I saw something a couple of weeks ago that stuck in my mind. A fellow veteran commented that deploying was great practice for quarantine...
So off and on I've thought about that. About the experience of being deployed, and how it compares to (over five weeks) of working from home and social distancing.
There's a lot of truth to that. I remember my first deployment,to FOB Danger near Tikrit. I can remember feeling kind of stir crazy, a few months in. It wasn't very big, and there wasn't a lot to do, and you never really realize how much that matters until you spend months confined to a small area.
My second deployment, as a civilian, was to Camp Slayer. That was a bit easier, in that it was part of the Victory Base Complex, so whenever we started to get stir crazy we could use the team vehicle to drive to one of the other connected facilities. You don't realize how much you obsess over food, until you're in a place where the dining facilities rotate the same dang menu... and you don't have access to a kitchen, and have very limited options for eating out.
Afghanistan was similar, I suppose. Camp Leatherneck was co-located with a British base, so for the sake of variety we'd sometimes head to the British side.
I do attribute my experiences there with making me a bit more introverted, I suppose. I don't know how well you believe in Miles-Briggs personality tests, but at one time I tested as borderline introvert/extrovert. I think it was Camp Slayer, really, where I started leaning more towards introversion. The friends I'd made early in the tour all returned home, one by one, and it didn't seem worth the effort to make new ones. I learned to keep myself pretty well entertained, whether with books or movies or tv shows or whatever.
Mostly books, though.
I've come to like spending time on my own, generally find quite enough to do, and sometimes find that I do need to unwind after too much socializing. (I still seem more social than the introverts further on the scale, though.)
Anyways, I was thinking about the differences between social isolation and deployment, and social isolation is better by far for the following reasons.
I have my own bathroom. I don't have to put on flip flops and walk through gravel to get to a bathroom trailer or shower trailer. (One of those bathroom trailers, btw, was unisex. Which gives me an interesting perspective on this whole transgender thing I guess. Who cares about stupid stuff like that, anyway? It's still a heckuva lot better than using those bags that you place over a toilet stand, and wrap up and throw in a burn pit afterwards.)
I have my own kitchen, too. I can cook whatever I want, if I have the ingredients on hand. Sure, I miss eating out. Ordering delivery or take-out just isn't the same. But those are also options, so there's definitely better eating choices here.
Not only do I have access to all my beloved books, and the ability to order ebooks if I decide my long 'to-read' list isn't cutting it, but I also have a bunch of streaming video options. And better internet.
Oh, and I have my cats and dogs for companionship.
So really, all told - this is much better. I can do this for a looooooooooooong time.
Hope it ends soon, of course. I may be lucky enough to still be working, but I have friends and family who are affected right now... and that's not even going into who might or might not get sick, and might or might not make it.
Then again, I hadn't really realized how stressed I'd been, overseas. Not until months after I came home and started to unwind. I don't want to talk as though I was some sort of front line soldier or anything. Really, it's been so long and I so rarely needed to use any of the basic training I got that I'd probably embarrass myself if I tried. (We all tended to go out and gape at the smoke from VBIEDs and the occasional mortar fire, sort of like how we mid-westerners like to stand on a porch and watch during a tornado warning. Horribly unsafe, but we do.)
And tbh, the stress I felt while job hunting (especially after I graduated a year and a half ago) was bad in a different way. Which is also why I sympathize with everyone who lost their jobs because of this.
I, personally, am in a better position right now... this isn't nearly as stressful as all the things I've experienced before.
It's funny, though. If there's one thing military service teaches you (and there's a lot it does), it's understanding how we react to stress. How different things can seem, based on how much sleep we've had or how much food we've had or what stresses we're dealing with at any particular moment.
How to appreciate the little things, how to keep on going when the future seems big and complicated and uncertain, and know you'll get through it.
One of the hardest things about leaving the service is realizing just how... well, spoiled, so many Americans are. I don't like using that word because of all the connotations there, but there's something different about people who've always known when their next meal was coming, have only been short on sleep if they're cramming for tests or working hard, who generally worry about mundane things like getting the kids somewhere on time and fixing dinner.
Now? Now I think a lot more Americans understand those sorts of things. Which is not something I ever actually wished for, since who would ever wish on anyone the type of hardship that teaches such lessons?
