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Metaphorically chained for twelve months to a land much unlike the one I’ve grown accustom to my entire life. It’s starting to hit. I, and I alone, will be here. Of course there’s always “others”. People or “Soldiers” who go through the same events, conditions, seasons, missed holidays, tragic deaths if they be, but you’re alone either way. I’ll be here… Stay here until the tour I knew would come is utterly and completely served, whether by dedication or responsibility or duty, but surely annoyance, if nothing else. Whatever your Superior says to push you toward Confidence and their belief. Whatever they believe is the reason for this so-called Liberation of the Iraqi people. They(The Mass Media Army, as I call it) would have you believe that the Iraqi people are desperate, clinging onto life after the fall of their great Dictator. But enough about them. That’s a rant for another time. There’s plenty to complain about, but nothing that should be complained about, because from the second the pen leaves the contract paper at MEPPS, you’ve signed for any bullshit(mind me) they would have you do. And you’ll do it, for if you don’t, all that waits is more of it… punishments that weren’t worth the trouble of disrespect in the first place.

Since I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will be here for a while, I’ve decided to try to improve my mind instead of the being the usual vegetable here. This will include studies of Literature and English, to improve my writing and hopefully make it more interesting and descriptive for the people that read these posts. Then another language. I would hope that people know why someone would want to learn a new language. For one, Language is one of the few things that are universally helpful. Even in a nation where one primary language is spoken, newcomers are always apt to stick around people who are knowledgeable enough to speak their tongue. Which brings me to believe it would be easier to make friends. And being more knowledgable is always a reward in itself.

More studies will follow. I would like to improve my technical skills in the general Computer field, but after a few years of HTML, CSS, Java, and Graphic/Web Design, I’ve lost a little bit of my momentum. If you haven’t noticed yet, there doesn’t seem much motivation or inspiration around here. Even in the United States I found it a little tough to conjure up Inspiration from simple things, which in my eyes makes an individual a good Artist… or Designer. You can imagine how it would be a little more difficult in the middle of a Desert.

Well I guess this would be the “rant” section of the post. There always has to be at least one, right? I’d like to explain to everyone what I feel about Society in general. Since that’s quite impossible, I’ll explain it to the people that follow this website. At the young age of nineteen and by being graced as a free thinker, I am almost positive the problem isn’t with Government. It’s a start, but the real problem seems to be with Society. The people. I’ll dive into this further. People still have control over the government. Quite some time ago, it was a Government for the people, by the people. Now I’m not so sure. As the Government positions its oh so powerful Armed Forces around the world for “Strategic placement” reasons and gives more power to the President and the Bankers, the people are slipping from their grasp of control. To me, it appears to be an obvious yet unforeseen trade. The Government gives Security and the feeling of comfort to the people. In return, they give up their rights and slowly forget about the forefathers and the Constitution. If you have forgotten about the Constitution, it’s that pretty important document that outlined our rights as American people and really showed the start of us being a United nation, hence “United States”. Or maybe it’s just a name chosen out of a hat. I could be wrong, but I’ll spare the sarcasm as this is a serious matter.

As a friend told me, people can pick out the problems all day, but can they offer solutions? Or, do they even attempt to? In my opinion most people would rather say they don’t like the Government or fight it in a way that offers no discomfort or danger to them. Sometimes disadvantages are required to see much later results. Actually, I believe that’s why we’re still the United States. Because the brave Soldiers that took up arms swore to fight the enemies of the United States, “both Foreign and Domestic”. Many died and fought in filthy trenches, sharing ammunition and having to bloody their hands in servitude to a man or woman they didn’t even know. Instead, the average Joe would rather post their hate comments on “Liberal” or “Anarchy” websites, complaining but once again, offering no solutions. Well… as the great President Abraham Lincoln displayed, you can convey the message without talking(or writing) the ears or eyes off your listeners(or readers, in this case). Plus, I feel I’ve already gone too far into this for my own good. If you agree with anything I’ve written, I urge you to research it for yourself and form your own opinion, instead of relying on how Society/The Mass Media raised you to be.

Quotes are powerful. An obvious statement… but I never realized it until now. Funny how it takes such a large amount of free time and boredom to cure me of being mentally blind… even if just a little. Anyone can speak them, but the original lines that span the pages and words spoken from great individuals give free lessons. From reading quotes I can reflect on them, realize their meaning, and literally learn from them. Of course you have to be willing to apply what you’ve read. I actually came up with the title of this post from a quote. I normally don’t like using “The” in a title. Although it gives more power to the word or words that follow it, it’s quite common. I just couldn’t think of anything that would fit better.

