swo

So i got my SWO (surface warfare officer) pin, as you can see in this photo.. basically it's the culmination of all my qualifications on the ship over the last year and a half. A big pain in the ass but a relief now that i have it, and i thought i'd give you all a visual of what exactly it is. It's the weird gold thing above "US Navy" seen here...

free willy

I tried the blogging thing and it didnt do much for me then, but with limited connections to the outside world, I think i'll just resort back to it for this deployment. or at least today. Anyway, this photo is the cover page of a liberal hawaiian weekly paper that came out over the couple days I was in Hawaii w/ the ship on our way to do a USW (undersea warfare) exercise. The timing is not a coincidence; there has been a ton of lawsuits all over the country (world?) about the use of sonar and its effects on marine life over the last year or so, and they literally had just come out with the latest litigation for the hawaiian opareas in time for our exercise. Without getting into too much detail, basically they just put out a bunch of ridiculous requirements for us to power down or secure sonar if we see any marine mammals (particularly whales... especially since it's mating season for humpbacks). Now I'm a tree-hugging hippie (or at least compared to my navy counterparts, so they tell me) and you'd think i wouldnt want to kill the whales, and, well, i dont. But I am also the ASWO, anti-submarine warfare officer, and for this particular exercise I was pretty much in charge for my ship, which meant I had to be in charge of all our MMM- marine mammal mitigation- measures. And man is it a pain in the ass to keep logs of every time you see a whale, how far away it is, its bearing, what it's doing, etc etc, and update every 5 minutes... all while stopping the exercise completely if it's too close. I mean, can we say poor planning? There are plenty of places out there, in the Pacific even, where there aren't a bajillion whales, so why did we pick such a heavily whale-populated area to do a sub-hunting exercise where we're using sonar the whole time? Not to mention I ended up spending more of this week dealing with whales, training lookouts, reporting sightings, drafting messages, etc, than i did looking for subs. Oh, and then when we did secure our sonar because we were in the middle of a big pod of minke whales, everyone up to the three-star admiral in charge of the eastern pacific fleet wanted to know why. It's this big catch-22, they want you to protect the whales, but then when you follow the rules and do it, everyone and their mother wants to know why. Sort of like how they tell you to shoot the guy in self-defense if you have to, but then if you do it, you get detained and questioned for a million years after. Or at least that's what i imagine it would be like. So anyway, I just wanted to share this funny newspaper cover and give everyone a sense of the crap i do that keeps me awake 20 hours a day. Now i'll just wonder if anyone besides me will read this? Well if you do, please comment, because like i said, I'm sort of desperate for contact with the outside world... and it's only been 2 weeks so far. Scary.

update - warning: this may bore you to tears

Well i've started the turnover to my new job. now, in addition to the average of 8 hours a day i spend on watch (4-6 hours at a time, for example, one day i'll have watch 23-03, then again 12-18, then 03-07) and all the regular meetings and briefs and stuff, I'm trying to learn my new job, get to know the new division, take my friend mark's (whose job i'm taking as ASWO... see an earlier post where i define that) disorganized paperwork and trying to organize them because apparently he cant, and so on. Oh and every day or two we have an ASW scenario where for anywhere from 6-12 hours at a time i go to combat and direct ships and aircraft to prosecute submarines even though i have no idea what i'm doing and it's a total shitshow, and i never really learned how to do this so i dont really know how to do it better until i learn the right way. This may sound like fun to some of you who like the glamour of the military, and yes, fighting submarines is kind of cool, but trust me: it is not fun. Maybe it would be if I ever had any idea what was going on, if I got more than 3 hours of sleep at any given time, and if I had hope for progress... but right now i'm a giant pessimist. Anyway, my new boss just told me that 45 minutes of sleep is as restful as 8 hours, so i'm going to go sleep for 45 minutes and probably end up proving him wrong. on a final note if anyone is actually reading this please dont worry about me, i just had to get my bitching out. I cant bitch and complain to my friends here because some of them have it even worse than i do, plus it's just annoying when people like me whine all day long.

on parenting and morality

Last night i got into a pretty heated discussion with some of my friends about the responsibilities of parenting. It was one of those conversations where I felt like a big liberal, and smiled a little to think that all my friends from home, college, etc still think that I'm (relatively) conservative. Not that everyone in the military is much more politically conservative than I am, but I definitely still think the majority of them are, when I get looks of disgust for saying things like "I think two gay men can and should be allowed to raise a child together."

