T minus 96 hours

In three days, I will be gone from Alameda. In three days, I will fly from San Francisco to Rhode Island and begin the Navy's Officer Candidate School. For 12 weeks, I will be cut off from most of the modern world, as marine drill instructors and navy chiefs play a drawn out mind game with a hundred person class. Of those hundred, seventy will graduate within those twelve weeks. The remainder will either return to civilian life, or be forced to endure even longer.

Never in my life have I been as nervous and never have the implications of failure weighed as heavily. Three years ago, I signed a contract with Navy, agreeing to become a officer upon graduation. The exchange was fairly simple in material terms, I would trade in four years of my life for a guaranteed job and a monthly stipend while in school. What I had really traded was a deferral from the vagaries of the future for a relationship cut short.

Infernocafe, though more technically open than facebook, is a much more private place. I started dating Felicia in the beginning of May last year. Though I did not realize it at the time, she was a perfect fit. It was a gift from high on up. And I put an expiration date on the whole damn thing. We would go out until I left for the Navy.

Everything was perfectly planned. I would graduate; we would go on that Japan trip, and on New Years, we would break up as I returned to the States to being OCS. Naturally, the efforts of man pale in comparison to the efforts of bureaucracy. I was denied my request for leave because the prescription of an inhaler for my upper tract respiratory infection meant that I had obviously developed asthma. I had to undergo some medical tests. I found out on the day of my last final 3 hours before I was to take it, 3 days before I was to leave for Japan. I had said good bye to Felicia a few days earlier, vowing to see her in Japan. This was the first time I had cried in years without having been injured.

So the break up was postponed. This time, until Valentines Day. Of course, the efforts of bureacracy are nothing in the face of a judo olympian. I was doing randori with Cal Judo's instructor a day after a pukingly difficult workout with Matt. My legs were jello. Going into the eight minute of sparring, Master Han swept my left leg, I manuevered to avoid a fall with my right leg, POP! and the knee bent the wrong way. So two weeks before I was supposed to go, I get myself broken. I had been building up the courage to break up with Felicia the whole time, and all that fussing was for nothing.

Now, I get to break up with her on Memorial day. If you've been following the timeline, Felicia and I have spent more time an ocean apart than in the same zipcode. Everything is set and done. I report to OCS the same way I signed my contract, a single man.

For me, the next four years are a defined haze. I will be in the Navy working as a Civil Engineer doing who the hell knows what. Not too many choices to make there. Ideally, I would find the work interesting, but not engrossing enough to make it a career. I would then leave and go back to school for graduate studies in engineering. Other than that, no big plans, no real ideas for what's going to happen.

I'm used to dislocation from places and people, and know that you guys are there (if not in Alameda, then somewhere on this earth) Home isn't really ever a physical place and that knowledge is all I really need.

Strangely enough, the next 12 weeks will probably be a short stint away from Alameda. From what I'm hearing, there's a strong chance I'll be back here getting more paid more as an officer to do the same work I've been doing. One thing I've learnt dealing with the Navy is that nothing is truly certain. So we'll see.

Also: Jung says that I'm INTJ, though I've been labeled INTP before. The only trait that's strongly expressed in my introvertedness. Gogo silence!