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its been a while... (Read 3395 times)
AubanBird
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its been a while...
Jan 30th, 2018 at 12:11am
 
hello folks, how have you all been?

the last few years have been pretty hectic for me.  lots of stuff going on.  so...  where to begin...

the last time i was here, i had just purchased a home in a town near fort bragg, north carolina.  two barns, three acres, a large pond, etc.  pretty much everything i would want in a home.  and, my wife and i had just invested thirty thousand dollars in a Snapon franchis(my re-up bonus, after taxes).  lol, it literally got spent the day i got it.

not that i got to spend much time at home...  from december 2014 to march last year, i spent about a total of four months home.  the rest of the time was spent either in training or on deployments.  since then i have deployed to Afghanistan and Africa.  i am currently on another deployment, but would rather not state where.  i did manage to spend about five more months home last year, transitioning to a new unit that had a need for people experienced at what i do.

anyway, as i said, a lot has happened.  for starters, my parents went bankrupt.  my father owned a Matco tools franchise in florida.  long story short, he ran it into the ground.  i didnt really understand how bad they had mismanaged their business and finances until they came up to live with us.  i gave my father a job, with the agreement that if he didnt find his own employment somewhere else after a year, i would have to let him go.  he didnt do very well and i ended up letting him go after a year.  my parents didnt fall apart though, they moved to georgia, my dad got a good job working for harbor freight, and they now own a nice(and old) house outright.  and they got their tax debt paid off.  you know, all the things they could have done much easier had they been working on it while they lived with us, but oh well.  they are doing well now, at least.  and mortgage free!

another thing that happened was that i took on my niece.  my parents were raising her, but my mother and my niece did not get along very well at all.  as it was, if they lived under the same roof much longer, i was pretty sure either my niece or mother would have ended up in jail or worse.  so, i took over guardianship until she turned 18.  i then managed to convince my sister to get to rehab and get herself clean, then move away from florida.  this is the same sister and niece that i found during my deployment to iraq in 2011, right after my saw gunners room mate died.  she got cleaned and, after talking it over with akina (my wife), we decided to bring her up to our house to give her one year to get a job and save up money for college or getting on her own feet. 

let me tell you something...  its hard enough trying to manage things when you are trying to raise a teenager who was raised by a meth addict for most of her life.  its harder still when her mother, for whom she still holds a lot of animosity for, is living with her.  it gets even more stressful when you are trying to respond to the inevitable drama that ensues while you are thousands of miles away engaged in intensive training or deployed to remote locations.  akina is a saint!

well, a year passed and my sister had not saved anything.  i originally wanted her to save up money and finish her medical degree.  i was willing to provide her with a phone, internet, place to live, and a vehicle to drive, etc.  all she had to do was get that degree, which she would have been able to do pretty easily had she wanted it.  oh well.  you can lead a horse to water...

anyway, she is now living on her own, paying all her own bills, and now has her own vehicle.  she and my niece moved out into their own place a few months ago.  my sisters relationship with her daughter is a lot better than it was before, my sister has stayed clean, and my niece has graduated high school.  so, i guess my efforts weren't a failure.  i wanted more for them, but they didn't do too bad.  everyone has to grow up in their own time, and im sure they will figure it out.  so long as my sister stays clean. 

along with all of this, my sisters husband got in trouble with the law, again.  after talking with him, i decided to sponsor him to get him out of florida as well.  he has never lived anywhere but polk county, florida.  until i brought my sister up, neither had she.  since my sister has managed to stay clean for the longest time in the last 15 years, her husband is hopeful that he can too.  i investigated the events that led to his most recent arrest, and i am convinced that he was trying to stay straight, but was around the wrong people at the time.  he doesn't know that i see it this way, but then again, he doesn't know how much i know about the circumstances of his latest arrest.  the justice system in florida is wonky.  he pled guilty to something i know he didn't do, so thats on him i guess.

he is set to be free by Halloween this year, and will be moving up to be with my sister when he gets out.  i will use some of my contacts to get him a starter job up here.  the contacts already know of his background.   in the mean time, i have been sponsoring him so that he can get some good old fashioned vocational school education while he is in prison.  when he gets out, im going to sit him down and work with him to plan a way to pay back his 50 thousand dollars worth of child support. 

while i believe that everyone is responsible for their own actions, i kinda feel for the guy.  his mother died in a car accident when he was 14, and his father drank himself to death when he was 16.  i have seen school records of his indicating that he was extremely good at baseball.  he was set for a free ride through college if he could just stay out of trouble and keep his grades up.  when his father died, he kinda just fell apart.  he had no other family.  i look forward to seeing what he does with his life when he gets away from everything he has ever known.

