I have now spent about a month in Arizona working at my new job here. I feel I arrived at just the right time to ease myself into the extreme temperatures of summer especially since my job duties are performed primarily outdoors. We are starting to get days approaching 110 degrees! Before I started work, during my first week here, I was lucky enough to have two of my Army classmates come and hang out and help me get settled.
The three of us went to a comedy club and did some bar hopping in Phoenix. We went to Tucson and ate delicious Sonoran hotdogs after hiking some trails in Saguaro National Park. We made it up to Lake Pleasant as well and did some cool hikes with some amazing views as you can see if the photo above. It was really great to have some good friends around to explore and settle into a new place with. This area appears to be a magic spot for fast food as well. Texans swear by their Whattaburger and Californians swear by their In-N-Out and I just so happen to live in a town with both!
Work has been an absolute blast and I am learning every day. I wish I could share a little bit more about it here, but a lot of what we do is sensitive so I won’t mention a lot but the picture below is just one of the many times I have had amazing views and hikes while getting paid!
Getting to this point though was a journey and with many new friends made along the way. There isn’t a whole lot I feel comfortable saying about that here since this is a public platform, but I am so appreciative of my friends and I know every one of us is excited to be out finally doing the job. During training, we had our opportunities to build some morale with some cookouts, hikes, and workouts. The best is yet to come!
I’ll wrap up with some stories from my personal life. For starters, the motorcycle in the picture below was stolen on my first ride out here in Arizona. I went out on some BLM land out in the desert with fun trails and great mountain and desert views and I was having a blast until it decided to break down… I ended up having to push it over a mile out to the road and then I went to get my truck and I came back an hour and a half later and it was gone! I filed a police report and looks like insurance is going to pay out at least something so that is good. It was a pain in the but with all the problems it had running sometimes, but it was my first bike and it was a fun one! I’m just excited now to buy a better one!!
Lastly, I’ll leave you with some personal thoughts. Sometimes I get caught in feelings and the best way for me to reason through them is to open up the notes app on my phone and just write. This is something I wrote lamenting on my time working in the military and in the government. I’m not sure what provoked it, but some days I feel like a square peg trying to get jammed into a round hole.
“Spending so much time in environments of teaching or training to the lowest common denominator has ruined me. Rules and ceremonies meant to keep the lowest denominators in check have stifled my creativity and my intrinsic drive to achieve for myself. Instead, I have learned I can get away without my max effort. I just need to reach a predetermined bar set by someone else with no knowledge of my capabilities. What could I be without the expectations that I would go awry without such rules to keep me in check? Where would I be if I aimed at what I thought I was capable of rather than what others told me I needed to achieve?”
I think specifically the last line, “Where would I be if I aimed at what I thought I was capable of rather than what others told me I needed to achieve?” is very poignant. I don’t think I am guilty of this in all aspects of my life, but sometimes I do get caught in this trap especially at work or in the military. Just having that thought on paper is a good reminder I am not what the standards are, I can be more than that. You have to have something to aim at, and sometimes other people’s targets aren’t based on who you actually are or what you’re capable of. Instead, it’s up to you to aim high.