My week sucks, but my life could be worse

Well, this week has not improved much, probably the worst week as far as work stuff goes in my career. At least I am discovering who in my unit I can trust and who I can go to when I need help for personal stuff. And I am earning the respect - I think - of at least some of the people I work with. Even if I am not doing my job right, since it is so new to me, they see me at least trying hard and learning. And they are also learning to take orders from me - well, for the ones that outrank me, not sure you would call it an order, but, they do what I tell them to do.

Had another double header tonight, and, as usual, we got creamed. Our Public Affairs guy was out there to take pictures, got roped into playing since we were short players, so I grabbed the camera when we were batting and took the pictures. So if any of the pictures from tonight's games get used, I get the byline on the photo. I also wrote the story for the Army Birthday events from last week, so I get my byline on the story for that, too. I didn't take any pictures that day, so someone else's byline goes on the photos, but hey, I am going to be published... even if it is just a magazine for the unit. Still something not a lot of people get.

At the game, we got a slight shock to our system about the realities of war. We had a couple of the guys from the unit come to the game to get one of the officers. We are on rotation for casualty notification. They had come to let our officer know that they were waiting on the spouse to be notified in another state, then he had to do the notification for the soldier's parents. Some people think that we have it so easy being in the army, that we are overpaid for sitting on our butts. They don't want to see that we are poorly paid, underappreciated by many, while working long hours, without overtime, depending on our job, and subject to deployment at anytime where we can die. We do not have it easy. What the world likes to see and point at is us trying to unwind and deal with the daily life we have choosen for ourselves. And this daily grind may be sitting behind a desk for me right now, but some days I ask myself why I love my career so much and don't quit, but ask to be deployed, when my unit would happily keep me here as long as possible, not let me, let alone require me to go airborne, and just keep me all around safe.