on top of this, we had a friend from new york come down and live with us last year.  same kinda deal, we gave her a place to start fresh.  she arrived march 1st, had all kinds of psychological issues.  she was pretty much crippled with anxiety.  well, she is doing a lot better now, and is most likely going back up to new york on march 1st of this year.  she still has a long way to go before she feels the way she wants to feel about herself, but the difference is that now she believes she actually can.  she has gotten pretty good at selling stuff online, has lost a fair amount of weight, and had a pretty nasty case of psorisis go into complete remission, which has never happened for her before.  and all done completely without medications!  that alone has done wonders for her self esteem. 

early last year, after running all of this for two years, akina had pretty much had it with the snapon franchise.  so, she sold it back to snapon.  im glad she did.  it was too much work for not enough gain.  i was originally hoping to have that as a backup so that i could get out, but...  i had no idea how much the skills i would come to acquire would be worth as a civilian.  if i got out of the army tomorrow, i would be making about six times what i make right now.  there are not a lot of people who have my qualifications in the world, and demand is only going up.  so im not very concerned about that anymore. 

that said, akina is getting ready to use her GI bill to go to college for electronics engineering.  basically, she wants to help me build things related to my job, which i think is awesome.  in my field, the best way for me to improve is to to learn to make my own equipment.  technology is always changing at such a rapid pace...

on a personal note, last year was kinda tough for me.  i got back from Africa early last year, and i have to admit, that deployment messed with my head a bit.  Afghanistan and Iraq were nasty, but i wasn't quite prepared for Africa.  im glad i had that pond...  i spent most of my post deployment leave with my hands in the mud there, digging up worms, isolating algae to use in aquariums, and looking for new critters to make live fish food cultures.  thank god for hobbies!

the lead up to this deployment was kinda rough too.  back in October, i buried a few buddies of mine who got ambushed in Africa. 

As it is, i am in a pretty good position to advance my career if i want to.  not sure if i want to do that quite yet.  taking a promotion would likely mean that i cannot do field work anymore.  despite the nasty moments, i do love my job. 

oh, and before i forget, i have been pretty much avoiding GMO foods like the black plague for a year now.  i noticed something in Africa...  since i was living off the local economy, eating mostly local poultry and veggies, i started to feel much healthier.  i started getting curious about it and noticed something...  nothing i ate came in contact with roundup.  to test the idea out, i tried eating a few different pastas from the US.  without fail, unless it was labeled organic, it destroyed my stomach and left me feeling like absolute crap.  it even made me anxious for the next few days and made it hard to sleep.  im thinking that it is all the glyphosate that gets sprayed on crops in the US in the form of Roundup.  even wheat that is non GMO gets sprayed with  roundup right before harvest, as a drying agent.  after talking with some Africans and some Europeans, it seems that a lot of people who suffer from autoimmune issues have their symptoms clear up when they leave the US.

who knows, maybe its the food?
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Mike NZ
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #1 - Jan 30th, 2018 at 9:16pm
 
Auban, what a post and a huge welcome back.

You're a shining example of just what people can do even if they have CH. You are defining yourself and not letting CH do it.

We often talk about living life between the CH hits and between CH cycles, but you're going above and beyond what so many of us do, not just in your "day" job but also in doing stuff to help those in your family who have been through some pretty tough times and trying to help them help themselves get into a better place in life. Plus letting people have a chance to stand on their own feet, being responsible for their own outcomes.

You're also lucky to have truly found something that despite all the danger, being away from home and more, you really do love what you do. Thank you for you and your colleagues doing what you can to help make the world a safer and better place for us all.

Give yourself a pat on the back for the great work you've been doing. Be safe(ish), have fun and keep your CH family updated as much as you can.
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AubanBird
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #2 - Jan 31st, 2018 at 3:19pm
 
thank you for the kind words. 

honestly, i wanted to reply earlier but couldn't find the words.  you have caused me to look back at the last few years with new perspective. 

to be honest, i struggle with guilt a lot.  i have done a lot of things that tear me apart when i think about it.  pretty much all of it related to what i do for a living.  there are maybe a hundred people in the world who have my job.  i cant go into specifics, obviously, but we have two basic functions:  hunt bad guys and protect our team.   

