1,035

1000 words.  If I sat down every day, could I write 1000 words by the end of the day?  How long is 1000 words?  I’ve only been out of school for a little over a year and I have already forgotten the amount of time and space it takes to write 1000 words.  Before, if given an assignment of a certain word length, say 2500 words, I could immediately think of the number of pages of either single or double-space type that it would take to fill 2500 words.  Having forgotten that months ago I am now typing without a clue as to how long I’ll be typing. 

            Why am I writing 1000 words a day, you may ask?  Is there a certain end purpose to this all?  Well….not really.  I seem to jump from interest to interest every week or so.  One week its practicing violin, the next week its working out, followed by a week of studying for the GRE, after which comes a week full of baking.  More recently, a few weeks ago I was quite taken with pondering the topic of love, and then last week I took up learning sign language. My devotion to an activity usually only lasts between a few days and two weeks, and then after that I’ll take up a new activity though I will occasionally come back to my previous interests.  For example, I don’t practice my violin more than a couple of times a week now because the other evenings I’m either at the gym, baking, attending a briefing, or at a Bible study.  I suppose in the end I could argue that I am a more well-rounded person, though I hardly lack much of a depth of knowledge or expertise on anything.  Writing 1000 words a day just happens to be my latest ploy to make the time go by and keep myself, especially my mind active and busy.  

            319 words done, assuming that I don’t go back and revise or delete anything that I have previously written.  Will I allow myself to do such things as revise? I don’t know.  I pondered the question for a few minutes as I walked back from lunch and wondered if I should set any ground rules for myself, but the thought of rules seemed to hinder the freedom to think and write, so I dismissed the idea.  What will I write about?  I don’t know.  There are many things I don’t know at the moment. 

            This morning I went for a jog at 5:30am.  Although I don’t like waking up early and I am still not a huge fan of running, if I do have to run I would rather run when it is cool outside. At 5am the temperature outside was 81 degrees, and by 7am it had dropped to 77 degrees.  I do believe that is the first time I’ve seen the temperature in the 70s in what seems like a very long time.  The temperature is now once again up past 100 degrees, but the highs for the past couple of days have been below 110, which is another new thing. 

            524 words.  Perhaps over the next few days I’ll drop the required number of words down to 500…and then 200…and in the end grow tired of sitting down to write and forget about the whole idea. 

            My mind has gone blank at the moment and I can’t think of what else to write.  College football season starts this coming weekend, which also happens to be Labor Day weekend.  Normally I don’t care a whole lot about college football, but this year I am a tiny bit interested in the whole thing since it will make the time go by faster, though the only teams I care about are Army and Michigan. 

A couple of weeks ago I received a package in the mail from my friend Anne, who happens to be in Cambridge, England at the moment getting her masters degree.  The package was full of delicious food ranging from candy bars and short cake to dried fruit, but it also contained a book called “Jesus, Safe Tender Extreme.”  In the letter that she included with the package she wrote that she was sending the book along because she found it to be a refreshing and useful look at Christian life written in a common matter without the holier-than-thou and above-this-world attitude that many Christian writers tend to end up taking.  Though I’ve only made it to page 100 due to limited reading time, most of it done while eating lunch in the DFAC, I must say that I agree with Anne’s assessment.  The author, Adrian Plass, writes in a manner that elicits in me a feeling as though I’ve found someone who’s thought structure is the same as my own.  Not only is what he writing of interest to me, but I also enjoy the way he writes.  He’s genuine in his mannerisms, not trying to put on a front or pretend to be something that he’s not.  In particular I’ve enjoyed his description of a near drowning he once experienced and description of, “The little man with a notebook who lives at the back of my head scribbled busily away, noting with interest the various nuances of panic and fear, the exact sensations that accompany drowning, and the emotions evoked by the imminent loss of those whom you love.  He was just on the point of starting a new piece under the heading ‘First Encounters with God’ when I managed to struggle free from my trap.”  I often feel as though I myself has a little man in my head jotting down notes on whatever is going on in my life as to record them for later use.  Of course, I do not often get to writing, especially lately, so most of those notes go the way of my notes in real life and end up set aside to be forgotten.

I must admit that I cheated a bit with today’s 1000 words.  I wrote the previous paragraph, totaling 362 words, yesterday.  The commo blackout is finally over and so I may post this entry on my blog.  1,035.

 

August Update

Right now I’m sitting at my desk and writing in my blog instead of making corrections to people’s security clearance packets.  The packets are a constant source of frustration for me.  It’d be nice if I had received some prior training on security clearance procedures, but MIOBC didn’t touch on the subject and when I arrived at my unit everything was focused on the deployment. The person who was responsible for the whole procedure before I arrived in the BN is no longer in the Army, so my assistant S2 and I are stuck trying to figure out the process ourselves.  Since I haven’t received any training I’ve had to search out advice from other battalions, brigade, and the people who I turn the packets into back at Fort Hood.  Everybody has a slightly different version of what is required.  Putting together the security clearance packets isn’t a high priority for the other BN’s and BDE due to the fact that we are in Iraq and busy enough with daily combat operations.   

 

Yesterday I baked my second batch of brownies in the toaster oven my parents sent me.  These were chocolate caramel brownies with m&m’s on top.  Very high calorie, but well liked by the people in my BN.  The lack of a well-stocked grocery store makes baking from scratch a near impossibility, so I’ve resorted to using mixes and adding in my own touch.  The PX has carried brownie mix for a month or two, but of course by the time my toaster oven arrived the PX had run out of the mix.  Fortunately, I’ve grown used to the unpredictability of the PX inventory and so I bought a couple of boxes of brownie mix a few weeks ago.  The sad part is that I am now out of all of my mixes and will have to wait a few weeks before my small order from netgrocer.com arrives in the mail with a couple more boxes of brownie mix and a bread mix.  In the meantime I’ll have look at my toaster oven longingly and dream about when I’ll next be able to bake. 

 

A few days ago I was able to talk to both of my sisters on the phone.  I was very proud of my sister Heidi when she mentioned that she’s started to do 10 modified push-ups a day and has noticed and increase in her arm muscle.  She inspired me to work on my push-ups, because that is an area that I’ve never been very good at and usually try and avoid except for when I have to take an APFT.

 

My smiling while typing on the computer and fixing my hair has led some of the people I work with to believe that there is a guy that I like and am conversing with online.  I’ve tried to explain to them that I have communicated with some friends occasionally (hence the smiles because I like to hear from my friends) and that I fix my hair because it’s against regulations to have my hair flying all over the place, but my explanations have fallen on deaf ears.  The assistant S-3 went so far as to try and figure out who the guy is and concluded that he’s a 1LT in the aviation brigade.  He’s only about 8 months off with his conclusion.  The truth is that there aren’t any guys at the moment I’m particularly interested in, though I do enjoy talking to and spending time with my friends. 

 

Woohoo! It’s supposed to get down to 115 on Saturday.  Actually, that’s not much different than right now because it’s been 115-118 degrees the past few days, but still it’s on the cooler side of really hot J

 

Okay, I’ve wasted enough time and should get back to work.