Process - Update #2 (Doctor's Note)

Navigating the maze in the Triwizard Tournament seems easier than getting in the Navy.

*Sigh*  After having a chat with my doctor (and giving her a $25 co-pay), I went to the recruiter to ask what exactly I need to do (these guys are clear as mud).  After 3 of these dudes stood around for awhile deliberating, they came to the conclusion that not only does my regular doc need to write another letter, but I also need to go to a psychiatrist for a legit psychological eval.  Another doc appointment, another (higher) co-pay, another couple weeks 'til the next step. 

The (sort-of) bright side:  After taking some medicine for over a month, my weight sky-rocketed due to fluid retention.  I was already at the maximum acceptable weight, and now I'm well over it, making me the heaviest I have ever been in my life.  I've stopped taking the medicine, so in a week or two the water weight should start coming off.  Before I started it, I was actively dieting and working out to get UNDER the max weight.  I really hope that underneath all that water is the result of all my hard work!!  So having to wait longer for all this other doctor stuff is giving me the time I need to get back to the appopriate weight.

What I'm learning from these set-backs: 
~ Patience. 
~ Enjoying the life I'm living the in mean time. 
~ Dedication to the goal. 

I'll be a Sailor one of these days.  :)

Process - Update (Doctor's note)

Finally made that doctor's appointment for tomorrow morning.  I'm definitely nervous, though I doubt I have a reason to be.  I'm just scared of anything that might hurt my chances of getting in the Navy.  If the appointment doesn't take too long, I'll drop the results off at the recruiter on my way to work.  Then we'll play the waiting game some more!  Check back tomorrow night to see how it all went.  :)

Reason #2: Join the Navy, See the World

"Most travel-hungry people overlook the Navy when searching for a job. People oppose the idea for many different reasons. However, if you believe that the humanitarian and international aid efforts are genuine – then you may want to consider it as an alternative to the cubicle life of most people you know."
-Theodore Scott

(The quote above is from this article.)  My closest friends know that I'm into globes.  Weird obsession, I know, which is why up until now, only my closest friends knew. :-P  But I spot them everywhere (especially on TV) and play with them every chance I get.  I still don't have my own, but I'm afriad I might have a house full of them one day.  The last time I was globe-gazing, I learned about Lesotho, a country in Africa that is entirely surrounded by another country, South Africa, and which I think is the only country like this in the world.  I never learned that in geography!!  All this to say I want to travel.  I mean, I have the bug BAD.  I've been collecting travel brochures and planning imaginary trips all my life.  I'd like to see the whole world eventually, but my biggest desire is the Pacific Islands.  I belong there.  I'm constantly consuming literature about their cultures, geography, languages, flora & faua.  Lucky for me, there are plenty of Navy bases in the Pacific!

Recently I realized that my desire to travel is not a dream, it's an expected reality.  Then I immediately realized this reality would not come to pass if I continued in my present life.  I have no means with which to travel, and it's highly unlikely I'd have them anytime soon.  I can imagine myself as an 88-year-old lady in a nursing home, still flipping through a calendar of Hawaii and dreaming of the places I never got to see. I am careful about not believing every perk the Navy advertises hook, link, & sinker, but from talking to many sailors from past and present, seeing the world WILL happen in the Navy. For example, I have keepsakes from all over Asia that my grandfather sent home to his children while deployed (including a glass buoy from the Sea of Japan in my living room), and have seen current Facebook photos of sailor friends all over the world.

And the best part?  Once I'm finally ready to settle down, I'll have a world of places to pick from. :)

Results

Whew, it's over!  I ran the Monument 10K on Saturday with three other lovely girls.  We had a blast and pushed each other hard, and it completely wiped me out!

My time: 79:02

Last year: 81:49

I only beat last year's time by 2:47.  I think it's okay, because I trained about the same last year and this year. I'm more concerned about improving my running overall, so I wasn't training specifically for the 10K. However, there is a HUGE difference between the beginning of my habitual-working-out-life and now. I beat my time in my first 10K (2008) by 15:32!! Now I'd say that's an improvement. :)

Here's what I'm up against now:

The bottom is a little blurry, but that's okay, since I won't be needing those numbers. My goal is to be comfortably in the middle of the chart BEFORE I get to boot camp.

Reason #1: Getting Paid to Look (and feel) Good!

“Exercise is done against one's wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse”

- George Sheehan

(These reasons are not posted in any particular order).

I'm starting with fitness because in 2 days I'll be running the Richmond Monument 10K.  This is my 3rd time running this particular race.  But there's something very important to note:  I AM NOT A RUNNER.  My body was just not made for it.  In fact, I'm not athletic at all.  I asked to do cheerleading and basketball when I was a kid, but my parents could tell I didn't have a shred of ability, and didn't let me sign up.  P.E. ended up being the worst subject of all my school years, and I was always the last kid on the track, huffing and puffing my way through the 1-mile run.

I didn't notice as many problems with a lack of energy while I was a kid, but somewhere during high school, I became overwhelmingly exhausted at all times.  I slept through my vacation to Canada that my grandparents took me on, and continued to sleep through college, and life in general.  And being physically exhausted leads to failing at life, which leads to depression, which leads back around to sleeping all the time.  Awful downward-spiraling cycle!  Watching my dad deal with his version of what I had throughout my life showed me that there IS a cure - REGULAR EXERCISE!  I had always viewed exercise as a form of legal torture, but once I decided I wanted to live life for real, I knew that I just had to frickin' do it.  Now I work out regularly, and I’m a much healthier, happier, and well-adjusted person. But even though I realize now how great those endorphins are, I still don’t have much self-discipline in this area. I pretty much require a gym partner, or my workouts don’t last longer than a week. I love that being fit is a major part of the military lifestyle, and that I’ll always have a reason to stick with it. Maybe by the time I retire, I’ll finally be self-disciplined enough to work out on my own. ;)

P.S. Another thing I'm doing during this long waiting period is making sure I'm ready physically - my goal is to be so fit before bootcamp, that I'll be excited about PT!

