2011 has begun and so far, it's kicked off exactly as I had hoped. We're swamped with work at the biz. It's mostly general contracting stuff that's keeping us busy. That's not ideal, but we can make money doing the GC stuff. Much better than the days when we weren't turning a profit. Not sure how long this will last, but this is a business where you are at the mercy of the weather.
There's no reason to believe that we aren't profitable again, though.
Not too long and I will be taking the LSAT. Yeah, after all these years, and at my age, I'm contemplating returning to school. Part of it was taking Arabic last fall. It was a real motivator. I won't say that it reminded me that school is fun, because I don't think it is. However, it reminded me that if you stay on top of your studies, you're going to do just fine.
Even if my business does well, I want to diversify my income streams and this is a good way to do it. Law is a profession people can practice well into old age.
Of course, this presumes I'm accepted into a law school, which is pretty far from a foregone conclusion. All I can do is submit my application and take it as it goes.
I had a bit of a crisis of motivation regarding my Navy service for the past few weeks. The travel was wearing me out. Also, the cost of the travel, since it comes out of my own pocket, is a bummer. Granted, I knew that coming in, but the reality of it was heavier than I might have anticipated.
Plus, well... it's starting to feel a lot more like work and a lot less like fun.
I was turning in my paperwork to get my $2,000 bonus for taking Arabic, and had to make a choice. If I submitted the paperwork, I also needed to commit to another 2 years in the reserves.
I'm also disgusted by the state of things in the country right now. Maybe it's always been this corrupt, but as folks know, I feel that the Wall Street bailouts really laid bare just how fairness and equality are only buzzwords we throw around when the monied interests aren't busy robbing us blind.
Am I really willing to die for a country whose number one priority is to make sure that rich people get richer? Seriously, what sort of simpleton sacrifices his life for a country that exists only for the benefit of the wealthy, and where the wealthy are not even willing to sacrifice their quarterly bonuses?
I think this is a crisis of faith. Military service, I have always felt, is a calling much like the clergy. I agree with Dubya when he says that if a person has never had a crisis of faith, that that means the person simply hasn't thought about their faith very much.
Sometimes faith means being unable to reconcile certain things, and simply believing that, on the whole, the good done outweighs any bad. Maybe that's where I am with serving the United States.
I am okay with hitching up for another two years. That's not that long of a time. I've completed 3 years already and it went by in the blink of an eye. I only have 2 more trips to Texas this fiscal year. Once those are done, I will be halfway through my tour with the contracting unit in Fort Worth.
I still stand a chance at mobilization, though clearly the mobilizations are becoming less and less frequent. Once I get my contracting certification, I will be fair game, but a lot can happen. I won't have my certification until next fiscal year. By then, Obama has promised we'll be out of Iraq. All I can do is wait and see.
The future prospects for my reserve career don't look good, though. It's a lot of guys competing for very few billets. For promotion, if I don't mobilize, I'll be behind everybody who did. The odds of me having to fly around at my own expense if I stay in the reserves is pretty good once I get to O-5, and even O-4. (I will be an O-3 in less than a year.)
Still, that's a ways off. I am thinking I'll do a couple more years. I'd like to leave the service as at least an O-3, if I leave. By then, with any luck, the wars will be pretty much completely wound down. They just won't need as many of us.
I joined the military because there were two wars going on and the manpower demands were really hurting the folks who were serving.
Once the wars are over, I will probably beat my sword back into a plowshare and focus on trying to make enough money to put my son through college and put myself through retirement.
In the mean time, life is good. Need more of the same for a while. 2010 was a brutal year in a lot of ways. I hope to be able to return to what life was like in 2008 and 2009. Things were pretty darned perfect back then.
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