Blast from the Past.

Not looking forward to the Seniors. Maybe a little.

OCS Liberty

First Time on Liberty. I’ve lost the ability to feel anything in my forearms and palms. The PT and staying in Port Arms during Close Order Drill for hours have caused my muscles to clench and kill the nerves in both arms. Can’t express how amazing its feels to be full on food and well rested now. Many people never have this opportunity, but I’ll cherish it for the time being. In the four hours Ive had Liberty Ive eaten 5400 calories worth of food. Never felt better. Three more weeks , and I’ll be home.

Shipping off Tomorrow

It’s been a long time coming. Since the seventh grade and during my time in the USNSCC I had dreamed for the day I could take the steps to becoming a Marine Officer. Now I sit here with my friends as they play a game of FIFA, and just cannot fathom the importance and the excitement of what’s to come. Tomorrow’s a big day I’m heading to OCS. A phrase I’ve wanted to live my entire life.

❝

“You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends buried than I’d like to remember, and you watch those waving flags.

You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell me that those people didn’t have a job? I’ll tell you, Howard Metzenbaum; you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men - some men - who held real jobs. And they required a dedication to a purpose - and a love of country and a dedication to duty - that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible.”

-John Glenn

 ❞
Combat Camera
❝ Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”
Theodore Roosevelt,1916 ❞
Officer Candidate School

Well……

There’s 9 more weeks until PLC-Juniors, an experience I’ve been waiting for since I’ve been 12 years old. I don’t feel worried, just pure excitement in the entire process. Day by day I fill with more confidence knowing that if I were to fail that there would be no foreseeable option in my future…. no desirable virtue that I may proceed with, and more reason to never fail in this journey. As I type this there is a future Marine in High School, Work or in the Fleet that I’ll have to lead one day and that’s what needs to be kept in perspective, that whatever struggle I may have that it be overcome.