In 9 days I will be leaving my current life to begin a new one as a United States Navy sailor. The beginning of this new life is one that I have tried to prepare for by reading and researching online, but one that I can never be fully prepared for as it will be completely foreign to me. I write this letter today for the version of me who has completed this first step of the new chapter in my life as a sailor. This first step will be one that every sailor must complete, which is Navy RTC, or more commonly known as boot camp. While I have had some time to prepare a physically by running, doing push-ups, and planks, I am not sure how ready, but I know I will be able to overcome the challenges that will be presented to me during my 9 weeks in boot camp.

The Present Me

I am coming back to this post after 3 days of packing and visiting with different friends and family. Two days ago I travelled ~200 miles to visit my long time good friend. He is letting me keep two of my bikes at his house and will be taking stewardship over my Crumar Mojo 61 and Yamaha Reface organs. It was nice spending time with him and his new family. We did some jamming on guitar which sounded really good, but unfortunately we did not record the session. He graduated Navy boot camp nearly 20 years ago, and told me some of his experiences that he could remember. He said boot camp is mostly boring and I will be doing a lot of waiting around. After we hung out I slept for about 4 hours and left his place around 05:00 in order to attempt to beat the bulk of traffic, but it still took me about 3.5 hours to get back home. Once back home I took a nap for 3 hours before meeting with my brother and being introduced to his new girlfriend. It was a pleasure meeting her and nice to get to see my brother another time before leaving. My brother and I have spent a good amount of time with each other in the last month, taking a 3 day trip together to Joshua Tree, and will hang out one more time before I go. He told me he is starting to get emotional knowing I am leaving soon. He said he is going to join the armed forces as well soon, but we will have to see about that. Hopefully my journey can inspire him to follow through with those plans. All in all I am getting pretty antsy to leave for boot camp, but there are a few more things I need to wrap up before I leave.

I will be leaving behind my many things once I am picked up from my house by my recruiter in a few days. I will be leaving behind my old career and lifestyle as a bicycle mechanic. This means I will now have steady work that will be more challenging and rewarding than bike repairs. The only enjoyment I got out of my career as a bike mechanic at this point was getting customers stoked on getting their bikes fixed, and convincing them to get their bike everything it needs plus a little bit more just to make it that much more awesome. This kind of goal is easy to do during the winter because only the enthusiast come out during that season. Now that the spring is here the people who have never taken care of their bike and do not want to spend money come out and wear the mechanics down with their desires to have a brand new bike for as little as possible. Many of these customers do not know that the cost of repairing their bikes out value the cost of their beat down bike anyways, and this needs to be explained to them which is very tiring. It will be nice to get away from this kind of environment, and be placed in one where I am not only not an expert, but I am less than an amateur. I am not even sure which job I will be getting, I do know it will be either a FC (Fire Controlman) or ET (Electronics Technician), both of which have many different paths available to them. Leaving behind my old career for a new one as a United States sailor who will be in charge of maintaining complex and expensive equipment is something that I am greatly looking forward to.

I am also excited to be leaving behind the habit of going to bed later than I should and having a spotty wake up routine. Previously when I had a strong morning routine I felt as I got much more accomplished through out the day. Living a life as sailor will require me to get back to having a regimented morning routine which I know will help me to excel in my future career. I will also have a regimented eating schedule which is something that I enjoyed when I implemented in my past. Finally I am ready to start having a bunch of information that I need to study, as I enjoy being a student. Even more exciting is I know that excelling as a student will pay off as my job will be directly related to the topics that will be covered in my training.

  • What I have over come to get to this point (Career stunted, tech looks dead, goals to become a leader and part of a team I can grow with.)

Speaking to the future sailor

The future me will be someone who has become more disciplined and has picked up the skills to become an effective sailor. I will have learned all of the necessary skills that all effective sailors who have come before learned before setting off to A school. I will have learned to be a better team member and hopefully how to become a better leader. I think due to my years of experience in the work force and age I will be more mature than many of the other members in my division and I hope to be able to use that maturity to help lead my division to be more effective at drilling and having a fantastic graduation. The future sailor will be someone better than I am today and the member of a successful and recognized graduating division. It would be cool to become recognized for my actions and abilities while in boot camp and gain some kind of award, but I will not be pushing myself for recognition, I will be pushing myself in order to recognize that I am in full control and able to go further than I ever imagined.

I hope not to forget many of the things that I have learned since the beginning of this year that have changed my life for the better. Some of those things being

  • Rely on Jesus instead of myself.
  • Being more like Jesus and following his teaching is the best way to live my life.
  • Only the things that are in my control matter.
  • My opinions are not as useful as my mind makes them out to be. They are just projections on what I think reality should be, but reality does not care what I think it should be.
  • When I begin to have negative thoughts, use the Jesus prayer to get out of that thought pattern.

Why You Started this Journey

I started this journey because my future options felt limited in civilian life. The tech industry is in an uncertain place. People with more experience than me struggle to land new positions in under 6 months. I studied hard to get a position as a Software Engineer and that work did was not enough, instead I was told networking was what was important. I saw people with no skills get positions due to nepotism. It became obvious to me that the tech industry is not for me as I just want to learn and work, not back stab and kiss ass.

Another option that I had was to move to a different area and continue working as a bike mechanic, as the area I currently live in is too expensive to be fully independent and a bike mechanic or manager in that industry.

I had one last option which was to return to take out loans and go back to school for an engineering degree. I have most of the courses done in order to transfer to a 4 year college to wrap up a degree, but there is one large issue. The few classes I do not have complete will take me about a year to complete, meaning that I would need to do classes for a year and then transfer and go to school for another 2 years if I went full time. I would also need to take out loans which I would need to pay back. Enlisting in the Navy will give me an opportunity to get experience with electronics, which would lead nicely into getting a degree as an electrical engineer. While enlisted I can do concurrent enrolment if authorized, which means I can redo any courses that have expired like my math and physics courses. If I decide that I want to leave the Navy after my 6 year enlistment, I can use my GI Bill in order to focus fully on going to school and wrapping up getting my degree. Once I have finished I can get better pay in whatever field I am working in, and I will be qualified for more interesting positions.

Serving in the Navy will also set me up to be more secure financially. I will be offered help with getting a home, having a fixed maximum interest rate of 6%, and having many of my expenses taken care of. These three things alone will help me to save a lot of money, also being on deployment will prevent me from needlessly spending money. I will have a large amount of savings and investments ready for me to use to begin setting up a nice life when I become a civilian.

By the time I am reading this in the future, I will be that much closer to fully realizing that I am that much further in my journey. Keep the plan in mind, and continue to refine it in future blog posts.

Some Words of Encouragement

“You came into this not from high school, but from hard-earned clarity. You made this decision with your eyes open, and your heart willing.”

“I hope you still carry the humility you had on day one. I hope you treat leadership not as a rank, but as a responsibility. I hope you’ve earned your uniform with grace.”