mychai's Diaryland Diary

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On God and entering the Air Force

"How many guys order a Sex on the Beach?"

That was asked to a waitress at the expense of my dignity and self respect the other night when I went out with a group of friends to a bar. The Heidleberg, if you want specifics.

I swear... they should put a bold-faced M and G beside each drink to let you know if it is a Masculine or Girlie drink. Spare some of the embarrassment.

But it just goes to show that I have a very sensitive side. A "girlie" side, if you will. Which would explain my liking of certain TV shows. American Embassy on Fox, if you want specifics.

I don't know what it is about this show that I like. Maybe because they pre-feed it over the FOX satellite network on Sunday mornings. Sundays are my most boring days at work, and this show sure beats the hell out of watching Meet the Press.

Maybe because there are lots of people with British accents on the show. I find British accents incredibly sexy. If there is anyone out there with a British accent that would like to record my answering machine message, I wanna talk to you.

Perhaps I like it because the main character's name is Emma. This name is shared by the fair-skinned beauty I met while visiting Chicago last year. She said I was beautiful -- one of only two people to say that to me in my life.

Regardless of the reason I like the show, the fact still stands that it is a guilty pleasure that I probably shouldn't be admitting to or else risk being beat up on the playground. But the "higher-ups" at FOX are messing with my life.

It's been cancelled.

Even though I work in television -- I have for four years -- I don't understand what goes through network executives' minds when they cancel a show so early. Some shows that are complete crap -- Fear Factor, for example -- they keep going like it was the best thing since Woodchuck Draft Cider.

Other shows -- American Embassy, Now and Again -- they quickly give the axe. Networks are losing money, and executives wonder why no one watches.


I've been talking a lot about joining the Air Force, and I've been trying to think mostly about the positives. But there are a lot of negatives. None of them are bad to the general population who enters, but they are bad to me. I'm not talking about something like boot camp. Nobody likes boot camp. These are...

Personal negatives, if you will.

One is kind of hard to explain. And I don't know if anyone feels this way. Not just in the Air Force, but in the world as a whole.

Ever see that movie, Simon Birch? As the plot outline says, "A young boy ... is convinced that God has a great purpose for him." I may have, at best, a very unconventional view about who/what God is, but I do believe in God. And, like little Simon Birch believed, I have always felt I was put here to do something big.

I know that sounds extremely corny and is probably leftover of a VERY imaginative childhood, but it is a feeling I have never been able to shake. Does anyone else feel this way? I'd be quite interested to know.

But most of my decisions I've made about major life changes has involved this feeling as a factor. "If I move to Missouri," I asked myself, "will I still be free to do something big? Will I be able to fulfill my greater purpose?"

And that is one of my hang-ups about joining the Air Force. Will I be able to make the huge impact that I have been created to make? Or am I wasting who I was meant to be?

That's the trouble with God. Ya never know what he's thinking.

When I tell some people -- usually people who know about my mental talents (former teachers, friends, etc.) -- that I want to write and cook and be creative, some of those I tell say that it is a waste of my abilities. I mean... I was WRITING relativity theory when I was 9. Before I even knew much about Einstein.

So, that kind of thinking is boring to me. Been there, done that kind of thing. I want to do something that makes me feel, well... more like God. God creates. And so do I.

Jeez. Stop me if this entry gets too deep.

But the military -- it doesn't create. It grows. It transforms. It engineers. But I don't see a fountain of creativity coming from the Air Force. And this really, really bothers me. What if it succeeds in killing this creative soul within the very essence of my being? Doing so will mean I gave up a dream -- a red mark in the book that keeps a running judgment of the way I lived my life.

If God, upon meeting me at the Pearly Gates, asked if I used the talents I was given, I want to show him everything I have written and cooked.

I think God is a gumbo man. At least, I hope so.

I also have quirks about living in the Air Force dorms. I only lived in a dorm for one semester of my whole college career. Though it was fun for a 19 year-old -- as I am sure most of the Air Force recruits are aged -- I don't know about being 25 and living in one small room.

I mean... you go to a bar (at age 25) and meet a nice girl (hopefully around age 25), and you want to go back and, uh, "have coffee" at your place. Except you have to put up with a bunch of 18 y/o's making noise before you make it back to your DORM ROOM.

See my point?

Plus... I am someone who extremely values his alone time. If I spend too much time around other people, I get extremely stressed, a bit upset, and quite grumpy. If I had to choose between spending a weekend with a group of friends doing normal weekend stuff and spending the time alone somewhere, I believe I would choose the latter.

I can be loud and extroverted in spurts. But I am a true introvert at heart.

Which gets me back to dorm life. I know from experience that there is no privacy when living in the dorm. There is also no kitchen. Well, at least in any dorm I have ever seen, there was no kitchen. At least not one of any value to a chef.


So, yeah... those are my complaints about joining the Air Force. There are gobs of positives. I just have to decide if the positives outweigh the negatives.

Sorry if I sounded too preachy.

Well, it is now 1:45am. I know it took me nearly 3 hours to write this, but I got busy doing other things. Tired? Nope. I slept for 5 hours when I got home from work today.

School? Huh? Yeah, well... I dreamed about school, if that counts.

I'm getting too old for Hell Days.

11:06 p.m. - Tues., April 9, 2002

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