"Ride, Captain, Ride Upon Your Mystery Ship"

Today is the BIG day! The one we've all been waiting for, the big one, the new start, the end of the line, the... okay, you get the picture. So my mom has been bugging the crap out of me to do this, and it might be a nice way to chronicle my thoughts and observations of the experience known as Joining the Military (cue menacing music).

I drove from Harrison to Montogomery yesterday listening to some great CDs that my friends put together for me. Everything from "Sweat" by C & C Music Factory (Mary's pick) to "You've Got a Friend" (thanks for that tear-jerker, Lucia) to the above, title of this blog (nice one, Melissa). Thanks to all of you who contributed your music. I absolutely love the CD. It's like having a little piece of you everywhere I go. Melinda put together some selections she titled, "Arbitrary Diversions" with instructions to me not to analyze it or try to find any hidden meanings in there- they're just random songs. However, she was wrong! She threw in some songs with a lot of meaning! :)
That song from Hope Floats, yeah, that was in there, and then "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure, mhmm, that one's got some meaning too. The CDs helped pass the miles and were a nice distraction from the spinning thoughts in my mind. I made it to Montgomery by 7:45pm, checked into a hotel, and got a pizza. I was asleep by 9:30pm.

This morning has been pretty lazy with a four mile run, some reviewing of paperwork, and checking email. Speaking of email, Melissa sent a quotable quote (italics are mine):

Choosing Faith Over Fear
Faith demands that, despite our fear, we get as close as possible to the truth of the present moment so that we can offer our hearts fully to it, with integrity. Faith is willing to engage the unknown, not shrink back from it. Faith doesn’t mean the absence of fear. It means having the energy to go ahead, right alongside the fear. The word courage in English has the same etymological root as the French coeur, which means “heart.” With courage we openly acknowledge what we can’t control, and place our hearts wisely on our ability to connect with the truth of the moment and to move forward into the uncharted terrain of the next moment.
We might (and often must) hope and plan and arrange and try, but faith enables us to be fully engaged while also realizing that we are not in control. To be able to make an intense effort—to heal, to speak, to create, to alleviate our suffering or the suffering of others—while guided by a vision of life with all its mutability, evanescence, dislocations, and unruliness, is the particular gift of faith.
-Sharon Salzberg

[Gulp] brought me to tears, the first of several this morning (and I'm anticipating many more to come). So, here I am... ready for the adventure. I'll try real hard not to get too sappy and whinny. The purpose of the blog is to provide you all (anyone who wants to read it) with an inside view of what it is like to "join the military." Being one who has historically been pretty critical of the military, I find it rather ironic that this is where I am... but then, you already saw the irony too. ;)

Ride on....