i don't know how it is for the rest of the SOT-As in other groups, but the job does cause me a lot of guilt.  well, when i think about it too much, anyway.  snipers count their kills in single or double digits.  we count our kills in three or more.  no matter how you try to keep things clean, you cant. 

im pretty sure its why i try so hard to leave others better for having known me.  so far as cluster headaches go, im just one of the lucky ones for whom busting works.  and, im lucky that my team knows about it and doesn't care. 

honestly, i have wanted to do FAR more for those i have taken in than i was able to do.  but, i cannot do it for them...  they didn't take advantage of the opportunity.  still, they turned out ok...  so i guess its not for naught. 

i really do love my job, but its hard to describe...  i know from experience that we can get surrounded and i can provide my team with on the go intel that will allow them to fight our way through it and survive.  thats not the part that i love though... 

the part i love about it is that it doesn't matter how my team feels about me, when shit hits the fan, they circle the wagons.  they will take a bullet for me, even if they cant stand my guts.  they will literally die for me without a second thought. 

where else do you find that kind of love?

if i were to say anything that i would want people to remember, it would be this:  accept yourself as being ok.  dont hide, but don't wallow either.  and reach out to other people.  you never know.  your next blessing is just around the corner,  but you have to walk around the corner.
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« Last Edit: Jan 31st, 2018 at 4:38pm by AubanBird »  
 
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LasVegas
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #3 - Feb 1st, 2018 at 4:52pm
 
Great to read from a valuable old timer on this site. Welcome back Wink

-Gregg
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Wishing everybody at CH.com less pain w/ more productivity in their lives in 2019
 
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AubanBird
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #4 - Feb 1st, 2018 at 10:46pm
 
i really do need to visit more often, don't i? 

i cant remember where i read it, but i remember reading someone here saying that they have a tendency not to visit when they are out of cycle.  kind of one of those things where you don't want to think about it when you dont HAVE to think about it. 

im not sure if that is why i have been away for a while, or if it is just because if have been super busy, or both.  i guess the reason doesnt matter so much...
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« Last Edit: Feb 1st, 2018 at 10:46pm by AubanBird »  
 
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Racer1_NC
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #5 - Feb 2nd, 2018 at 4:20pm
 
Glad to see you are back!
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #6 - Feb 5th, 2018 at 3:35am
 
Thank you for a great post. AND, a very big thank you for what you do. What you do, very few others could do, and this old man can sleep comfortably in bed at night because of you and others like you. I'm the proud dad of two Marines (one active) and I value each of you who wear our uniform. I'm to old and fat to serve in that capacity. (I can only fix half of that, and I really don't care anymore). The guilt you feel is intrinsic to the kind of man you are. it's unfortunate that we need your kind of man for your kind of job when it is someone like you who pays the dearest price for it. I hope our gratitude suffices to bring you at least a measure of peace.

As to those you have tried to help: You can take another person upward only as far as they want to go. Being the kind of many you are, you feel like a failure if they don't succeed, but you are not. To quote "The Rose,"
It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
Who cannot seem to give,
And the soul afraid of dyin'
That never learns to live.

You, my friend, live. You also feel the pain when other choose to merely exist, for you know what living really means.

My very best to you and to Akina. You have enriched this old man's life.

jlc
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AubanBird
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #7 - Feb 6th, 2018 at 3:11am
 
thank you for the kind words. 

i really do like what i do, but i think i am only going to have a few deployments left in me.  my daughter is 8 years old, and as much as people like to tell me that the younger years are the most important, i think she is going to need me around more as a teenager.

she is SO much like me its not even funny...  even down to the ADHD.  i have taught her a lot of the methods i have used to be able to focus and stay on task, and they work better for her than medication does.  when she remembers to use them, that is...  lol, its not easy building a habit.  especially for a 9 year old hyperactive girl who is brilliantly intelligent.  i dont think my daughter is going to be as restless as i am when it comes to challenging herself, but she has learned some of the lessons i have learned.  such as, if you just get used to challenging yourself, then most things seem  pretty easy.  that and if something is hard to learn, just keep thinking about it and keep studying it, and eventually it will make sense.  she used to freak out if she didnt know the answer to a question.  so i sat her down and told her about my struggles learning arabic.  i failed every single test for the first six months.  but i figured it out eventually, and now i know arabic.  nowadays, its obvious it still frustrates her when she doesn't understand something, but she doesn't give up.  im very proud of her.

