Welcome to the suck

Welcome to the suck.

I’ve been boots on ground for less than a day and I am already known around the bay as “that guy”. I’m the one who was suppose to be out of the army a LONG time ago, but somehow got called up. Half of them think I got shafted, while the other half think that that I’m an idiot. Most of the officers, or “alphas”, are infantry captains who are year group 2004 and are bitter to say the least. They are here because they have to be, not because they volunteered to stay on inactive status like me. I don’t blame them for being a little salty, but I expected this. In fact, I’d be a little worried if any of them were actually happy or excited to be here.

My re-initiation into the Army officially started when I ate an MRE for dinner. Yummy. We came in too late for the chow hall so we had to fend for ourselves. Since we aren’t allowed to leave the area and none of us have been issued ID cards to leave and return to the base, the only options were to storm the candy machine by the day room or eat an MRE. I chose the latter. They aren’t that bad, but that is coming from a person who hasn’t had an MRE in a LONG time.

They have a lot of activities planned for us this week, but most of them involve force feeding Powerpoint slides down our throats and signing our lives away on a forest’s worth of paper. Next week is when we’ll know more about what we’ll be doing or where we’ll be going. I’ve heard everything from training folks in country to driving desks at a ANG unit. If there is one lesson that I’ve carried with me from my previous stint in uniform is to be flexible and to roll with the punches. No need to get stressed out about things that I can’t control.