Anyway... though we did talk about gay parenting, most of the conversation was about the morality of divorce. We went through several hypothetical scenarios, but for this post I'll stick to one: if you have a child with someone, are you morally obliged to marry/ stay married to
that child's father/mother? We'll break this up to two sub-questions:

1. If you get knocked up (or knock up a girl), should you marry him/her?
I don't think you necessarily should. I really didnt think this was an interesting question until I realized yesterday that I have so many friends who think you should marry him/her just because you got pregnant. Obviously if you love the person and would otherwise get married, being pregnant certainly wouldn't stop you. But in a case where you wouldn't marry them if you didn't get pregnant, I don't think you should marry them just because you got pregnant. That's just asking for disaster and unhappy marriage. However, the popular answer yesterday was that yes, you should marry them, it is your moral obligation for the child's well being and development that you marry the child's father/mother-- the reason being that that way the kid is supposed to have a "normal" childhood and learn "proper" gender roles. My retort that the kid is more likely to have a screwed up childhood with unhappily married parents was overturned by my friends because, as they said, all unhappily married parents should either try to work it out and get along, or otherwise fake that they get along, for the child's benefit. Anyway, for the second subquestion:

2. Say the child's parents are already married when they have the child. Down the road, the parents become unhappy together. Are they morally obliged to stay together (either forever or at least till the kid leaves home) for the child's well being? In other words, is separation/divorce immoral?
I strongly believe that they are NOT obliged to stay together, nor should they. The opposition argued that it's selfish to get divorced, and if you have a child, you must invest more in the child's well being than your own. I agree that as a parent, your child is more important than yourself- and I think any good parent would agree. HOWEVER, I think that in the case where the kid's parents are unhappily married, it is in the child's best interest to get a divorce! This seems really obvious to me, but I learned that it's not obvious nor widely agreed upon by intelligent, educated young people. I think, especially from friends with divorced parents growing up, that it's better for a child to have happily divorced parents than to have unhappily married parents. Yes, it's difficult for kids to grow up having two families, spending the holidays with a different parent every year and so on, but I think it's A LOT more difficult for a kid to grow up in a home where the parents don't get along and don't love each other. Maybe they learn "normal" and "correct" gender roles, namely that a "normal" family has a mom and a dad living together, but they certainly don't learn the "right" things about love and happiness. I personally think it's a lot more important for a child to learn the value and importance of love and domestic happiness even if it means learning that from step-parents than for the child to be trapped in an unloving home but where the mother and father still live together.

We all agreed that you shouldn't marry someone or have a child with someone unless you want to spend the rest of your life with that person. But life isn't always that easy and straightforward. And it IS possible for good people to fall out of love. Sad to think, I know, but we see it happen. I certainly hope that I marry and have children with someone I love and continue to love for the rest of my life, but if I don't, I will consider separation/ divorce for myself but even more for the kid(s)! Because I think that's the right thing to do. Do I value happiness more than gender roles? I don't really think that's the question, but perhaps I do. I admit, I do think happiness and love are pretty damn important. Maybe this is because my family has a history of depression and I have spent a lot of time reflecting on happiness, but that aside, I really believe that everything ties into happiness-- success, fortune, good parenting, health.

