The Worst Life

Back in my days as an Intelligence Analyst I worked on a job called CITP - Counter Insurgency Targeting Program. The outside looking in it was a cool job. Hunting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Like many things, if you are on the inside it is not nearly as cool. We were a bunch of dorks that had delusions of grandeur. One of these manifestations was a 24 hour watch.  

When you are in a war zone it is critically important to have a 24 hour watch for the commanders and other decision makers to have access to the latest information to keep your troops safe.  

This was not that.  

The CITP Watch was in Charlottesville, VA. Roughly 6,000 miles away from anything even rounding up to hardship.  

As contractors we were all voluntold  for shifts a few times a year to supplement the government civilians that ran the watch. My shift started early morning and this older guy came in around 9 AM. He went to the white board and erased the 1756 replacing it with 1755 and declared to the room that is how many days left he has until retirement from the job. 

This made me want to throw up.  

How could someone who dislikes their job so much that they have a countdown clock but it is FIVE YEARS OUT. 

Initial disgust changed to sympathy. I felt bad for this guy. We all had countdown clocks when I was in the US Army doing deployments to Iraq but these were 15 months or a year deployment. Most importantly, none of us really wanted to be there*. If given a real choice we would have been stateside.

This sorry son of a bitch chose every day to come into a job he hated for a $30K/year pension. Based on his BMI there was a strong possibility he wouldn't even make it to retirement. Why did he do it?

You meet a lot of these people throughout life. Putting up with something they dislike or hate. Sometimes it is noble - they hate it but it feeds their family and they CAN'T do anything else. Most of the time it is out of fear. Fear that it is not the job they hate but something more internal. Changing jobs would only prove it wasn't the job after all. 

Chances are this guy retired and then took a contracting job in the same office working for the same people because the money was good ..... and still complained every day.  

Sometimes having examples of what not to be is better than what to strive for. I never want to be that guy. Counting down the decades. He may have had the worst life out of anyone I have ever met. 

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*We all volunteered for the US Army during a time of war. Of course that was the macro choice but we really couldn't get out of deployments unless we wanted to go to jail (or fake hemorrhoids).

Sci-Fi Idea

The world experienced a new world war. One where a nefarious non-state actor was able to do a retro geo-grade orbit with the successful intention of knocking out all of earths satellites - putting us back into a more technological type of Stone Age. 

Navigation was down, along with internet, and most communications. During this chaotic timeframe nations mobilized to war to defend their countries. Skirmishes were fought at the borders as some saw this chaos as the opportunity to expand.  

Engagements quickly escalated into large scale conflicts with large payload missiles and weapons. The societies of earth collapsed quickly. Leaving only a few critically weakened city-states and hunter gathers who knew nothing was different. 

Observing this chaos are two colonies. One a multinational military base on the moon and another civilian earth outpost on Mars. By this point in history we have successfully built both but have been sustained with consistent shipments from Earth. Now they find themselves with enough supplies to last only a while. 

Do the colonies work together? Is there war between them? Does one of the nations fight for power on the MND moon base? 

How do they navigate back to earth to get the needed supplies?  

Try being a stay at home

Choosing to stay at home being a full time parent can come with a lot of stress. For me it was about doing a 'good enough' job. Daycares had play areas and curriculum for the little kids to follow along with other possible friends.  

My stresses were passed along to one of Mallory's old friends from ABQ and a great piece of advice was passed back to me. 

'That first year, a baby only needs someone to hold them with love' 

This phrase really put me at ease and it is one I refer back to frequently, especially since doing it again with our newest baby girl. 

Because it is easy to beat yourself up - or get beat up mentally by the daily duties. Are they developing enough, did we do enough tummy time, and on it goes. When in the end loving them and holding them is what they want and need.

We try our best but it's not perfect but that is alright because love for your child can't be outsourced . If you have the chance to stay at home with your kids, especially that first year - do it. You will be the best at loving them. 

It's a whole new world

Over the last two days I have been coding HTML.  The only reason that it is even worthwhile to mention is that I have never coded a day in my life and these past couple of days I have successfully coded scripts to run in Google to export data from the calendar to google sheets - all with the help of ChatGPT.  

These are the types of jobs that you would need a senior software engineer to do  along with a few hundred dollars to pay them a few years ago. Now it is free and some dumb-dumb like me can create HTML scripts successfully.* 

This feels like the beginning of something very transformative. I will not use a GPT for writing this blog. That defeats the point of why I am doing this but there is a lot of things that it will help me accomplish. Onward. 

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*I wasn't able to figure out how to convert the HTML into markup-style so I am using GPT to convert the output into what I need after I do the run. <b>weak as hell<b>

What could go wrong?

It is not very often that am envious of the habits of my parents. One comes to mind - my Mom's retirement blog.  Her and Dad were visiting on their first road trip south for the winter and they stopped by Virginia en route to Florida. Mom mentioned she wanted to document their RV'ing lifestyle and I helped her get a blog going. That was 6 years ago now and she has been pretty consistent with it. 

It is not for making money or fame but for posterity. I read it now and again and think that is a nice reference to have for the future. Publications are different than pictures in the same way listening to a hour long podcast is different from a couple minute home video record on the phone. It feels more personal. 

I tried this once before and failed. Not failed with a capital 'F' but didn't follow through. I started a blog in 2023 thinking it was going to be a slow year and ended up running for County Supervisor* and I prioritized my time on the campaign.  

This attempt is leaner, faster - in hopes of making it a habit. I am reading the book 'Bird by Bird' and taking the lesson that consistent writing is its own reward.  

Some of these posts will be long think pieces. Others will be journal entries of my life. Still some others will be past recollections or short pithy advice I want my son's and daughter to have access to later.  

This is low stakes so what could go wrong...

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*I lost but it WAS THIS CLOSE

Notes

http://roxirykalretired.blogspot.com/

The Brad Rykal Brief Podcast