A lot, yet nothing much, has happened the past few days. On Monday I started my journey to my first duty station by flying into Tucson, AZ and then driving to Fort Huachuca. I was planning on only staying a short time to check my PO Box for a final time and say hi to Kate and Jordan, but I discovered that I was too tired to drive any distance safely, so I spent the night in Sierra Vista. It turned out nicely because I was able to spend more time with Kate and Jordan and go out to dinner with them. Then next morning I got up at 6 and started my drive. I made it around 770 miles before stopping for the night. The next morning I slept in until 8:15ish and then headed back out on the road around 9. I made it to Jordan's apartment by 11:30am. Zack had deployed the morning before, so the timing worked out pretty well. I spent the rest of the day moving my stuff in and relaxing. This morning I didn't make it out of the apartment until 9:30am and had to make a stop at the post office to mail some letters that Zack had left for me to mail before I headed onto post. Once on post I got new decals for my vehicle and then officially signed in. Inprocessing begins tomorrow at 0630.
While I was waiting to sign in I looked up and saw Chris S. walking my way. I called out to him and he came over and sat down. A few minutes later Gretchen walked over and joined us. Gretchen had signed in the day before and so she had already started inprocessing, but Chris signed in with me. I said a small thanks to God for letting me run in to two people I know from West Point and who were in my OBC class.
Since I was done with everything I could do on post today by 1230 I decided to go back to the apartment and relax. I had drifted off to sleep on the couch when my cell phone rang. Charlie was calling me and so we talked for a little while. He's doing really well and graduates from IOBC in about 2 weeks. He is another friend who I find it extremely easy to talk to, and talking to him always puts a smile on my face.
After not running since Saturday night I figured I was in need of one. It was a rather short 20 minute run since I didn't know the area and was a bit wary because the homes had bars on their doors and windows.
When I got back from my run I cleaned up and then made dinner. Having nothing else to do after dinner I decided to check out the Navigators. There was a Navigators group at West Point, but they met at the same time as OCF, so I never went to it. Charlie got invovled with it at Fort Benning and raved about it a few times to me. He also gave me the link to the Fort Benning Navigators web site which I found very useful. Zack had also gotten invovled with the Navigators group here and recommended it to Jordan who then recommended it to me. I still felt a bit out of my comfort zone going since I didn't know any one in the group and hadn't made contact with anyone. I am glad I went and like the group so far. The topic of the night was right what I needed because we talked about courage.
One thing I realized while I was at Navigators was that I'm making progress, however small it may be, with stepping out of my comfort zone. Actually going was a big step, and then when I was there I made contributes to the discussions, which was something I didn't do for a few months a few years ago when I started attending OCF. Afterwords I went around the room and said bye to everyone and shook their hands, instead of trying to sneak out the door unseen. I hope this progress continues.
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