Spreading my wings part one...

Supp playas??

This is part one in a... I actually don't know how many parts this is going to end up being but I thought if I was going to do a series, it should be about something really important to me. Due in large part to financial woes, I am currently not attending college. But as an alternative I have decided to join the Air Force.

In all my 19 years of living on this earth, I have come to the conclusion that this is indefinitely true; life does NOT care about your plans. When you're up to bat, there is no way to know what life will pitch you next. It could be anything from a fast ball, curve ball, change up, or even a slider. There isn't any way to anticipate what will happen next. One of my favorite movies of all time is Forrest Gump. If there's one thing you should take away from that movie it's that his Momma was right all along. "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get."

If a military recruiter asked me two or three years ago if I was interested in signing up for the armed services. I would have laughed. Me? In the army? Or the navy? Or any service for that matter. Graduating from high school was so far from my mind at that time but things change. What I failed to understand then was that after high school, the training wheels come off, things are not as easy as they once were. I would love to go to college and start getting my life together. But its not that simple. And like I said before, life doesn't care about the plans I have. There are a lot of different avenues I could go down. But at this juncture in my life, I think that the Air Force is the best thing I can choose for myself.

When I tell people I'm going to join the Air Force they usually give me the uh oh look. Come on people, relax. I'm not going to jail and I'm not dying. While there is the possibility of me having to go to war, that doesn't mean that it will happen. Any job I can get as a civilian I can also get in the Air Force. And even though at this current point I don't know what I will be doing while serving, trust me, I will be aiming for anything other then the battlefield.

I'm afraid.

Not so much about going to war because I'm pretty confident that it won't happen. Not even the physical trials and tribulations of basic training. I'm more concerned with who will Brian Cummings be when it is all said and done? Now I know that something has to give. There's no way I will be exactly the same, that's a given. But how much will I lose? How will my loved ones react to who I have become. I don't want to compromise who I truly am, and I believe I won't for the most part. I want to promise that I will be who you know me to be. But people change, circumstances change, nothing will ever always be the same. So in the end it would be an empty promise.

So I think that pretty much sums up part one of this series so please stay tuned for the next installment. The next post won't necessarily be about this topic but I hope you read it anyways. And I hope my blog gives you some food for thought. Or at least keeps you entertained. :)

Peace and happiness to all :)


Humbly yours,

Brian J

edited by Thomas Manton