Reasons Why

"While others have excuses,

I have my reasons why" ~Nickel Creek

Throughout next few weeks, I'll be posting my reasons for wanting to join the Navy.  Since I tend to be a long-winded female, I'll just post one reason at a time, so that I can discuss it in detail - I've never claimed to be a simple person!  :P  At the end of each one I'm going to ask you questions, and I would REALLY, REALLY love it if I could hear from you - your own reasons, your own experiences...  Maybe your reasons for joining didn't turn out the way you hoped?  Or maybe you discovered new reasons once you joined that excite you and make you glad you did?  I want to go into this *HUGE* committment with eyes wide open!

Process

Back in the day, if someone got it in their head to take off for the military, they could virtually walk into a recruiter’s office, sign up, and be headed to boot camp the next day. When I was in high school, I had recruiters calling my house. In 2005 I was seriously considering joining, and after I had contacted a recruiter, I couldn’t get them off my back. They called all the time to check on me. I still wish I had not gotten side-tracked, and stuck with the idea the first time – I’d be 5 years on my way to retirement by now! But oh well, here I am in 2010, and it’s a very different world. The lack of stable jobs available has turned the military into a very attractive prospect for those who wouldn’t have previously considered it. Right now it’s terribly difficult to enlist as a male. They are currently only readily accepting females and SEALs, and the wait time for a job is about 6-12 months. So I’m lucky I’m a female, but the recruiters still aren’t in a hurry!

I started talking to a recruiter in the Richmond office in October 2009. I told her I definitely wanted to join, and that as soon as I graduated from college in December, I wanted to go to MEPS and take the ASVAB. I guess she stopped caring about her recruit contacts, since she was due to transfer somewhere else around Christmas. So she led me to believe I could just schedule a time to go to MEPS, do the test and physical, pick my job, and swear in. Yeah, not so much. Once another recruiter took over, he sent me preliminary paperwork – a 17 page background check form. I pretty much had to write down every detail of my life for the past 7 years. Hooray for me, my last 7 years were the most tumultuous of my life, encompassing several schools, jobs, living arrangements, etc. To get everything straight I had to sit down and write out a timeline of my life. I had to find transcripts and pay stubs just to get the dates correct. It felt like ripping off a bandaid, as parts of those 7 years I have purposely tried to forget. I had to find one of my previous addresses by going through an old memory box and looking for a letter someone had sent to me there! The entire ordeal was draining, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard complaints from others about it. Then I realized most of the kids joining are about 18, have lived only at their parents house, just graduated from high school, and have had maybe one job. Oh. That explains it.

That was just the beginning. I proudly took my stack of documents to the recruiting office, only to be sat down to start filling out piles and piles of more forms. Asking me personal questions, and medical questions that I didn’t always know the answer to. I had no idea how little I really knew about myself!! There were a couple medical red flags, so they just told me to go get those taken care of and come back later. They didn’t even keep my background check form I had worked so hard on. I went home discouraged, and unwilling to hurry to the next part of the process. I hated that I had to sit there and tell this random dude everything about my personal life, and it wasn’t even enough to get me to the next step in signing up.

After a couple weeks of lolligagging, I made the necessary doctor’s appointments, and collected, hopefully, everything else the recruiters needed. I went to the office yet again, still clutching my huge form, and tried again. I had to re-do some medical forms, and dude told me they still might not be enough. He said he’d send all my forms along, and some people in an office somewhere would look through it and tell them if I was fit to send to MEPs. He said that should take 2 weeks, and that I would hear from them. He also wouldn’t take my security form, and let me in on the fact that it was just a worksheet – the REAL form had to be filled out by me on the official Navy website. Sweet. To this day, I have maybe half of it done. Four weeks passed, and I finally worked up the courage to call them back (since they clearly weren’t going to contact me anytime soon as they promised). Guess what?? My doctor’s note wasn’t good enough. Since I had taken Zoloft some time back, I now have to go back and get a psych evaluation from my doc. Yet ANOTHER co-pay, time off from work, and general set-back. Discouragement sets in again.

The good news is that I know I’m not alone. Some people have even stickier things to untangle before the Navy will let them in. The hard part comes when all the well-meaning folks in my life ask me about my progress. “Nope, still trying to get the paperwork processed…nope, haven’t even gone to MEPS yet…nope, still have no clue when I’m leaving…” It gets old. And what if the worst happens, and I have to tell the world that the Navy won’t take me after all? I really don’t see any reason they won’t, but I’m scared to bank on it until I have an absolute answer. Part of the reason this is so nightmarish is that it feels like a replay of trying to graduate from college. “Nope, still don’t know when I’m gonna graduate...yes, I know I’ve been in school 7 and a half years…nope, they still haven’t accepted my graduation application…” Never would have dreamed the next stage of my life would be a repeat!

So Monday I'll schedule my next doctor's appointment, and try to get this frickin' show on the road!!

Coming soon... WHY I'm joining the Navy... & My Military Heritage