Photos I've Taken

Some photos from D.C. and such...

R.I.P Justin L. Bauer

Crazy Picture

TV art

The Subway

John has a very similar one...

... no words

Base of the Wall

Airborne over Normandy at the WWII Memorial

A view of the ampitheater at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Now, It Don't Really Matter

The more I learn, the less I know. These past few weeks have challenged me to a point that's enjoyable. I realized what I've been missing in my life; challenge. My work is easy, and sometimes all to mundane. Only physically challenging, but not mentally stimulating. Given a job now with more responsibility and the use of critical thinking and or problem solving on a level where the final decision is mine has made me realize that power is empowering, and I see how the weak who gain it become obsessed with it.

My leadership has grown over the past few weeks as well, and I'm a little surprised with how I've been received. Regardless of the positive feedback, I refuse to rest on my laurels. It's the first weekend in a long time that I needed to take a break, not go out and forget about the stupidity of work, but actually just take a mental checkout of everything. Fold laundry, and wax the floors. My brain needed the break, not the booze or bars to check in to.

My biggest concern with investing so much time into my work, and caring to go above and beyond the normal standard, is that I lose touch with my emotions, and connection with others. My personal relationships subsequently falter and sometimes fail. Balancing the two is vital to having a good life, but perhaps by whatever balance act I can think of, I need to work harder at my feelings and relationships, instead of less hard at my job. It's a weird concept, but a possible cop-out to say that I work to hard at work and that is the reason why I fail at the other stuff in my life.

I find myself too often trapped as a member of our society, and have to remind myself that I don't have to follow societies norms. Those are just reasons, limiting factors within our own minds that stops us from being successful. I've become better at not making excuses, but it's been a tough bad habit to break. I'm on a constant quest for self improvement and success. The most challenging aspect of improving oneself is when you get blocked by an obstacle, and instead of realizing that there are other ways around or over it, you simply use it as an excuse to fail. Our minds will fight with us when it comes to working hard or giving up, and usually by our nature we just want to take the easier road. The path of least residence is sometimes the right one, but not when that path leads away from your goals. I've learned, thanks mostly to the Army, that there are sometimes you can't let those obstacles beat you. You have to put your head down and charge through them. This quality in life is mostly learned, and certainly any extremely successful person knows how to do this.


It's just a flesh wound

Arlington

The first few steps were certainly the hardest that I took. Coming out of the visitor center in the early morning, I felt the patriotic sun of the Potomac coercing the sweat to bead out of my skin and roll down my forehead. It was early enough that not a lot of people had come out yet to this vastly hallowed grounds of American Heroes that my feet fell on top of in Arlington Virginia. The National Cemetery was far bigger and expansive than I could have imagined it to be, and the tears looked to weep around the corners of my eyes.

I couldn't understand what it was I was feeling. I expected to be crippled, unable to continue, going down to a knee a weeping. I was glad to have my glasses on, not only so that I wouldn't have to squint in the bright early morning sun, but also to hide from my family the tears welling up in my eye lids. I walked and tried to appreciate the beauty of the cemetery, the perfectly manicured grass and blooming flowers. The tombstones were in near perfect rows as far as I could see, only broken up by the occasional tree or roadway. I walked, not feeling my legs past the pounding of my heart.

I started to understand what it is I exactly felt. I'm sure that since I've served this nation and have the possibility of being buried in such a remarkable dedication to those who were loyal enough to sacrifice everything for this country, and knowing some who are buried here, I took things a little more to heart. Walking and reading the names off of the white granite stones I couldn't but help to feel so extremely honored to be around the spirits of those who were willing to make such a sacrifice. I felt honored to be associated with these men and women who sacrificed their own lives allowing me to appreciate all that I had with my family in our Nations Capital.

I walked around, feeling the tears at the gates of eruption turn from one's of grief to one's of great veneration. At the JFK grave site, I looked over hi speech carved in granite over the graves below on the hill, and into the Captial at sights end, just waking up with the bustle of tourists and church goers on a wonderfully beautiful Easter morning. I couldn't help but feel abhorrent to the fact that so many were expressly enjoying the freedom and liberties that they so unknowingly take at such face value that they couldn't even begin to understand the amount of honor and respect that the men around me deserved. As beautiful a place as they had made to rest the fallen, it could not be enough to give the proper amount of homage to the saviors of freedom and fighters of oppression.

The kids walk past me on the road, playing grab ass and hollering about. It took some personal restraint to keep from making a scene, or worse hitting somebody, but I managed to deliver myself from doing so. I felt honored now, and disgusted in the fact that I had served this nation in combat in the sands of another country in order to help maintain the things we appreciate on a day to day basis protected; and yet I felt that no one of my generation, or close to it understands the price of that daily liberty. I start to feel embarrassed when I watch the news and see the way the youth of our nation are now allowed to act. We've made excuses for everything poor that we do now as a nation. These men resting eternally at my feet, they did not make excuses. They understood, much as I have, the willingness to put it all on the line to live a free life. That idea hasn't been as seriously threatened in long enough for us to really remember. We have forgotten about 9/11 in almost the same way that we've forgotten that we are at war.

I walk through the visitor center, a flew of emotions gripping at my soul, and beating my heart with their hammer throws. I'm glad to have come, unwilling as it had been. It inspires me to try and make a change in our country. I look up at the hill of change that we must make to preserve what for so many years we had valued, and what we fail to value anymore. The tightness in my throat, I can no longer tell where it comes from.


Give me liberty, or give me death.