It's always the car ride convos that get you...

Recently I was in the car with a close friend of mine. We were running some pretty mundane errands, and just sitting in traffic chatting away. I can't remember how we got to the topic, but she asked me "What was the toughest thing you experienced when you were in the military?" Off hand, I couldn't really think of anything. I responded with how I've learned to compartmentalize so much, that I struggled with pin-pointing something specific. I don't know why, but this specific question has been recycling in my head. Why couldn't I think of something specific? Was my career so boring that I didn't have anything that really challenged me? Was I so numb that I didn't feel anything? Maybe it was so traumatic that I just pushed it all so far down that it's buried under years of piled stuff. 

Today, something inside me just clicked. I realized the hardest thing I had to do when I was active duty was leaving home.... 

I left my loved ones

I left a life full of love and support

I left years of making memories with the ones I loved most

My first year was so hard on my emotional state, but I couldn't just quit and go back to being nothing. I couldn't go through all this pain just to fail and go back to the life with no direction. I had to make my leaving worth something. I needed to become someone successful. 

In order to cope, I started reading some self help books. Chicken soup for the soul. Cheesy, I know but it helped me more than I thought it would. It gave me the confidence in myself to keep pushing forward with purpose and drive. It created an alter ego that kept me from myself.

Now I'm on a journey to find her and refine her, not redefine her...

System Reset - Restart

 Dusting off the ol' keyboard, and trying to kick-0ff this blog space again. A lot has happened in 10yrs; I fell in love & got married, we lost family members and added some new ones. We adopted a cute little Schnauzer, we bought our first home, I was promoted at work, I stopped powerlifiting but starting playing softball again. I was offered a position back in L.A., sold our first home, moved back to L.A. and bought our forever home...

In true fashion of big life changes, at some point it all became overwhelming. Although there were a lot of happy moments, there were some really challenging ones that eventually took me down a road where I lost myself a little.

I stopped taking photos, and posting positive thoughts with them. I stopped writing and sharing my thoughts with everyone, but even worse sometimes I even hid them from myself. I had a pretty lengthy run where I was up and down. At one point I even had my very first anxiety attack. 

That single incident was enough for me to start making little changes. It legitimately scared me. I had been bottling everything up and not pouring enough out. I realized I needed to make some adjustments and I needed to do it sooner than later. I started small, because honestly, I didn't have it in me to dive back into my journal. I bought one earlier that year and was off to a great start, but then I just fell off. 

I noticed I was becoming easily overwhelmed and distracted. So, I turned to the one thing that always centers my soul, music. No, I didn't start playing the piano again or anything. I simply invested in some noise cancelling AirPods and a nice pair of over the ear headphones. It was my way only way of tuning out the outside noise that had made its way in and rustled the insides of me. It allowed me to sit and focus on the one thing I needed to get done, whether it was a project at work, a project at home, or a project within. I had to make the conscious effort to work one thing at a time. 

So hear I am. Years later, I began journaling again. Now that I finally feel like I have the mind space, the physical space is a nice addition too, I'm ready to just put my thoughts back out there. I know I'm not the only one who has ever been in these places, so I'm open to hearing how anyone else has gotten through, what they are currently going through, or how they are trying to get started. 

Let's journey together...