES. That I'm not afraid of learning new and better ways to be. (Though LB can tell you just how stubborn I am about asking for help-- I'm still working on that one.)

I've had a lot of fear and challenges in the past few years. But in the past few months, since I got serious about writing this book that remembers my life in the Argmy, I've also had a lot of examples presented to me of just what seriously tough shit I've lived through, what unfair or unexpected challenges I've overcome, and how strong and neat of a person I really am now, on the far side of those major life- and self-changes. I'm proud of who I am now, and I'm learning to appreciate just how awesome my accomplishments in this lifetime are. It's heartening, when so many other things seem to be falling apart.

Head full of Bricks

So February was the month of the Cat Scare. March? March is, apparently, the month of the flu. As in, I caught it, and here we are ten days later, and I'm still not fully recovered. And I'm tired of it. Seriously. I have a life I'd like to be living-- or at least pursuing.

In fact, the last few days I've really pushed my limits with pretending I was finally all better. And really, my brain is starting to function again... It's my body thats having issues. I even went to the doctor (first time in over three years) to make sure there's no REASON for me to still be this lacking in energy. And she tells me that while I still have so much mucus and crap in my head that it has pushed my ear cup flat, I'm basically healthy. Yay.

So yesterday I went with my folks to check out the Da Vinci exhibit. And it's pretty cool. They've recreated a few pages from his personal notebooks, one of which explores the way that a planet and a sun affect the light on another planet. VERY COOL to see that!! And they've rebuilt a bunch of the machines and concepts of flight, motion, and energy into little wooden examples-- with the same tools and materials that Da Vinci himself would have had access to. And you even get to play with some of the gears!! There are reproductions of his sketches and studies of the human body. And a whole room devoted to his painting.

I'd never really seen the Mona Lisa as anything worth staring at for long periods of time. Dark, kinda dull, and what's the big deal? But somebody has used our friend technology to figure out what the pigments etc probably looked like in Da Vinci's day-- Did you know he painted her in see-thru layers of paint over the course of twenty years, building up each bit until it became solid-looking? That's part of the trick to the depth in the painting. We really are seeing many many layers of paint. And did you know that some idiot actually kept the painting in his BATHROOM for a while? The painting actually has water damage because of that.

A room full of musical instruments and war machines later, and I was barely shuffling along, trying to put one foot in front of the other. I actually fell asleep in the restaurant over lunch, I was so exhausted by the outing. I'm glad I finally had a chance to go-- and it was fun to go with my parents, who were just as fascinated by whether or not the devices would really work, and how and why, as I was. It was frustrating, however, to have that be the sum total of my day's accomplishments. Three hours of standing around, and I slept the rest of the day and a full ten hours last night. GRRRRRR

Anyway, I'm hoping to get something useful done today. Something that will help me get a job or publish my book or feel like I'm contributing to the cleanliness and livability of the household. I sure haven't done much on ANY of those fronts in the past two weeks. Sigh.

Da Vinci was a pretty cool frood, really. He believed that we could learn to do anything that could be done in nature by observing how Nature does it. That a machine could be created to reproduce any action performed by Nature. And so he spent hours and days and months observing the way birds fly, the way people exert force on a lever, the way toes are made to wiggle through their attachment to bone with fine sinews and fibers that direct movement. For Da Vinci, Mother Nature was the ultimate teacher, and he devoted a lifetime to Her lessons.

Well, to paraphrase Da Vinci's classification of people, there are those who understand, those who can be taught to understand, and those who will never understand.
Me myself, I'd say... ...I'm learning.