My Future (Update)
Thursday, September 8th, 2005
Quote of the Day: “It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.”
- Unknown
If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, please do so now. This is important.
Tonight, I sat down with my wife and discussed what I outlined yesterday. Just explaining it to her made it clearer in my head on what my choices were and how the timelines worked out. It boiled down to this:
The easy path. (sit back, relax, and retire in 2007)
The harder, unlikely path. (get caught up with education, get promoted, get the MOI job, stay in until 2010).
For so long, I had accepted that I was getting out so the second path was a hard sell. The hard path IS actually hard. REALLY hard. And the easy path is EXTREMELY easy and rewarding.
The hard path is rife with potential disappointment and failure. Any stumble, any non-alignment with all the moons in the solar system will knock the plan out of control.
All my career I’ve taken that path and it took a lot to admit that I had resigned myself to accept the easy path as the last waltz in my Marine Corps career. After our talk, I had pretty much decided that I SHOULD take the harder path because it promised so much reward, even if I didn’t actually succeed. I would know that I TRIED dammit, and what has my tagline to all my personal email said for the last 5 years or so?
“And of course you can’t become
if you only say what you would have done…”
But I was still shaky as I returned to my computer. Checking my email, I received a single correspondence as I sat down.
From Sergio Garcia (my Drill Instructor from 1987). Here is the “random” email he sent to me:
FEAR IS CONQUERED BY TAKING ACTION.
Most of your obstacles would melt away if,
instead of cowering before them
or procrastinating about dealing with them,
you make up your mind to walk boldly through them.
Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
When you dare to face the things that scare you,
you open the door to freedom and success.
Don’t be afraid to take the steps you need to take
to make those positive changes in your life.
To fight your fears, you must act.
Your fears increase when you wait, put off, or postpone.
If you understood your situation enough,
you would never be afraid.
The attainment of your dreams is but a determined action away.
Successful people take action.
Here was my response to him:
Top,
Your message is divine intervention.
My wife and I just had a long conversation about my professional future and I was faced with two paths:
The easy one where I ignore my PME requirement, turn down promotion so I don’t incur a 2-year obligation, and get out in 2007.
The other choice was to bust out the PME, get promoted in early 2007, get accepted to the MOI program at the University of Washington, and stay in until 2010.
I’m not kidding, we sat at the table and discussed our options. She said she’d support me in anything I decided to do but encouraged me to go for the unlikely/difficult path.
Me: “A lot of things have to line up for it to work.”
Carrie: “We’ve done it before and it worked out somehow. I think you would feel better if you tried and failed than if you just took the easy way out.”
These thoughts were swirling in my head, knowing that I wanted to do it but scared that I would fail. I came up with many “what ifs” and the list was long and legitimate. Any link in the chain will kill my chances.
And then you sent me this.
Could it be any clearer?
- Capt G
Free Advice for Today: “Don’t scimp in order to leave money to your children.”
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
.jpg)
