I will not refuse what I can do.
“Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.” -Pablo Picasso, Spanish Artist
Health has escaped me recently. With all the chaos in my life currently, I have barely been going to the gym. When I do go to the gym, I don’t follow any specific plan, I just kinda do whatever I feel like doing that day and I never really get things going, then I leave and don’t really feel like I’ve done much. I have seen some change, but not a ton.
“The bastards tried to come over me last night. I guess they didn’t know I was a Marine.” -PFC Edward H. Ahrens, US Marine and Navy Cross Recipient
Today is 10 November 2017, that means it is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. An institution that I credit with providing me so much of my life, whether it was my Grandfather who served for a long time and was always a part of my life as I grew up, or it is the 5 and a half years of my young adulthood that was completely encompassed by the United States Marine Corps as I worked to be the best I can be, as it forced me to be even better than that. I have said this before but it can never be said enough, I would not be half the kind of person I am today if I did not join. At 17, I made the decision to commit the rest of my teenage years and a few of my 20s, at a minimum to the Marines. I left about 2 weeks after graduating high school, riding in a van to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Paris Island. The Marine Corps was always something in my life and something I wanted to be a part of for a long time and looking back on my early adult life, I am seriously so damn proud of the choice I have made.
“We are running on line north and south.” -Amelia Earhart, American Pilot
I really don’t like running, I borderline hate it, not really hate it, but the overly dramatic version of hating it. Like a 14-year-old daughter hating her parents for not letting her go out to the mall with her friends in a family comedy tv show. It is horrible, it hurts my knees because I am a big baby, it’s slow and not exciting and I just love cycling infinitely more. Anyway, running is not fun, I never enjoyed it but back in early June, I agreed to run a half-marathon thanks to a combination of macho hubris, lack of thinking quickly and peer pressure. Either way, I am committed now, I have signed up and now, next June. I will have ran my first official half-marathon and hopefully, it will be my last.
“That’s good. Go on, read some more.” -Warren G. Harding, 29th United States President
Languages are hard. Our own is easy but learning a second is hard. I am doing my best to learn German and it is going well. I can speak to people, order food, chat about soccer etc. but there is so much that I don’t know and it really is the most frustrating thing when you don’t understand something that you think you should, or if you can’t figure out how to say something that you want to say. It feels like you are trapped in your own head and unable to express your thoughts to be understood. It is annoying and disheartening. I, at least, feel like a failure when I get lost like that and can’t properly form a sentence. There are many reasons why one might not be able to, like misunderstanding what someone just asked/said. This gets you stuck between, trying to parse out what they just said while your brain wants to immediately craft a response without pause as if it was your native language. However, this also happens when you think about something too complex and you are just missing a single word, or multiple. Missing descriptive words is okay for a basic conversation because you can normally leave them out. Yes, you would lose some impact, but you would get the point across. It is when you can’t recall a verb or noun that really destroys the construction of sentences and flow of a conversation.
“Maybe they only had one rocket?” -Lawrence Beeter, WWII British soldier
I absolutely love space. If you know me, you would know how much I love space. I have always been fascinated by it. It is infinitely vast and there are so many things that we learn all the time about space and the things hidden beyond our world. Space gives us so many cool things to learn, understand or just look at/observe.