“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.”

John F. Kennedy

I’ll only share that one quote. I don’t want to fill up this post with quotes when you could do a little research and find other great quotes.

Moving on. I recently purchased headphones/mic and paid for Yahoo! Voice so I could make calls back home. I’m heavilly surprised at how great the pricing is. I’m thinking of purchasing a personal number so my friends and family may contact me, instead of me always having to call them. I’ll be doing that today… once the appropriate time presents itself. There’s an eight hour difference from here to the U.S. Eastern time zone. I’ll post again when a thought sparks. Normally though, a whole slew of thoughts come forward when I quench my addiction for Energy drinks. They exercise the mind, Hooah. Everyone should take it easy for the Holidays… and I guess that’s really my closing line.

I believe it’s been a little more then a month since I’ve posted anything… and for good reason. Although we’ve done some things, not much has changed. Thus is the result of deploying to a country where a lot of nothing is going on. For starters, our cable team moved to another COB(Command Operation Base) much farther north. Whereas my cell phone had a connection half of the time, now it has a connection none of the time. I guess this is good because I’ll no longer have an outrageous phone bill. On the other hand, I haven’t talked to my family for weeks. The only form of communication we’ve been able to share is Facebook. I feel lucky to even have that.

We’re now with the rest of the Unit, but there hasn’t been much going on. After about two weeks of that, we offered to help with any upcoming missions, regardless of Unit or job. I want to say that less then a week later, the Unit that is staying in the same compound as us started a cable mission. A large cable mission. One that went semi-outside the gate, which required us to wear our Kevlar and IBA(Interceptor Body Armor) while working. As I told my friend, my sense of worth was slowly coming back. It sounds depressing, but really I just wanted something to do, and the satisfaction of hard work made it even better.

The purpose of the mission was to run Fiber Optic Cable from somewhat outside the base to one of the main roads inside the COB. It consisted of running a reel of Duck Rod from manhole to hand hole or vice versa through plastic pipe. Then the Mule Tape, and then finally the Fiber. The two of us who came from the other Unit didn’t splice the ends for use but we helped with everything else. It took about a week to complete and even after the job was finished, we still showed up to the other units workplace just to chill out with other people. It wasn’t like our Unit would need us for anything, so we figured it to be fair.

Supposedly another mission will be coming around soon and I hope that’s true. I don’t love soaking my uniforms in my own sweat or feeling sore at the end of the day, but there’s a certain satisfaction for what we’re doing. We’re not just helping our Unit, we’re helping another. They’ll be leaving in four months, totaling up to a fifteen month deployment and I believe that they appreciate us helping them in the last few months they’ll be in Iraq.

In terms of anything going on with me specifically, I’m sorry to say once again, not much. I feel a little stronger and I think I’m building more tone in the abs and arms area, but not enough to notice a major difference. My “diet” has changed from the usual Chicken and Fries with Whole Milk to Steak or Pork Chops and Mashed Potatoes or Rice or Noodles with Soy Milk. Of course I eat other things besides that, but that’s a general look at it. I’ve acquired a taste for Soy Milk and from comparing the nutrition table to Whole Milk, it’s a hell of a lot better for you. Pretty soon I’d like to get some source of extra Protein and get some Dumbbells. I’m not exactly looking to get much bigger, but to build more tone. And far from reasons like appearance, I’d like to improve my run. My fastest 2 mile time is 15:04. Not bad, but not great either. I was thinking of using weights while running, like my IBA, but before I remembered to tell my friend, he presented the idea to me as well.

I’d like to believe that the biggest change over the past few weeks isn’t physical, or has anything to do with appearance, but with my and some others mentality. Everyone probably knows at least one person who claims to know that the government is corrupt, or that they hate the President, but I often wonder if they’ve even done the research. Are they truly Libertarians, Liberals, “Free Thinkers”, or are they just following the trend that’s been laid in front of them by Music culture or pushed onto them by people who fit in at their school? I know the same event has occurred many times. They walk by a television set, a News Reporter spewing bought off and politically rendered reports of how the war is changing things, how the great America is freeing the Iraq people. Or they pass two educated persons discussing an issue, actually knowing what they’re talking about. Somehow between the two events, there seems a be a very different opinion. I’m going to end there, but I just wish people would research, not follow when it comes to the real issues.

I’ll update again when something happens. If nothing happens, then give it a few weeks.

