In some ways the Navy has taught me a lot about patience. Not directly. Definitely not directly. However, as I've become a little more "adult" and slowly started to unravel what I want to do with the rest of my life I have come to realize that the "rest of my life" is still a long way off. And because of that it's important for me to remain patient.

This blog is the growing representation of that patience. Everything I am writing here I write as part of my evolution toward a later time when I will be able to write independently. That's a time when I will no longer belong to any of the institutions that currently plague me and hold back my development. High school, college and the Navy are all a part of that group. Unfortunately I cannot just abandon them. Despite the fact that they are a hindrance to me, I still have things to learn from them. I still have advantages, even passive ones, to gain here as a writer.

That's where the patience comes in because I'm at the point in my Navy career where I am going to see an equal number of people getting out as are coming in. I am at the original end of my own enlistment if I hadn't extended it until the end of my time on the Nimitz.

So, when I see my friends or even just coworkers finding themselves on the way out with reasons I could easily use for my own way out I find it very hard not to follow in their footsteps. After all, one reason (going to college) is not only legitimate but it would also push me farther along my path into the final institution between me and life.

Still, while the argument is a weak one, I do not want to be a guy with an administrative discharge, or the guy that took an early-out, and I definitily would be a quitter in my own mind. No, I need these last couple of years in the Navy. I never really joined the Navy with a goal, but I've developed one over the years and that goal includes an Honorable Discharge. The possibility of going into politics wouldn't even be worth trying without one (not yet in my plans, either).

In this same vein I've learned a lot of patience with relationships, even though this is more in theory than in practice. I know what I want, what I need, and I know I can't look for just anyone to help ease my lonliness. Still, that's hard because I can look at all the people around me and stand dumbfounded at my inability to find someone considering some of these people can divorce one and marry the next before I've even had a chance to look.

Again: Patience. I know I'm not cut out for the military lifestyle and my attitude toward writing would make it difficult to live with a military person. I also know any relationship I form will need time to grow and the few months between deployments is not enough for that. I have conservative standards that are not only rare by society's standards but near invisible in my normal social circle. So, I must continue looking when and where I can (like church instead of the ship, for example) and hope God leads me in the right direction. He does have a tendency to do that even though it's been a long time since I was going in the completely right direction.

I know who I am.
I am a writer who doesn't write.
I am a Sailor who doesn't want to sail.
I am a romantic at heart who has no one to give his heart to.

And all of this is okay as long as I have patience.