FTN

It has been a couple weeks since I last posted, I guess. I dunno, really. The days blend seamlessly in with each other down here. I wake up around 7:00 PM and walk to work, and then get off at 7:30 AM and walk back to my room and talk with friends and loved ones back home, and then go to sleep, only to repeat the cycle the next day. But I do apologize, anonymous commenter, I'll try to keep things a bit more up to date. It's been hard lately to keep the motivational juices flowing. I find it hard to wake up and roll out of bed early enough on that one day per week I feel like showering.

Oh yes, I only shower once per week.

It's not because they're enforcing water rations, or because I'm uncomfortable in communal showers. No, it's because I just don't feel like it. I don't feel like a whole lot anymore. Ever since I've gotten here, I've fallen into somewhat of a rut. A depressive rut. But on the bright side, this rut has within it, a schedule. A set series of events that all I need to do is repeat every single day with little or no deviation, and things go by relatively uneventfully.

This past week and a half or so has been pretty humdrum, to be honest.

Yet it's been stressful.

And relieving.

Relieving in that I got an e-mail from my replacement a few days ago. I won't divulge the name, rank, gender, or any other information. But I will say this: seeing that e-mail was the highlight of my time here. Knowing that I've got one foot out the door of this... this hell on earth.

Stressful in that I deal with some of the most incompetent boobs in the history of incompetent boobs. I've had semi-high-ranking Army officers yelling at me to fix their keyboards. But it can't be just any keyboard. It has to be a keyboard with a "translator matrix" installed for Farsi. Upon further inspection, this matrix looks to be nothing more than Arabic lettering painted on the keys in white out. And the solution to the problem? After all this yelling... after all this self-important bullshit he throws at me, it turns out the moron is plugging the keyboard into the wrong computer.

There've been other issues like this since I've been here, and I've come to look forward to those types of issues, to be honest. Usually, the people are more than willing to admit they're computer illiterate, and treat me with the respect that someone that's there to help deserves. But just as prevalent are the "keyboard douches", constantly thinking they know more about what's wrong than I do.

Throwing technical terms like "matrix" and "drivers" and "incompatible" at me.

Too bad they're using them in completely incorrect contexts. I might not be the brightest male in existence, but by no stretch of the imagination am I a moron.

I don't have to help them. I really don't. What are they gonna do to me? Punish me for an Article 92? Who gives a flying fuck? The Navy obviously doesn't. I e-mailed as many Navy people as I could when I first got the chance in regards to getting my follow-on orders for where I'm supposed to go beyond Afghanistan, and they blew me off for two weeks.

Deciding that I don't care what happens to me anymore in terms of the Navy, I contacted my detailer, my old career counselor, and another detailer. I figure although they're pretty likely to blow me off if I just contact any one of them, they have to prove to the others that they "legitimately care" about my issues.

And low and behold, I get a response.

A few of them.

My old career counselor tells me they were "just working" the problem, and that it's in the process of being finalized.

My old senior chief tells me that I should watch how I talk in them e-mails, lest I piss off the detailer, and get fucked further.

And my detailer finally grows a pair and decides that he'll talk to me. He tells me that I've got plenty of time to get orders elsewhere, and we'll cross that bridge when we get to it (in a nutshell).

But what really gets me is that the career counselor went so far as to say, and I quote, "The detailer recommends you go to a ship for twelve months to get your ESWS pin. He says it'll really help your career in the long run, but you can go to a shore command if you want to..."

Go to a fucking ship? To get my fucking ESWS pin?

What's an ESWS pin you ask? The ESWS pin, or Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist pin, is a soon-to-be-mandatory uniform device that you can get to further show how "shit hot" you are. But wait, what's this?

My title... what's that say? Does it say... IT2(SW) Shaw?

Why yes, I do believe it fucking does.

That's because I already have my fucking ESWS pin, and have had it for nearly two fucking years, if not two years on the nose.

Pardon the vulgarity, but it pains me to realize that the people who are supposed to know all about me don't know much at all beyond that fucking 2.0 evaluation I got for being a fatbody.

Yes, I'm obsessing.

It's my right.

The Navy is going to fuck me over somehow or another before this is all over.

But I digress.

This post is a bit too long, right now. I'll post more later on or more likely tomorrow.