Going to War

I like to put it as bluntly as possible. I'm going to war. I'm going to try to blog as much of my experience as I can while being careful not to add details that would compromise operational security. Really, I'm viewing this as a life-altering event and I want to chronicle the ways that my life will be altered over the next 9 months. I hope to come home the same person, just smarter and in better physical condition. Is that too much to ask?

I have some very specific goals that I want to achieve and I think blogging will help me stay on track. Obviously the pushup bet was a failure but I credit the blog for keeping it going as long as it did. It's really my shoulder's fault that I wasn't able to complete the challenge. I don't really anticipate many of my goals failing because of physical reasons(knock on wood) so we're blogging to keep the motivation up. Here is a short list of things I would like to do over the next 9 months:

Learn decent Japanese
Play a few songs on the guitar
Be able to run a 3:29:36 marathon in September 2014
Lift weights/circuit train 6 days a week
Be ready for a Pilot in Command check ride in August 2014

The last one is the most important because it's the key to my main, unwritten goal, of coming home in one piece. We're probably going to have a lot of down time and learning more about safe flying is the number one goal. But you can only read so much about helicopters so I'm going to use the other goals to balance my deployed life.

For now, I'm just going to keep this small. Dookie and Jimmy will probably be the only readers. But I'm hoping that I'll make enough progress over the next few months to advertise the blog a little more and show people how much you can accomplish even in shitty situations. How you can find silver linings in everything. How you can go to war and come home stronger.