So off and on I've thought about that. About the experience of being deployed, and how it compares to (over five weeks) of working from home and social distancing.
There's a lot of truth to that. I remember my first deployment,to FOB Danger near Tikrit. I can remember feeling kind of stir crazy, a few months in. It wasn't very big, and there wasn't a lot to do, and you never really realize how much that matters until you spend months confined to a small area.
My second deployment, as a civilian, was to Camp Slayer. That was a bit easier, in that it was part of the Victory Base Complex, so whenever we started to get stir crazy we could use the team vehicle to drive to one of the other connected facilities. You don't realize how much you obsess over food, until you're in a place where the dining facilities rotate the same dang menu... and you don't have access to a kitchen, and have very limited options for eating out.
Afghanistan was similar, I suppose. Camp Leatherneck was co-located with a British base, so for the sake of variety we'd sometimes head to the British side.
I do attribute my experiences there with making me a bit more introverted, I suppose. I don't know how well you believe in Miles-Briggs personality tests, but at one time I tested as borderline introvert/extrovert. I think it was Camp Slayer, really, where I started leaning more towards introversion. The friends I'd made early in the tour all returned home, one by one, and it didn't seem worth the effort to make new ones. I learned to keep myself pretty well entertained, whether with books or movies or tv shows or whatever.
Mostly books, though.
I've come to like spending time on my own, generally find quite enough to do, and sometimes find that I do need to unwind after too much socializing. (I still seem more social than the introverts further on the scale, though.)
Anyways, I was thinking about the differences between social isolation and deployment, and social isolation is better by far for the following reasons.
I have my own bathroom. I don't have to put on flip flops and walk through gravel to get to a bathroom trailer or shower trailer. (One of those bathroom trailers, btw, was unisex. Which gives me an interesting perspective on this whole transgender thing I guess. Who cares about stupid stuff like that, anyway? It's still a heckuva lot better than using those bags that you place over a toilet stand, and wrap up and throw in a burn pit afterwards.)
I have my own kitchen, too. I can cook whatever I want, if I have the ingredients on hand. Sure, I miss eating out. Ordering delivery or take-out just isn't the same. But those are also options, so there's definitely better eating choices here.
Not only do I have access to all my beloved books, and the ability to order ebooks if I decide my long 'to-read' list isn't cutting it, but I also have a bunch of streaming video options. And better internet.
Oh, and I have my cats and dogs for companionship.
So really, all told - this is much better. I can do this for a looooooooooooong time.
Hope it ends soon, of course. I may be lucky enough to still be working, but I have friends and family who are affected right now... and that's not even going into who might or might not get sick, and might or might not make it.
Then again, I hadn't really realized how stressed I'd been, overseas. Not until months after I came home and started to unwind. I don't want to talk as though I was some sort of front line soldier or anything. Really, it's been so long and I so rarely needed to use any of the basic training I got that I'd probably embarrass myself if I tried. (We all tended to go out and gape at the smoke from VBIEDs and the occasional mortar fire, sort of like how we mid-westerners like to stand on a porch and watch during a tornado warning. Horribly unsafe, but we do.)
And tbh, the stress I felt while job hunting (especially after I graduated a year and a half ago) was bad in a different way. Which is also why I sympathize with everyone who lost their jobs because of this.
I, personally, am in a better position right now... this isn't nearly as stressful as all the things I've experienced before.
It's funny, though. If there's one thing military service teaches you (and there's a lot it does), it's understanding how we react to stress. How different things can seem, based on how much sleep we've had or how much food we've had or what stresses we're dealing with at any particular moment.
How to appreciate the little things, how to keep on going when the future seems big and complicated and uncertain, and know you'll get through it.
One of the hardest things about leaving the service is realizing just how... well, spoiled, so many Americans are. I don't like using that word because of all the connotations there, but there's something different about people who've always known when their next meal was coming, have only been short on sleep if they're cramming for tests or working hard, who generally worry about mundane things like getting the kids somewhere on time and fixing dinner.
Now? Now I think a lot more Americans understand those sorts of things. Which is not something I ever actually wished for, since who would ever wish on anyone the type of hardship that teaches such lessons?
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