My second day in Iraq. My second day, yet our team is still not where it’s supposed to be. Not because it’s far away from Kuwait, where we recently were for ten days. It’s only takes an hour and forty five minutes to get from Kuwait to this location in Iraq when flying in a C-130(Military Plane). I guess the difficulty comes from having to be flown in Helo style. We were supposed to take a short stop and then fly over to our site. From what I know, we’ll be working with the Marines, who had gotten the wrong information on when we’d be coming in. They showed up much earlier in the day and due to time restraints(5:00AM), they couldn’t wait until we showed up. Understandable, as we came in around 2200(10:00PM). These 2 days have consisted of moving our excessive amount of unnecessary gear from building to airstrip to tent. It’s a little cooler in temperature then Kuwait though, so that’s a plus.

Carrying an M249(Automatic Weapon System) is a bit… different too. Besides major bruising on my right thigh and knee, it looks cool and that’s about it. I’m hoping after this deployment I can reenlist to an MOS(Military Occupational Specialty) where I’ll be issued a pistol. Of course it depends on the unit too. I was issued an M249 when I arrived at my new unit three weeks before deploying. Of course I wasn’t qualified with it, so we went to the range and were scored by a different unit. We fired around eighteen hundred rounds and called it a day. The funny thing is, the unit that was controlling the range never gave us our scorecards, even after we supplied them with a phone number and information. Therefore, I had to go to the range again. I’m estimating we fired a good one thousand rounds at the second range, where I finally qualified. After each range we were told to turn in our weapons with no time to clean them. That’s twenty eight hundred rounds without even a wipe down of the barrel.

Before we left Kuwait there was a weapon inspection. My buddies were quite surprised when we disassembled my M249 to find that the majority of the interior was caked with carbon. I don’t mind taking an hour of my time to clean it. What makes me angry is that I actually like firing this weapon, but I’m almost positive this unit does not want me to qualifiy Expert on any of the weapons systems, which takes away from the enjoyment of even firing it. Every Soldier has to qualify with the M16, no matter what their primary weapon system is. I shot a 36 at the range with an M16 using Iron Sights, while everyone else had scopes. The reason I did this was because they handed me an M16 with a scope when I never trained with one, so I took it off. When we were finished at the range they read off the scores and I heard “Sommer, 35.” I was starting to become irritated and angry. We had spent the entire day at this range and after being sure I had shot Expert, I was being told I hadn’t. I shot a 34 in Basic Training with Iron Sights. After training at the previous unit with an M16, I felt even more comfortable with it. I even looked over my target right after we finished and counted 36 rounds that were hits. I tried to reason but to no avail. I was still considered a “Sharpshooter”, not an “Expert”.

This experience hasn’t been entirely negative. I actually had a lot of fun in Kuwait. There was a lot of off time and we were there for about 10 days, so we had time to acclimate and check out the post. I’m part of a four man team, and everyone I’m with is very cool. I work much better in small groups, so I think we’ll be fine. Hopefully we’ll get to our site today.

As our deployment draws closer, I thought about how I’m not exactly the soldier I want to be. I had high hopes for the canopy(Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces), but how is that possible if I can’t even look high-speed in a normal unit? I’ll be overseas for a full year, so that is plenty of time to change the things I don’t like about myself, both physically and mentally.

For one, I’ve lost focus. With that came the loss of my motivation. I just don’t see the end product or point of what we’re doing half the time. It seems more like the leadership decisions that come down are solely for their entertainment or that they just don’t care. To me, there’s only thing that’s clear. I shouldn’t be questioning anything. Questioning leads to a loss of trust, and I need trust the people I’ll be with for a full year. I just have to get used to the fact that it doesn’t matter if I see the end product, but that I followed my orders.

Motivation is hard to obtain. Being of low rank leaves you open to all sorts of things that I consider stupid. I realize that I have to deal with the stupid things in order to gain rank, and if I deal with them the right way I may get a waiver for a faster promotion. I can’t conjure up false motivation either. It just doesn’t work and I normally get stressed out when I try. I’ll have to look at the small things at the end of the day as that may help. If I do good work, then I won’t have to work later. If I don’t have to work later I get more time for myself. That means more sleep, more time at the gym, etc. This may work, but I’ll have to see.

In terms of mentality, I can deal with a lot. I don’t see many things as a big deal and that may be a problem. I don’t have a healthy sense of danger or consequence. That does help though when it comes to high stress situations. I can just handle it better then others. I consider my lack of focus and motivation to be large enough to cause a problem with my work performance and efficiency, so I’ll start on those.

