Yes.

For the past two days the American tax payer has paid me a pretty good wage to crawl around in the sand and shoot a machine gun. MY machine gun.

Yes.

I can't help but feel that somehow on a grander, cosmic scale, this is cheating.

Everything I ever thought was cool is happening here. As a child I had a fixation with gas masks. That was the coolest miltary gear to me. I wanted a gas mask - bad. After years of searching I found a half broken one that never fit at a thrift store once and I'd be willing to bet that sorry POS is still in my closet somewhere. Almost by accident I now own a gas mask. I didn't even appreciate the momentous occasion about to take place the day I was issued my mask until I was a few steps away from the sizing station. It's kind of amazing/disturbing that in the midst of such a serious exercise I can find some childish joy, but I have to say that at that moment I felt like an 8 year old on post-apocalyptic Christmas morning. Here's hoping I never need the damn thing but it sure is cool to cross little Mike's wish off the list.

We've been shooting a fair amount lately with a lot more to come. Having grown up a backwoods retard I thought I was pretty good with a musket, but I've found I have some room to improve when shooting things other than discarded farm equipment and beer cans. The techincal training here has been pretty good so far. Not learning a whole lot of new stuff but the excessive practice is making me a lot better. We're moving off the fixed ranges more to pop-up targets at different distances (out to 300 meters today - drilled it. All paper terrorists wasted. Sleep tight; you're welcome) and will be doing some stress shoots starting tomorrow. A stress shoot involves donning our full battle rattle and running around some kind of physical course to get us out of breath and exhausted before we fire. Don't know how I'm going to do with that - I've been pretty sick the last few days due to allergies/living in 2000 square feet with 40 dirty dudes/no sleep. I'm on the mend but definitely still depleted. No big deal. Motivated.

Given the bureaucracy uber alles environment I'm coming out of it's been a strange thing to realize that people actually make a living doing this stuff. I'm doing things I truly enjoy for the first time... maybe ever, and it's hard to believe that after all I had to push through to get here, this is my JOB. This is FUN. I always thought it'd be better to have a job that I hate so that I'd never bring it home with me. I'm beginning to think that was an erroneous approach to career planning. If I have any regret about joining the military it's that I didn't do so sooner when I was a little better at playing the young man's game. As tired and dirty and sore as I am at the moment, I truly look forward to what is to come from this deployment.

Side note - if you are ever offered a "Veggie Burger in Barbecue Sauce" MRE, you should destroy the person making the offer.