No, I'm not homeless... but I sure look it, eh?

The reason I'm posting this picture isn't to show you how I look at 6:00 AM, after a shower, holding a strong desire to return to bed. I'm posting this picture to show you that, try as I might, I am physically incapable of growing a beard. This is a week's worth of growth on my smooth baby face. I shaved Sunday morning so I wouldn't look like a ragamuffin at Church, and while I did so I prayed silently that some day I'll be able to grow a real man's beard. Not that I want one, mind you. I just want to know that I could grow one if I wanted to. Thankfully I'm not a member of a Dwarven clan, or else I'd be dealing with a real social stigma.

Cheers.

-Sailor Matt

It's Not You, It's Me. Really.

Here's my dilemma: I fear that my harsh inner criticism has distorted the perspective of my previous post, and in doing so rendered it impossible for others to gain a clear picture of things. Part of the problem is that I left out a significant amount of information, so this is an attempt to fill in those gaps.

I loved to read when I was a child, and I especially enjoyed fantasy books. I read constantly, obsessively. I also enjoyed making up stories of my own, and excelled at writing assignments in school. When I was in 2nd grade, I wrote about two boys who buy the wrong fertilizer for their mother's garden, and spend the rest of their story battling mutant vegetables across town. My teacher was certain that I'd copied this story from somewhere, and she even called my parents in for a conference on the issue (the piece, of course, was my own original work). In fourth grade I wrote a story about a boy who could jump between worlds across time and space, and my mom sent it to a local university publisher to get his thoughts. I was told that the story was good, but it needed to be longer to be considered for a children's novel. He strongly urged that I should finish the story and come back to see him.

During this time I was also excelling at math and science, and I had dreams of becoming a scientist when I grew up. I was in special math classes by then, and in seventh grade I started attending a second school in the afternoon (Center for the Arts and Sciences- CAS) that specialized in math and science. I wanted to be a nuclear physicist. I was also very good at baseball and soccer, and had dreams of playing college sports. Additionally, I spent countless childhood hours drawing alien landscapes, castles and dragons. I loved art, and actually considered enrolling in the art program at CAS in seventh grade instead of the math & science program. I was also actively involved in music. I played the piano reasonably well and excelled on the trombone. I had dreams of being in a cool jazz band.

Somewhere down the line, each of these dreams fizzled out. Especially during my high school years, I stopped playing sports, stopped reading, stopped writing, abandoned the trombone, and barely graduated with my diploma. I was in no shape to go off to college, and began considering the military as an option.

The Navy was a life-changing experience for me. It didn't happen like the flip of a switch, but gradually I began to learn discipline and responsibility, just as the kids that were serving along side me. I worked hard, probably for the first time in my life, and began working from a new list of goals: get promotions, earn high evaluations, and get my degree. As I progressed in my career and my maturity, I added to the list: pursue my master's degree, complete the command mission with pride, guide my junior sailors to success. I even began to re-kindle my childhood love of the written word.

There were a great many things I could not do while I was in the military, and the list of things I wanted to pick up from my childhood is extensive. I've tried to indulge the inner bookworm between classes and duty assignments, and read some great books and series: Harry Potter, The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Gates of Fire, The Name of the Wind, Eragon, Neverwhere, The City of Ember, and others. I probably managed to get through 2-3 books a year, which totals roughly 20-30 books over my decade in the Navy. So, here's how I am a poser: I happy declare that I love fantasy and science fiction books, but my list of reads over the past 15 years is woefully diminutive.

Now that my education is complete and I am out of the Navy, I plan on indulging my inner sci-fi/fantasy fanhood. My minimum goals is a book a month, and my ultimate goal is a book a week. I'm so happy to be reading again! Additionally, a story I began many years ago slowly began to take solid form during my 2005-2006 deployment, and now rests at a nice 61,000 words. I just may complete that novel after all.

Thank you for bearing with me on this exhaustive post. It was very cathartic to voice the demons I carry from my long list of childhood disappointments. Although I can never go back and realize most of my dreams of youth, I can fulfill their spirit in new and exciting ways. I'll never play baseball for University of Michigan, but running a 5k race will fill the void in my soul for a sense of accomplishment in the arena of athleticism. Reading the Bible, learning Spanish, finishing my novel, reading all the books I own, learning computer programming, studying Calculus, and learning how to draw all have elements that trace back to my childhood, and accomplishments in these areas will fill large holes of disappointment in my heart.

