Training Elephants: October 2015

Hello Faithful Readers (or those who will be!),

It has been 3 years since my last post and it's time to start writing, and reflecting, as I launch into a New Normal. The last posts followed my adventures as I again prepared to jump onto a Navy hospital ship, this time in #TheMiddle of the Pacific. Fast-foward a few years, and a few lives' worth of experiences (~40 countries, heart break and heart repair, fieldwork in a combat zone, a plane crash, a car crash, trips in planes, trains, and automobiles and now: life in the midwest). I am currently living in Kansas City, MO (more specifically, in Parkville) and life is good. And I am, as I usually am, feeling ready for a [big] change. As with this last three years, I cannot possible predict what this will look like but I am taking some time reflect, plan, and learn. If there is one lesson that weaves throughout these experiences, it is the value of critical thinking and informed decision-making.

As I launch into the next chapter, here are the topics I plan to write about in the next few months. I'll plan to catch up on the past 3 years while zooming ahead at what the New Normal will look like:

Career Musings + Planning
Relationships
Healthy Mind + Healthy Body
Podcasts and Professional/Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)
Travel (local and abroad!)
Financial Independence

Taxes
Investments (and "Robo Investing" vs. DIY investments)
Renting vs. Owning
Rolling over (and managing) Retirement

Fieldwork in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

Commuting to work around Eastern Afghanistan

Hottest place I've ever been - napping outside (tent was 130 F)

Last picture before loading up for fieldwork in Afghanistan.

Startline: Here's where we start. I am 31 years old and I have a comfortable, stable job teaching graduate-level applied critical thinking and anthropology for a military university. I am the first female they have ever hired and I am 1-4 decades (yep, 11-40 years!) younger than my coworkers. Since the beginning of my career, actually, my peer group has averaged the same age as my parents. This has provided some unparalleled life experience, most notably my comfort level working with and around senior leaders, mentorship, and musings about what I may or may want to accomplish by the time I catch my "peer" group.

However, as a result of this career adventure I have also felt perpetually isolated, an outsider on the inside. I am a civilian embedded in military environments, a woman in a man's world, a millennial among retirees. I spend a significant portion of my time finding and pursuing opportunities, and as a result I have a constant conveyor belt of opportunities up for grabs and never quite feel content. To steal from my current course curriculum on perception and interpretation, I am at times an ambitious, go-getter maven (by some definitions) and a flighty, non-committal millennial (by others' definitions). The truth is that I have an insatiable curiosity and subscribe to the notion that the more I know, the more I know I don't know. Which leads me to wanting to know more, about everything. To help me manage this knowledge, and to attempt to share what I'm learning I'll be posting here. This will act as my evening reflection space and a way to track how I'm doing.

Let's see, outside of work-life there's a life-life to write about, too. It's been 18 months since I returned from Afghanistan and documenting my transition and re-integration is going to be part of this blog. I read anything I can about emerging "hindsight" with regard to our work, expectations, and hopes in Afghanistan. As I have pursued a career in service, I also find that separating work and life is difficult, and may not be necessary (but deserves a discussion!). Perhaps the toughest adjustment is balancing life/work (both physically and emotionally). I have trouble turning off what happens at work, and at work I have trouble managing my time and focusing on just one thing at a time.

Admittedly I have gained back most of the 20 lbs. I lost during fieldwork in the desert and that has created a physical reminder of the changes that have occurred since leaving for Afghanistan in April 2013. The physical weight also reflects a mental burden that has been growing in the past two years associated with life in #TheMiddle and trying to sort out who I am, what I want to do, and why. These past few years have been marked by significant transitions and adventures, I'm told they number in what others would consider a lifetime of experiences lived in 3 short decades: traveling and working through 40+ countries, moving from a land-locked war zone to slow-moving, land-locked community, balancing a relationship with a significant other who is never less than 6 timezones away, and a daily life that drops me into the #TheMiddle of a fascinating and challenging work environment.

Anyway, if you've made it this far - THANK YOU! Here goes my reflections, ideas, and reflections from Life in the Middle...
(A very short year in review, with many many memories missing):