And life's not fair-- maybe the kid growing up with divorced parents will have a tougher childhood than the kid with happily married parents, but I think he'll have a MUCH easier childhood than the kid with unhappily married parents. And in the end, having to deal with difficult issues during childhood isn't necessarily a bad thing, just like it isn't necessarily a bad thing as an adult. If life were always easy it would be boring. And there's a lot more to learn from tough times. Anyway, this is a topic for another day.

getting better all the time

haha how cliche are all the beatles lyrics? Anyway, i cant help it when i see the title of my blog on the top of the page as I consider what to title a post about how work/life don't actually suck as much as they did when I wrote that last post. And then why am I justifying myself, anyway? Bizarre.

So anyway, this is gonna be quick but i wanted to let those of you who are worrying about me know that things don't actually suck that much. Work sucks a lot, but then it's all right most of the time too. I'll be honest, I am looking forward to shore duty, but considering that I have to do this, I suppose it's better that I have a really challenging job where I work hard than if I had an easy job, didn't learn anything, and got bored all the time. Not sure where I got the perspective, perhaps just some reflection in the past few days, but it helps. Also I've managed to actually get a lot of work done lately. OH and i bought a car! I ended up getting the A4 (audi) that I drove just for kicks, but accidentally fell in love with. And since I work so much I dont really spend much money, I figured i could afford it. Plus I dont even have to be a success to get a raise next may, it's pretty much guaranteed. That's one nice thing about the navy. Anyway... it is "deep sea blue", manual, all wheel drive, sun roof, sweet sound system... pretty much all the extra shit that I dont need but that pretty much all the cars they get come with, so now that I'm over the fat check I had to write, I can't complain. And it is wonderfully fun to drive.

Finally, Theresa if you are reading this, I just want to let you know that I am currently wearing these silver ballet flats that I bought for like $5 and that are ridiculously comfortable, and now every time i wear of them i think of you and all your shiny shoes I used to steal.

starting to hate my job

I'm stuck in a rut. And since I realized no one reads this anymore (since I am now averaging about one short, mediocre to boring post every month or so) I may as well just turn this into a public journal and write a bunch of crap in here. So here goes. I'm hoping that writing about all the stuff that sucks lately will help me pinpoint the problem and find some sort of solution. I'll try to do this in a semi-organized fashion. Perhaps numbering my thoughts will help...

1. Lately I've had a long list of stressful/painful things that I cant wait to be over. Like checking the crappy things off the list will minimize the level of crap I have to deal with. But this method puts way too much focus on the negative. For example, before last week, my list looked like this, and since the items dont really matter I'll use acronyms anyone reading this probably wont even understand anyway:
-ULTRA-S including: MSFD, TSSE, Shiphandler of the Year thing
-staying awake/ sleep deprivation
-DITS
-CICWO board
-car stuff
-IAC stuff
Now that last week is over, the first two items are crossed off (I finally got to catch up on sleep for the first time in about 3 weeks), but I still have all that other crap on the list, which is pretty much all work-related, because my job consumes my life. Well the car stuff isnt really work related, though I wouldnt have crashed my car at all if I hadnt been driving in to work at 6am on a sunday...
Anyway, it's like everything I think about is stressful work stuff that I have to deal with and worry about. Lately I havent really had anything to look forward to, or to enjoy. It's sort of an issue of living in the future instead of the present, but in a bad way... I have semi-fun plans for the next two weekends, but my looking forward to fun stuff is pretty much completely suffocated by all the bullshit which takes precedence.

