One week down and all’s well

I’ll admit it — on Friday around lunchtime, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through all five weeks of this Air Force school… We’d just been beat up as a group, going through our weekly briefing, I’d done 4 consecutive days of heavy-duty running and, due to the fact that I’m a commuter, I’d been sleeping less than five hours a night. I was so worn out, so tired, and so done with the whole thing… and there were another four weeks to go!

But then, we got a group “wargame” (more a computer battleship-type game) to play, and I ended up in one of the “director” slots, and I got to boss people around, and it was fun and energizing. I think it’s probably not a good character trait that I was that enthused by being in charge, but I suppose it’s true to character. Anyway, that was good, and then there was a weekend to enjoy… I invited one of my flightmates (the other token female) to stay in my guest room at home, since it would be a little more personable than living on-base in a hotel room the entire time. (Yeah–don’t really have room for the 12 guys, so they’ll just have to fend for themselves.) And it was good to have her around, even if I never really got the for-real downtime that I’ll probably need to recover from this much intense people time.

I can see it already–I am going to be SO peopled-out by the end of this five weeks that I’m probably going to have to take a couple weeks off in order to return to sanity. I apparently scared my parents, talking on the phone to them last night, because I sounded so manic. I have to work myself up into a high level of energy / enthusiasm / excitement in order to do this kind of stuff, so it comes across sounding utterly unlike my real self when I talk to people who know me. I know myself well enough to recognize that I’m tapping reserves that I don’t exist in unlimited quantities, but the five months of irritable boredom that preceded this should be enough to fuel five weeks of manic people energy. I hope. (We’ll see.)

Though driving on base tonight (we had to meet to go over the next iteration of our briefing–and hopefully not be quite so badly reamed for it), my stomach twisted into knots of “oh no–not this again”. But it’s all good. I’m quite enjoying this break from the normal life, and truly, the experience of being a member of a team is enjoyable. I’ve mostly only had this during military training/education, and I always like it. I’m such an individual by nature that I forget that group dynamics and group identity can be such fun (in limited quantities).

OK, I’d better get going–yet another early morning tomorrow, and I don’t want to be dying by 3 p.m. the way I was some of the days last week!