So two years ago today, Holly and I arrived in Tampa, FL, with our newborn Stella, Lucas (who had been with my parents since my divorce in 2009), and an empty tank of gas and an empty wallet, but a brand new FAA license. We found a pad in downtown Tampa, nice little pre-furnished 2bd 2bth overlooking the international airport where I worked for United Airlines. Great gig, met some great friends. Definitely different from the military.
Then the Dyncorp calls me up, asks me to work at Patrick AFB for the Department of State for an outrageous salary, when working there was my dream since my pre-military days. So I gladly took the job. Again, we found a kick ass pad right on the beach, got to spend a lot of time with Gary Watkins and my cousins. Unfortunately, six months later I read in the paper that 60,000 space shuttle employees were getting laid off, and within 24 hours of reading that in the news, I got the call that I was being laid off too. Well, when you’ve got 60,000 people with clearances willing to work for half of what you’re making, you can’t really expect to hold on to your job. That kinda shook my confidence, although I was told it was a 6-month gig. But I was getting used to living back home. We had babysitting, a church, a beach 100 paces off our front door, we had it good.
Then I get a call a day later saying there’s a job offer at NAS Whiting Field with Sikorsky Aerospace. I remembered Milton was somewhere around Pensacola so in my mind I saw it as moving back to Destin. I found I was quite mistaken. It took us an hour and a half to get to Destin from our house in Milton and we didn’t know anyone in Pensacola. The beach was too long of a drive for a weekend. However, the special trips we made to Harbor Walk, Travis’s house, Dom’s birthday party, Billy Bowlegs, and who could forget the Thanksgiving party we through when we had 15 people sleeping in the house at one time, and then the hurricane party we threw that had me, Holly, Michelle, and Ryan jumping on a trampoline at night in the pouring rain in our underwear throwing wads of shampoo and shaving cream at eachother. We had some of our best times in that house, despite the remote location.
NAS Whiting Field, working for Sikorsky, was by far the best job I have ever had, bar none. I worked with great people, met great friends, had the most kind-hearted boss I could have asked for, and an abundance of talent to learn from and willing to teach me all around. I worked there for over a year and actually loved every day I came to work. When word came down that the T-34’s were being phased out and we would be on a 90-day TDY to Corpus Christi to help them get ready for the T-6’s, I was ready to go anywhere with this company. My confidence was at an all time high.
Then we get to Corpus Christi and everything turned to shit. Everything. We had 16 people and only two rental cars. They put us in a fleabag hotel 30 miles from base and refused to reimburse gas costs. I was elected union steward for our detachment and in the first two weeks had to referee two fights (free beer at the pool for happy hour, it happens). The city was dirty, the restrooms in the hangar smelled like no one had ever flushed the toilets, ever. The planes were dirty and as I discovered the first time I hopped in one to crank it up, not maintained well at all. Pets crap on the beach and no one cleans it up, our house was in a barely decent neigborhood and we paid $200 more per month for it than the house we had in Milton that was 500 sq ft bigger. And a $200 water bill? We knew we had to go. Then we get told we are no longer on TDY, offered a job and told accept it or be laid off. Well I said hell no, I’m going back to Florida. Then they came back with a counter offer, a promotion and a CDI stamp (USAF 7-level basically). The pay was great, so I accepted. Everything went further and further downhill and has been since.
So I put a resume out. L-3 at NAS Pensacola calls, offers to match my pay and job title to come work for them on T-45s. Then General Atomics out of San Diego calls, offers to match my pay and make me a tech writer. I end up turning San Diego down only because of the high cost of living and accepted a job with L-3. My start date for L-3 is this coming Monday, the 26th. Yesterday, a month after turning General Atomics down, they call me with a counter offer, asking what it would take to hire me. I quote them some off the wall yearly salary and a moving package. They accept. So as I type this, I’m about to go in to work in the morning to out-process and bring my toolbox back home. We plan to move to Pensacola because it’s a nice steady job. But some things are tugging at me.
The job in San Diego is a jeans and button up, 9-5 job in a big city. That’s always been a dream of mine. I never clean up. In the Air Force I was made fun of for being metro, I cleaned up more in the military working long hours with little time to myself way more than I do now working steady 40-hour shifts. I have no style. For a while there I was getting tattoos, playing in bands, dating (which I don’t miss, but it was still helping me to define myself), then it all stopped when I got married. Why does that happen? I accepted a job with L-3 because I’m a decent mechanic and this is a decent job that pays enough to live comfortably. Work, come home, eat dinner, catch the news, respond to a few emails, go to bed, repeat process all over again.
I married a girl that’s just like me. We both have ambitions and we’re both young. It seems like by default married with a family means “settle”. I only need 20 more hours to get my pilot’s license. I should already have my AA and be partially through with my BS degree if UNM would hurry up and send me my degree. I’ve written an album 90% of the way and then just stopped. I find myself going around angry at who knows what, and end up either pacing around smoking and wanting to punch holes in the garage door, or I take my valium and curl up and listen to Nirvana and just think about stuff. Why is it that I always look back and see my accomplishments but wherever I am at the time I am never satisfied?
Everyone asks me when PTSD is brought up, what caused it? A doctor here in Texas didn’t even let me answer once, she just started into a sermon on how Jesus loves me and that killing in battle is not murder (yeah… I know, I’m laughing too, but I didn’t argue as she meant well). Well the truth of it is, I’m embarrassed to even admit that I have it. I have my fellow servicemen, and the great friends I’ve made at the local DAV lodges who REALLY saw some EFFED UP stuff and have PTSD from it. Art, my “big brother” as we call eachother, drinks himself to sleep at night because the last scene in Stanly Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” was a reality for him. Why do I have PTSD? Not from Iraq. I miss Iraq. I want to go back. If something broke, I fixed it. If there was a need, I filled it. Bad guys were after us and we were all on the same team. I felt like I was a part of something. When I got home, back to the states, I hated it. I started drinking constantly, trying to escape the reality of reality itself. I was married to someone I wasn’t in love with, I was scared to be a father, and to top it all off the same military that gave me a sense of family started invading my private life and generally turned me into a basket case. Nope, I have PTSD because I had my entire life taken away from me in the course of about 4 months, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Now, I reject all authority, refuse to be held down, and have a number of things that at any time can cause me to lose my freaking mind and erupt into a total mental breakdown out of nowhere. But that’s beside the point. The real point here is that I’m about to hit 30 and I think it’s about time that I shake off some dead weight and just fly. I’ve always been my worst enemy, and when I look back at the mistakes I made, they were stupid mistakes that I made that were avoidable.
So I guess moving forward, the conclusion I’ve come to is that I kinda need to back to being myself. I’m cocky, arrogant, and a complete prick. That’s why I’ve been posting so much about deleting people on Facebook lately, because I know I need to shake off dead weight, but I feel bad. Well I think my spine has been slowly growing back and I’m finding my feet again. Whiting Field showed me how things SHOULD be, and working here in Texas forced me to have to stand my ground. I think I have now come full circle and am back to being me again. As as it happens to be, since I’ve come to this conclusion, the people that matter the most to me have come back into my life right when I needed them to. So that’s a good sign.
I don’t know whether or not I’ll take the job in San Diego, I think I’m gonna give L-3 a shot first, but I think this will be my last mechanic job. I think it’s time for me to drop the chains and fly.