now that we have most of the people out of the house, akina and i are thinking about adopting out of the foster system.  i have heard of plenty of horror stories from people trying to discourage the idea, but so far they have not put me off the idea.  nobody has raised a single concern that i have not already planned for and/or navigated in real life.  mostly, i get warnings of how kids from the foster system are nightmares to deal with.  i get these warnings from people who just dont seem to have it in them to apply proper boundaries and consequences though, so i take it with a grain of salt.  i dont see how it would be all that different than taking on a 15-16 year old girl who was raised by a meth addict and her abusive boyfriends. 

there is a lot i want to do outside of my military career.  before i joined the army, i made about 100 grand a year between my job and a business i owned.  im pretty sure i can be successful just about anywhere, so long as i dont get bored.  for me, idle hands is the devils playground.
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Mike NZ
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #8 - Feb 6th, 2018 at 11:23pm
 
Auban - I get the idea that you'll take anything you come across in your life and master it based on the obvious hard work you put in and the clear intelligence you have.

With your background, attitude and experience, plus your wife being there too, any foster kid(s) would be very lucky to be in your care, getting a start that will get them set to do well in life.

It also sounds like you've a wonderful daughter. No wonder you're proud of her and her achievements.
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AubanBird
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #9 - Jun 12th, 2018 at 12:04pm
 
i have been pretty busy lately.  we had a fairly large operation going on... 

things were going good until suddenly they weren't.  a close friend of mine, alex conrad, was killed last week.  he was killed by a mortar of all things.  when i was in iraq, i used to watch them fall while standing around drinking boom booms and wild tigers.  it was like lightning.  no telling where it was going to hit.  either it was your time or it wasn't. 

i still owe him a subdued flag... 

my troop offered to let me go home early so that i could attend his funeral.  i declined.  ill find him when i get back.  i have a 130 year old morgan silver dollar i still need to get to him.  ill get it to him soon enough. 

sunday, we saluted his casket in Ramstein and sent him home. 


im close to deciding that i am done with military service.  dont know if i should re-up.  i dont have many friends die anymore, nowadays.  when i first joined as infantry, it was all the time.  i have only known six who have died in the last year.  i have known OF others, but those six, i knew personally.  told jokes with them, swapped MRE items with them, shared water, etc. 

my first real squad leader in the 82nd was a SGT "Joe".  he fought in the battle of wanat.  he lost most of his friends in a single battle.  i remember him telling me to never challenge what i feel...  always accept it.  only challenge what i think.  he kept us busy.  we did so many reflexive fire drills that we all ended up being able to hit a bottle cap from 3 meters without looking down the sights.  we all ended up with calluses on our hands. 

back then, we were losing guys left and right.  but when i became a fire team leader, my team didn't lose anyone.  we all made it back.  despite an iranian group that was doing their best to capture one of us for ransom.  i dont know where "Joe" is now.  at first, i dreaded working with him.  but, before long, i learned to love him.  he cared about us more than i knew. 


in what feels like a strange paradox, i feel like i am in his shoes.  but, i feel like i am not experienced enough, which is odd.  since then, i have fought in three wars and a couple international conflicts.  its strange to think of myself as old blood.  the last decade seems to have flown by in a blink. 

i dont know where "Joe" is now, but i remember what he taught me.  go into that "dead space" when you are moving.  THINK about it later, when you have the chance.  while you are moving though, the only thing that exists is you, your weapon, and your environment.  pay more attention to your environment than you do your weapon, and more attention to your weapon than yourself.  think nothing of what happened before.  instead, go into that dead space, where you think nothing. 

i can do that, i know the dead space.  cant seem to do it when i am not out moving though. 

i miss "comrade conrad".
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Mike NZ
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #10 - Jun 12th, 2018 at 10:43pm
 
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Quote:
i feel like i am not experienced enough, which is odd


My experience is that the more experienced people are in an area, the more they really understand how incomplete their skills and knowledge are. I bet you're recognized by others in your peer group has having a great depth of knowledge, skills and more.

But the decision on what happens next is always complicated, especially given what you're doing. Hoping you make the right choice for you and those close to you.
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Racer1_NC
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Re: its been a while...
Reply #11 - Jun 13th, 2018 at 6:40pm
 
Mike NZ wrote on Jun 12th, 2018 at 10:43pm:
Quote:
i feel like i am not experienced enough, which is odd


My experience is that the more experienced people are in an area, the more they really understand how incomplete their skills and knowledge are. I bet you're recognized by others in your peer group has having a great depth of knowledge, skills and more.

But the decision on what happens next is always complicated, especially given what you're doing. Hoping you make the right choice for you and those close to you.

This.....
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