It has been sometime since my last post.  I've begun and nearly finished another course - common core, though i've called it 'common bore' because it is mostly common sense.  then again, after nearly a decade of being somewhat engulfed in the aviation industry common sense to me is fairly new ground for others.  this tuesday is my last written exam.  after this week i am to wait for two months until i start the final phase of training, my ql3s - which so far is slated to start on december 1 and end on sept 11 of next year.

since then any privacy ive had here has disappeared.  the military has made my room full of people again, and there is guaranteed to always have someone around - like chinese water torture my sanity has whittled away.  nobody's fault really - really a compilation of everyone else including myself.  friday was a snapping point for myself and from that decided to shed annoying outside pressures in order to maintain a semblance of self control once again.

the three urinals have been fixed, but the bathrooms are still covered in vomit, piss and other excrement.  the mold and dust here has me asthma back in flare again.  what i tell myself to maintain calm is that there is nothing i can do to better my situation here, nobody here will help make it better.  no calling out for help or paying money that doesnt exist will improve the situation here.  the only way out is to accept it and move on.  this does not mean that i have to go about this as if it doesnt bother me, or that those whom i depended on for the most part of my life would help.  ultimately life is simply an individual struggle, coexisting together for reasons of selfishness - Adam Smith really did a better job of articulating it than I can right now.  I like what ghandi said about this 'live like you will die tomorrow, learn like you will live forever.'  good words - i feel if you are not in the process of learning something you are dying, and being in some sort of educational pursuit my whole life I feel has been for the best.  well, there was that year after college and for a few months after i was booted out of moose jaw i wasn't learning, and those were very bad months.

let me set something straight on my time in moose jaw and why i will never pursue a career as a pilot.  i remember as clear as it happened last week the reasons i went into flying school.  i just finished high school - and made the most amount of money i could during the summer by working with the navy reserves (the story i  tell people about joining the reserves as a way to get out of a prom date is untrue, i joined because of the recruiter went to my school and there was an offer to make more money in 3 months there then i could have made working full time as a cashier at minimum wage).  i wanted to go to university and experience ''university life'' - that is, learning great things, living on my own, enjoying things i could never have enjoyed while being surrounded by my oppressive and highly conservative parents.  i was to go into engineering, and i was thinking of going into biological engineering.

that summer i made just enough money to cover one semester of tuition.  no books, no money to live or eat or anything else.  i had no car, or money for a car.  i couldnt get student loans because my parents earned too much money (though for me they may as well have earned 0 because it served no purpose at all).  there was this notion of going to flying college - which at the time i thought of as cute but ultimately a waste of money, time, and learning something pedestrian and silly when i should be after bigger and better things.

so - university was out purely on financial matters.  it couldn't happen on my own.  when i was there during frosh week my plan was to get into flying college purely as a means to get into the military and pay my way through university.  if i couldn't afford to experience ''university life'' - then i will get the military to do that.  but in 2000 i did not feel ready - nor was i.  i never was a leader of people, and i have no intention of doing that, but to get your degree paid for you needed to be an officer.  so when going through college i was lucky enough to have an ex air force major teach.  we got along great actually, he was a wonderful man and much of his mannerisms and opinions ive kept for myself and carried with me through my life.

i stuck with the reserves through those two years of flying college.  didnt accomplish much.  i drank most of the money away during the summer - mostly from depression from having racked up a huge amount of debt from being in college.  they were good times though, i was looking forward to finishing and fulfilling my dream of the ''university life.''  i remember during frosh week someone from my reserve unit was there and asked when i would start university.  i said ''i cant do it now, but in two years ill return.'' he thought 2 years was a stupid amount of time and probably thought it would never happen (rightfully so).

well speed ahead 2 years and i learned a lot about the aviation industry.  we had tons of lecturers that were commercial pilots and we were told with the same respect as fellow pilots just like it is.  you see - most everyone out there looks onward to them and they see it as a glorious job, a job that only a handful of brave people can do, those who are smart, capable, and professional - and with a pay only matched by those just as great, like high profile lawyers and surgeons.

in reality the stories i got from them is that of a job of monotony, of low pay starting out - where safety is second place to the bottom line.  where a commercial license really is just the beginning to a long bitter road where you may work your way up to the lower middle class after years of struggle.

my god!  that wasnt in the brochure.  i enjoyed watching those old ww2 movies with pilots and their scarves blowing in the winds, with intense air battles and fly by the seat of your pants maneuvers.  but that was 70 years ago - today flying is all done by machines and computers, and everything is so heavily regulated you cannot do anything but watch the instruments.

okay - so flying really wasn't for me - i realized in 2001-2, but what the hell now, i have almost 55000 in debt, no employable skills, a global economic crisis.  i considered many options - the french foreign legion, taking what money i had left on credit and running to mexico or something to start fresh, going full time in the navy to pay off my debt, and lastly was going officer (something i wanted to avoid), but felt the need that that was the right choice.

i doctored up my resume as best i could, and with the help of someone who had the interview a week before i did knew all the questions they would ask (total bullshit questions like 'who is the current governer general, who is the chief of air staff, etc.) I memorized these and aced the interview.  i put my name down for anything they would take me as, i really didnt care, as long as i could experience that ''university life'' i always wanted to experience.  hell, i remember being a small child while my dad was in pharmacy school and visiting the university there and thinking how much fun it would be.  i remember this one guy standing outside there, with a winter coat and glasses - he looked so smart and, well, a success in the making, and i wanted to capture that idea, that feeling, and pursue it.

