Better?

Imagine walking into work tomorrow and having your boss call you into their office. Then imagine your boss telling you that he doesn't like the way a particular project is going and would like you to make it better and would like a briefing at the end of the day on how you are going to accomplish this task. No other guidance besides "make it better" and sends you on your merry way. So, you go back to your cubicle or office and try to do just that. You brainstorm it, you ask co-workers for their advice, maybe even do some statistical analysis to develop multiple courses of action. After skipping lunch and drinking too much coffee, you return to your boss and say that this is how you are going to make the project better. Your boss studies your report, critiques it thoroughly, and sends you on your way for another try. Obviously you didn't get it right. So, you pause and ponder what you did wrong. You need to ask your boss for some guidance, which he replies "make it better" and again sends you on your way, but this time you're not so merry. You re-look at your report to scrutinize any possible mistakes. Where was there room for improvement? What did he actually want and how are you going to make it "better"? You scrub your numbers, check your reasoning, and call home to tell the family that you'll be late for dinner. You finish up another report and are confident that you have indeed come up with a plan to make this failing project succeed. Again, your boss looks at stack of color slides, spreadsheets and graphs and listens to your recommendation as you look at the clock speed past the time you would normally go home. After a brief once-over, he hands the pile of paperwork to you and says that it's not what he was looking for.

"Make it better," is his only response. You are baffled now. You are hungry and confused as to what he means.

You ask yourself, "How do I know what the boss wants if he doesn't give me some sort of direction? How late am I going to have to stay until I satisfy his request?" You start to doubt your ability to do your job and wonder how in the hell you are going to make your boss happy. So you go back to the drawing board and do it all again, chasing your ideas in hopes that you will come up with a solution that will make things "better".

Welcome again to the world of a staff officer in Iraq.

Maybe it's not as bad as I try to make it sound. We do have overall guidance of what we are suppose to be doing here, and that is to make the Iraqis stand on their own feet and run their country. You can get political on me and argue whether or not we as the coalition made things better or worse. I'm not going to engage in that argument because I am not here to debate. I'm here to do a job. It's a thankless job done by many people before me who sacrificed to finish a task started by their predecessors. They handed that task off to me, just as I will hand over my task to some unsuspecting individual after me. I'm not building schools to educate the Iraqi youth or constructing hospitals to tend to their sick and injured. I'm not patrolling the streets to keep religious violence from occurring. I'm not even here to promote democracy or freedom. I'm here to do a job with little guidance and a lot of expectations. I'm not alone either. There are countless others like me who slave over computers, compile data, run convoy missions and engage in epic conversations with Iraqis so that the one or two individuals with any sort of real decision making power can do just that; make a decision. The amount of money we spend each day for huge staffs of military and contract workers to crunch numbers and do research just so a general somewhere can decide what color uniform the Iraqis should get is almost criminal. But we do it, day in and day out. It's our job.
People tell us that we'll be part of history. That our actions will shape the future of this country, of the Middle East, and of the world. They tell us that we are making progress. It's difficult to see that. I'm not saying that progress doesn't exist here. If you look hard enough, you can find the small nuggets of success in the mire of failures and you hold onto them to keep your sanity. People before you and around you put a lot of effort into making the small improvements you see today and you don't want to discount their efforts. You don't want to let the work they did fail, so you try to push through the frustration and move forward. You remind yourself that you, while in service of your country, are trying to help the Iraqis defend their own country. As an IRR call back, I try to convince myself that they called me off the bench to do something good and I'm going to do my damnedest to do just that. But today is just one of those days that I just can't see it (I seem to have a lot more of these kind of days lately). My ability to realize the worth in it all is clouded by the BS, the lack of guidance, and dealing with the frustrations of those around me (not to mention my own frustrations). I'm sure I'll go back to my trailer, crawl into bed, and feel much better when I wake up tomorrow after a short night's rest. The two things that are getting me through this right now is the fact that I go on pass soon and that I have some wonderful people back in the states that are sending me love and support on almost a daily basis. If it wasn't for the latter, I think I might just conveniently miss my flight back from my pass destination. Okay, maybe I wouldn't, but it sure is tempting.

So, in a effort to try and cheer myself up, I'm listening to Ben Folds "Army" on my computer at work. We're probably not suppose to be listening to music here, but I'm rebelling.

P.S. Don't send stuff over here if it is packaged in a box like this.