If you have read this far, I thank you again for your patience and compassion. Have a blessed day.

-Sailor Matt

I'm Fine, How Are You?

Wow... 1/12th of 2009 has already passed by. I'm off to a great start on many of this year's goals, and I'm hopeful that a few more will drop into the (completed) category in the next two months, namely #2) Secure a well-paying job, and #3) Pay off debt to Mom. Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on some of my longer-term goals. I make a point every day to read 1/365th of the Bible (downloaded a Bible-in-a-year schedule from the Internet), study a daily lesson from my Spanish book, and a section from an electronics text book I borrowed from the library. I also make a point of partaking in a bit of fiction reading every night before bed. This is a daily step toward accomplishing a particularly ambitious goal: #20) Read all the books I own.

Goal #20 has a particularly large element of baggage attached to it. Why is that, you may ask? You probably know lots of fanatic book-readers who buy or acquire far more books than they have time to read in a year. Well, I'm not really like that. I'm really more of a non-book reader. You see, I SAY that I love to read, but I don't really read much. I buy books because I enjoy the idea of being a fantasy and science fiction book fan, but I don't really read them. Does that make any sense? I've owned Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia for 19 years, and to this day have not read either. I think I've read one book in 2008. Or was it less than that? I can't recall. Needless to say, as a fantasy/science fiction fan I'm a pretty poor example. There's a deep-rooted issue here that I still need to identify, but on the surface of it I can at least say that my lack of follow-through has resulted in me acquiring lots of books I want to read, but never really spend the time reading. I'm a sayer, not a doer. I feel pretty shallow in this way.

A lot of my demons have a common evil thread. That core thread is something difficult to put into words... Fortunately, 2009 is the year of rooting out demons! With its army of demons slain, that menacing root will have nowhere to hide :)

Bleh. I despise melodrama. Enough, I say! Where's the beer?

-Sailor Matt

A Shrine to the T-Shirt Gods

I'm a jeans 'n T-shirt kind of guy. Most of the time, anyway. Throughout the years I have accumulated a wide variety of T-shirts, and have grown quite proud of my T-shirt collection. I definitely don't have the most T-shirts, and I probably don't have the best T-shirts, but my collection is uniquely my own and I'm proud to share it. Pictures of them, anyway... I won't actually share my T-shirts. Here's a few of my favorites:












I don't normally fold my T-shirts in a square-ish fashion, but I think it presented them well.

In other news, I'm still a jobless bum but I have second interviews lined up with two companies next week. Wish me luck!

-Sailor Matt

A Perfect End to 2008...

I can't believe I forgot to tell you about my harrowing experience just before the New Year. The wife and I went out for some drinks for her friend's birthday on the Saturday after Christmas. All was well until the drive home, when I picked up a watermelon-sized nail in my tire, which promptly started to go flat on the highway. It was 1:00 AM. I was on an overpass at the time and pulled over to the right to check it out. The flat tire, unfortunately, was on the front driver's side, on the traffic side, and there was no way I could get to it without getting squashed by oncoming cars. So, I had to call a tow truck to tow me home, which took FOREVER. I didn't fall into bed until 5:00 AM. I was so pissed off!

So, this leads me a new item added to my goals of 2009: 'change a tire on my car.' You see, in all my ten years of driving, I've never actually put on a spare. I've not even had a flat tire before. This adventure reminded me of my specific shortcoming in auto maintenance skills, and it was time to fill in my knowledge gaps.

Don't get me wrong. I've seen A Christmas Story. I understand the fundamentals of changing a tire. So when I woke up the next morning, I was full of vim and vigor, eager to learn this new skill. Here's what we started with:


And here's what we ended up with:

My first tire change! So, in honor of this crowning achievement, I'm adding this to my Goals of 2009 list retroactively, and then crossing it off. I don't care that it technically occurred in 2008, I'm doing it anyway. I've also added another key knowledge area of auto maintenance to the list: change the oil in my car. Nope, haven't ever done that one, either. Wonder when I'll get to that...

-Sailor Matt

I Have Angered the Calculus Gods

My original plan was to post "normal stuff" intermingled with my 'Goals of 2009' stuff, but Logankstewart has compelled me to divert a bit. So, I am here today to answer the burning question of the ages: Why is 'Learning Calculus' on my Goals of 2009 list? Here's my gut-wrenching story...