i was accepted as a navigator (sure, okay whatever) then that changed to pilot (meh - this made me nervous actually as now i was expected to act like the rest of them.  for the remaining years until moose jaw i made an effort to avoid pilots and flying as much as possible, as i got a bad taste for it in college).  really college too was a way for me to finish what i started when gliding.  i never really obtained a license there, the ground school was too tough and i had no guidance on how to pass it.  anyway with shit tons of cash and full time education i got it, heh).

anyway, with minimum effort on my part i made it threw boot camp (that summed up my experience so far in the military, as it was simply a means to an end to experience university - and as long as i passed, the rest was nonsense).

ahhh now to begin university.  so much pain to get there - i suffered greatly as my health had deteriorated during boot camp - i had horrible lung infections and bronchitis (kind of like what im experiencing now).  i had a choice between smu in halifax (old hat, been there done that nobody new to meet nothing new to experience) and uvic.  easy choice.  oh yes i applied to mcgill university but was denied - life in montreal there would have been nice but really who cares.  there i was - after two years i could enjoy it!

my efforts in the summer months of working with the military were primarily so that i could get back to enjoying life learning what i loved (not biological engineering evidently, no program for that there, i fell into history which i have not regretted taking for one minute) and this military thing in the summer was a painful but necessary way to pursue that.

now that university is done, im married, with a daughter, people wonder why i never tried hard or bothered in moose jaw.  i wonder.  i gave a good effort when pushed, but in my spare time i couldnt force myself to perfect learning in something i hated, to be around people i had nothing in common with or agree with in any way.  what sealed my hate for it was in primary flight training - a feeling of impotent rage really sums that place up.  same with MJ. my instructor was a total asshole.  he told me he instructed people because he wanted to help people.  bullshit.  whenever people say they do something because they are there to help, or they want to help, i now suspect the complete opposite.  its late but i feel there is enough evidence to back that up.  if someone says to you ' i just wanna help' tell them to fuck off, thats the best advice i can give to you dear reader.

what was my plan after university?  i had none.  pay off my debt, start some kind of stupid job, and begin preparing for next phase, then next part of university.  i said in my last year of the undergrad (quoting churchill) - 'this is not the end, this is not the beginning, but maybe this is the beginning of the end.''  i was 24 when i said that.

a masters program has proven to be a more difficult hurdle.  first of all no money to do it. second of all no time with the military.  third of all no scholarships with the insane amount of competition out there.  fourth of all this little family i picked up demands things from me, mostly money.  to get money i need to work.  to work i need to stay with the military.  to stay with the military means i have no time.  and with no time means i have none for them or myself to pursue this.

im now 29 (5 years later) - and no closer to that goal than the day i graduated.  i spent that time chasing my tail - trying to nail down just what the hell where to go next and how to do it.  only now am i starting to formulate plans, but these are looking out to be pipe dreams.  that's another reason why i got so upset friday, not because i couldnt even watch a porn movie because this chinese (okay his family is from cambodia but who gives a rats ass) robot wont see his family who lives an hour away but really i figured that those years 2002 to 2006 were really the peak, and the rest of it was unplanned and unneeded.  yet i still keep living.

so why not go back to flying?  because i never wanted to get into it from the beginning.  it was a stepping stone from poverty to the military to enjoy a few months of higher learning.  now that that's over, there is not much else.  which leads me to - a) giving up on life b) giving up on dreams.  who knows.

you see it could have worked.  in 2008 (after MJ) i bought a house with my wife at the tail end of the housing boom.  i was to stay there one year then after a year of learning some bullshit on how to manage a hospital was to move to edmonton.  but the army did not do that - they wanted to send me to edmonton right away - totally ruining my plans.  i pulled the plug on that.  fast fwd 2 years and the market collapsed, my wife and useless agent unable to agree and sell, failing there, leaving that area a total mess.

because of that total failure, ive harbored much resentment for those at home - because i feel that i could have saved much anguish and grief had that heavy financial burden been lifted earlier, and would have been far on the way to saving to pursue a masters and having other long terms financial goals set into motion.  instead, they have been totally bogged down into a single piece of property which i have no use for anymore and the market is irreversibly crippled and back to levels before the 2008 boom.

a major reason i attribute these failures was that i did not have total and complete control of the situation.  before in 2000-2002 it was a risky venture, but one where i had multiple (some better than others) outs, and  was the one calling the shots and decisions.  from 2008-2010 i left them in the hands of others less capable.  the army - for their intentions and purposes are focused on how a single man want things rather than what will happen or what should happen, and those at home - who have their own personal motivations and goals to achieve - which i must say now are not one of the same as myself.

i was told awhile ago that my efforts of self control ultimately fail time and again ( a badly made cart that will break down ) and what i do once that cart breaks down is up to me.

where to move forward is to get a plan together where i can get some control back into my life - to relieve the burden of the house (even if this means divorce and paying alimony and child support - which may or may not cost just as much)  and to get back on track to where i left off all those years ago.

the success of that in a later date is totally dependent on my actions now.   this means learning to whack off in the shower while my idiot robot chinaman plays crysis 2, this means eating at the mess 3 times a day, and this means sticking to paying off this outrageous consumer debt and getting back to saving.