In Physical terms, I want to get bigger, stronger, faster, tougher, better. This means I’ll need to eat twice as much as I normally eat, work out twice as much, increase my running stride and shorten my running time, and push myself to a state where I’m not in pain after every work out session. I’m currently 161lbs., 18lbs. more then I was before I came in. I’m aiming for anything between 190lbs. to 210lbs. Some say that’s just not how I’m built, or that my frame won’t allow it. Then I guess I’ll have to prove them wrong. I’ll be disappointed if I score anything less then a 270 on the next PT test. 300 is the max on the standard scale but you can score in the extended which I would like to do.

I’ll update this later.

I wanted to discuss something that has happened to me just recently and may have happened to you before. Have you ever gone to bed exhausted and when you woke up, you thought you had dreamed for days on end? That exact thing happened to me today. I left work around 1:00 PM on friday and decided to go back to my room and sleep. I was averaging around 3 hours of sleep a night that entire week. 22 hours later, I wake up on a Saturday thinking I had slept for days. If I hadn’t looked at my laptop clock soon after, I would’ve been worried that I had in fact, been asleep for days. Even then I was still worried as that’s also an abnormal amount of sleep.

The dream was simple and it’s strange to me that like most dreams, I wanted to stay in it. It started with me waking up in a room. Without notice, I was now outside, standing in the town I grew up in. Everything had one hue to it, although I’m sure that’s a subconscious trick. Dreams are displayed in Black and White. I walked around until night fell and being a dream, my body was not tired after walking for so long. A few people appeared, some friends and some not. Old acquaintances, people I didn’t know, and people I knew for a very long time. No words were exchanged and as if we already knew what to do, we all continued walking. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them again, I was the frontman, walking in front of everyone. We had all been walking at the same speed, so this hinted to me that I was somehow leading them. From familiar sights I figured we would soon leave the town if we continued to move. Then we stopped. We sat and talked about things that most of the people wouldn’t know about. I couldn’t hear myself either, but I knew we were talking. It was strange… and calming.

A series of events happened over the course of the few days I felt I had dreamed. Simple things like visiting old neighborhoods and people I hadn’t seen in a while, more walking, and more people followed. It was almost as if people were silently recruited into this group. For what reason, I’m not sure. On the last day, I was no longer the frontman. I was actually the last. As we started to walk into the woods that crossed the town line, my vision focused on the ground. The ground became closer and closer and I felt heavy. Then black. I had passed out. Then the dream ended, just like that. I find it strange that I remember so much detail, but the dream was quite vivid.

I recently went home for two weeks of Block Leave. It was great. I spent time with friends, family, and new people. There pretty much wasn’t anything to worry about. Although, not long after returning home did I find I returned to some old problems as well. They most likely could have been avoided had I not had a problem cutting people out of my life. This time, I should have refrained from getting involved and let them fall.

At what point in your life do you realize you’re a poor decision maker? Is it after you impregnate your underage girlfriend, get kicked out and become homeless, or after you quit jobs because you’ve been offered better opportunities but not guaranteed them? In this situation, all of the above. Actually, that may be inaccurate. I still don’t believe this person realizes they’re a poor decision maker. Shortly after coming home from being on duty for the past 6 or so months, I’m told my friend will soon be a father, but that he’s homeless. At first, I was surprised, which is rare because oddities are commonplace in this town. Now I feel bad for what’s going to happen to the child. I think adoption would be the smartest route, but that’s just my opinion.

One late night I answer a phone call to a distressed friend. Apparently him and his girlfriend had seperated, and he told me for what seems like the tenth time he was no doubt going to go into the Military. A few days pass and I’m getting ready to go to this persons house. I ask when we’re going to go to the Recruiting Station, and once again, he had changed his mind. Not only that, but he failed to tell me he had gotten back with the girlfriend, who had hit him in the face just the day before. I was pissed. I told this person not to call me before, during, or after my deployment to Iraq and that if he ever told me he was going to join the Army again, serious or not, there would be a major problem involving me taking a visit. I’m sick of people looking for attention because they brag about how they’re going to join only to change their mind five minutes later. To say it shortly, problem solved. The rest of the time I hung out with real friends. It was a good time.

Joshua Sommer

Here you are at the digital domain of Sommer: Designer, Soldier, Realist, etc. Let’s throw out the formalities though. Names Joshua, age 19, and currently living in the state of Washington. Soon I’ll be living in Iraq for a year because yes, I’ll be deployed. No worries though. This blog will continue to grow throughout my exploits, even while I’m there. Some of the things I like to do when I’m not sleeping or cursing at this widescreen monitor are chilling out with friends and family, running, working out, designing, chatting, hitting my monitor(much different then cursing at it), among other things.

I know this entry is short but that’s how I like things sometimes. Well… most of the time. Short, simple, straight forward. Check back often as there will be an update or five. Take care.