I was an ambitious youth, and eagerly propelled myself to bigger and more challenging coursework in school. I took Algebra in 7th grade when others in my small town were doing general math, and I took geometry in 8th. In high school, I was the only freshman in my Algebra II class, and I succeeded in convincing the head of the math department to let me skip Trig or Pre-Calc and jumping straight into Calculus I as a sophmore. Where do I go from here? Community college. I took Calculus II and Calculus III during my last two years of high school, and the school district footed the bill. What a bright, shining little star I was!

But I had a dark secret. Although I was ambitious, I was also an extremely lazy son of a gun, and rarely (if ever) did homework. There was always tomorrow, or next week, or next semester to crack the books. I barely scraped by with a C in Calc I, and my Calc II grade weighed in at a D. And for Calc III, the grand-daddy of 'em all, I landed a nice, prongy E. In that last class, I would literally drive to school and sit in the parking lot, because I knew that if I went in I'd have to face the professor. What an arrogant little kid, showing up to take college classes (paid for by the school district), and he doesn't have respect enough to put in a little effort. To think I chose all that pain over the pain of doing a little homework...

This lack of discipline pervaded my entire high school career. My sister, with a severe learning disability, graduated with a higher GPA than I did. I laughed secretly at her General Math class her senior year, but at least she passed. Now she's a nurse. She's a true champion.

Oh, and I also missed the deadline for my Federal Aid application for college loans, and my 2.97 GPA certainly didn't land me any scholarships (plus, to get scholarships, you typically have to apply at a college. I hadn't done any of that, either). What to do then? I joined the Navy.

So, why do I want to learn Calculus in 2009? I feel like I owe it to myself, my parents and a lot of other people who put their trust in me, to somehow make up for my past wrong-doings. Because of their effort and support, I should know calculus right now. If I hadn't been such a lazy little deadbeat back then, I'd know calculus right now. So I'm going to fix that. I suspect the blood, sweat and tears of this journey will be cathartic. It had better be.

-Sailor Matt

To Learn Electrical Engineering: Easy As Pie

I feel that an explanation is in order for a few of my resolutions, er... goals. The motivation behind some goals are obvious: paying off credit card debt, for example. But Learning electrical engineering? There's got to be a story there somewhere.

With me, there's always a story.

Here's the short version:
I spent ten years in the Navy working on electronics. I was trained in basic and advanced electronic theory, and was responsible for the test and repair of advanced electronic systems. I earned a General Studies Bachelor of Science degree and an MBA/ Technology Management degree while on active duty, and I still have two years worth of college benefits left. With all my basic classes already out of the way, completing an electrical engineering (EE) degree would not take long, and it would add substantive heft to my resume.

That's an admirable motive, but it's also a lie. Here's the (longer) truth:
I dislike my General Studies (GS) degree. Finishing the degree was a big accomplishment for me, and allowed me to continue on in pursuit of my MBA, but it definitely was the easiest of two paths. Pursuing an EE degree is a long, drawn out endeavor, and I was more of an instant gratification kind of guy. While the EE program would have taken me four years (or more) of hard work, the GS program involved receiving a bunch of college credits based on my training in the military, and earning the rest through college level exams (pass the "History of Nazi Germany" test, you get 3 credits). Excelsior college is regionally accredited, and their tests are approved by the accreditation body, but still... I "tested out" of my college education. I earned my bachelor's degree in 9 months from 20 exams (72 credits) and 60 "job-related" credits, and it cost me $300 (the Navy paid the rest). I feel sensitive about this. I took the easy way, and I could have done better. I dislike my General Studies degree.

So, I have two years worth of college benefits left from the Navy. I can attend University of Texas at Arlington (like 5 miles away), or enroll in distance learning classes at University of North Dakota (electronics labs are done all at once over a two-week period in the summer- I'll have to fly out there). At any rate, I have the opportunity to smooth over this soft spot in my curriculum vitae, which will both help my career and restore a bit of self-esteem.

A noteworthy addendum: completing an EE degree requires full coursework in Calculus (and beyond). So why is Learning Calculus a separate item on my list of goals for 2009? Well, my friend, that's a different story...

-Sailor Matt