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Saturday, March 12, 2005

All right, it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything really noteworthy and even longer still since I’ve posted it online. Now I know how much you all care about me (yeah right, filthy fibbers the lot of you) so I’ll start with the recent and work my way back to… … well let’s just see how far back we can go.

Well then let’s see I’m still in the army in OETI, don’t bother asking me for what it stands for because it’s top-secret military intelligence. Well that is meaning everyone else but me knows what it stands for. For all I know it could stand for Otters Eating Titanium Implements, which if you really think about it is pretty much a scary idea; an entire battalion of otters trained as a top secret assault team targeting enemy air plane carriers, submarines, kitchen appliances.

But I digress. Yes I am in OETI and my course hasn’t started and won’t start until the 21st of March, which is about a week more. The environment here is nice, most officers and sergeants are fairly amiable. Seeing as how my course hasn’t started yet, I’ve been assigned mostly fatigue work. The putting up of posters, assembly of display cabinets, fixing up chairs, shredding, you know all the mentally taxing stuff.

Take the shredding of paper for example. After filling 11 trash bags worth of shredded paper, I’ve come to think of myself as a semi-professional paper shredder. In fact I’ve distilled the essence of paper shredding to several key steps:

Right hand, choose 3 unlucky sheets of paper from pile of papers
Left hand, using over hand feed sheets of paper into shredder
Enjoy grinding sound as paper is shredded mercilessly
If necessary stomp on collection bag till blue in the face with vein throbbing in temple (vein throbbing optional but highly recommended) to compact paper shreds
Repeat
As you can see it’s all very challenging work, but hopefully by the end of this week I hope to fully master my over hand paper feed and maybe be promoted to carparks which I hear is very exciting.

I’ve also been seeing a counselor and psychiatrist for my stress and sleep disorders. The psychiatrist for the most part I feel is (and I say this with all due respect) a git. The counselor a God send (more on this in my later posts). For instance in my last visit to her, she’s pointed out numerous things that I do in fact are flaws and not only that she has advised certain things to correct them.

Learning how to switch off from work.

Apparently I don’t know how to compartmentalize my life, work, family and church. So when one area of my life experiences stress, I tend to bring it over to another area. Example I worry about work and continue to worry about it when I get home. As a result the thing snowballs into an unmanageable heap that ends up giving me a:“not tonight honey I’ve g … …”.

Strange enough upon hindsight the people in church are not helping. Because the lot that I hang out with are also in the army or have been through the army and are just as bad at compartmentalizing their lives as I am or worst. So when I’m out with them surprise! What do they talk about? Then again maybe they find it a release, though for me it’s just like being in camp all over again.

I have to learn how to unwind.

Apparently I haven’t learnt how to take things easy, even sources of leisure are sources of stress sores, either because the activities are too competitive or I make it as such. Also I need to unwind for longer periods of time. Often when I’m out I’m always worrying about what to do next, where, with whom and how to influence them to go. As a result my weekends end up a mental planning marathon, not at all healthy. Also according to her, I maybe growing up a little too fast for my own good (her words not mine). Apparently I need to go through a stage of controlled recklessness, which is similar to males of my age. In other words there should be an element of “ Hey man yeah let’s go party whoo hoo! ” in my life. Though to be perfectly honest I can’t imagine myself trying to “ get down and boogie ” or whatever buzz phrase is in use today.

Though undoubtedly difficult I have take this “loosening up” very seriously. Not only that to mark how much I intend to have it in place I have personally filed this suggestion under 12.125.s.174.12.b or Suggestions→Personal character→Improvements→Outside sources→SAF→Counselor.

I would write more but Frasier awaits.

That is all

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