2. I hate being the bad guy. I used to love work because I loved my division, and even though I didn't really always know what I was doing, the division was making strides in a positive direction, and I felt good about what I contributed to the division and to the department. It didnt matter whether I got my quals done or not (one of those things that is currently stressing me out), or how anything else at work was going, because my divo job is my first priority, and I used to feel good about that. Now I feel like the division's just getting worse, AND everyone is miserable, not just me. Yet instead of being able to make things better, I feel like I just make things worse by being the one person who is willing to yell at people and tell them to suck it up and do their job. It's more time consuming to always be on everyone's ass about getting stuff done, more stressful, and overall just not a very happy or fun thing to do, but someone has to do it. Now that I've been around for almost a year I'm starting to get my bearings, and I can't just play dumb anymore when shit is jacked up. I don't know how to fix it though. I tried by wiping the slate clean with my chiefs and putting my trust in them again a few weeks ago, and that worked for about a week, but now I feel like they still arent communicating with me. Honestly I really think communication is the problem. Rumors abound, and I dont think my word is good with anyone which REALLY bothers me because I have never lied to anyone in my division, and never would. I always thought my trustworthiness was one of my best features and lately it seems like no one trusts me either. Even though I try SO hard to trust everyone else, even after they let me down. I just don't know what to do anymore. I've turned into an unhappy, micromanaging yeller, which is not what I want to be.

3. I'm lonely. I miss having a personal life. Even when I do have time for a social life, it's with the same people I work with, since I really dont have much time to maintain friendships outside of work. I have the small group of college friends in Seattle who I hang out with occasionally but it feels like such an effort to keep up even just a few friendships! Since I only have time to be social like twice a month max. It is so nice to just be a normal human being and hang out with friends and go out and do normal people things, but it just makes work that much worse.

4. I don't really forsee myself beginning to like my job anytime soon. Even when I envision what it will be like in a different division (I am supposed to move to CA division and be the new ASWO- Anti-submarine Warfare Officer, though I don't really know when that's happening), and get all my quals done, and even going to another ship or to shore duty, I can't really picture being happy with any of that. Honestly I really have grown to like engineering and (most of) the people I work with, and I feel like moving me out of engineering is like forcing me to give up trying to overcome the issues we have in my division. Anyway, I know I'm only 22 and don't have to know what I want to do with my life, but it's pretty sad not even having some sort of job that sounds both fun and realistic to look forward to. I love the Navy in theory, and I love some of this stuff in reality (like driving a 9000 ton, billion dollar warship, and working with a family 0f 300 that actually do care about each other most of the time, and working with some interesting, cool people), but there is just so much bullshit that overrides the good stuff that it's hard to stay motivated. And I'm losing all my hope of making things better, since my division has only gotten worse since I've been here. It's depressing!

OK, I'm sorry for anyone who read this, because it was probably really boring and somewhat depressing. Don't let me get you down... I'll try to write another, happier post if I find some happiness sometime in the near future...

bye bye Deb

I need some decision-making help. So after working all day saturday, i was on my way to work at about 6am sunday morning in the rain of course (because it is Seattle) when I hydroplaned and smashed Deb into the guard rail. For those of you who dont know, deb is my Subaru Forester (she is named Deb because it was a fittingly lesbian-sounding name for a lesbian car). And she's dead. She looked fine, and I thankfully am 100% fine myself, but she had a slashed tire on top of some knicks and scrapes so i got her towed to the shop the insurance company wanted me to use. Then I go in there on Monday, right, and they tell me the estimate is $6800! Which is ridiculous, since that includes replacing every panel on the car that has even the most minor scratch which is totally unnecessary. But anyway, my only other option besides calling it totalled and taking the $5500 or so that the insurance company is going to give me is to pay the salvage cost and then fix it myself. Which I'm thinking will take more time and effort than i can afford and ultimately wont be worth it. So, it is goodbye to Deb. But now i have no idea what to do! My initial response is get a similar used car, but the more i think about it the more I sort of want to get a new car. Less hassle, warranty, I'll already have the insurance money to spend toward buying it, and.. well yeah. But i have NO IDEA what kind of car i want. here's where you come in. I know a lot of you have probably recently bought cars being recent college grads and all so perhaps I can hijack some of your research results. I just looked at some more subarus today and sort of liked the new outback, but i have no idea if I might like a different car better. I always thought my next car would be a hybrid but I dont think i want one now for various reasons. What are good cars? Help, friends. So far I have been thinking everything from toyota to acura to bmw (haha cant hurt to dream out of my price range, right?) to saab. Really I have no clue.