I'm going through changes...

Well, I’ve been going through some changes in my life. I know what you’re thinking.. ‘He’s hit puberty finally!’ Ah…no…no that’s not it at all you jokers you. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching since the 11^th and since the 13^th as well, just about everything in general. I’ve slowly begun to realize that some motives I’ve had have been more petty than anything else, and that’s going to change, no seriously. I’ve realized that while I’m not a medal chaser, or a skirt chaser my goals in being in have been for positive recognition. Actually got my ego sated the other day when during a talk with a Japanese man he called the United states and I quote ‘you USA you big damn hero country, thank you.’ It broke my heart to not just be able to say that well ‘im getting out’.

So there it is I am indeed getting out, sure it’s early but I was never a good fit as a mechanic, and hell I know it, Doesn’t mean that I didn’t try to do my best and to be a positive force at work. Who knows maybe it’s for the best for everyone else. I don’t know about everyone else though. For me, I’m still searching for ‘the best’ for me and I’m going back to photography to try and find myself. Yes I said it I said ‘try and find myself’, and I don’t mean in a washed out and dropped out, do a lot of illegal drugs manner. I’m legitimately going to try getting a job as a photographer and I am actually already in the process of job hunting and resume/portfolio building. I’ve already begun to pad my portfolio with pictures from Ueno Park and the Imperial Palace. That coupled with some of the other work I’ve done, while not likely a plethora of selection, I believe quite strongly that it is a varied and strong portfolio. All I need is a little more portrait work in it and I’ll be fine.

If I could have done thing differently in my short career in the military it’s this, put my foot down. I shouldn’t have debated it with my recruiter, I should have gone for photography hands down, and that’s it. While it’s nice being stationed as a mechanic in Japan, I’d much rather do what I love at my job, instead of only loving parts of my job. Though I will say this, I did encounter an actual ‘work’ side to my photography over the last two days in the editing and post. Nothing could have made the editing and marking of 1229 pictures any easier. Things have been made easier though as I’ve got a good friend that has decided to let me host a website on his server and that’s exactly what I am doing. Once the site is operational you can find me here.

http://www.verseless-photography.com/

Yeah that’s right verseless photography. I’m a brand now people. Right now the site just has a mess of redirect and search links on it, but that’s because it isn’t operational yet, right now my goals are thus, network, commercialize myself, and sell my work either solo or to an employer. Now…that said, if anyone wishes to purchase any of my work before the site goes operation shoot me an e-mail at tower.007@hotmail .com and we can talk. So here’s my flickr link http://www.flickr.com/photos/58409124@N03/ and here’s some gratuitous (and watermarked) pictures.

Justice?

With recent events that have transpired tonight I find myself asking if justice has been done. Who knows maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. I’ve received the punishment coming to me and I am unsure if it is fair or not. I know that punishment of sorts can be light every now and again and this time it feels that way, admittedly being restricted to base for 30 days hurts me quite a bit. I won’t be able to photograph at the Fashionweek and because of that I will not be able to take the pictures and sell them to (insert name of fashion magazine) so I can kiss a very conservative few hundred good bye right then and there. And oh yeah, the Cherry blossom festivals so yeah I’ll need to get creative with my work on base in such a way to edit out any overly identifying features and still produce high quality work that I intend on selling.

The other hit comes in a demotion; it’s mostly the symbolism that hurts me the most. Sure I’ll be losing roughly 5,000 USD over the course of the time it’ll take to gain my rank back but if I play my cards right with photography I can make more than that. Huge IF there. BUT what really hurts me is the symbolism of being demoted, and it is the commanders reasoning that ‘I cannot be trusted’ that really hits hard for me. I have tried hard to prove that I can be trusted; I always try to show that I am a good person, and that I have personal responsibility, but being told that I can’t be trusted stings. It’s hard to not take that as an insult but I must look at things objectively and from my Commanders view point. I realize that punishment was absolutely necessary in order to instill the proper behavior, but to be called untrustworthy is something else that I cannot adequately describe.

I do not feel angry though; all I feel really is a mix of disappointment, confusion, and satisfaction. I feel disappointment because I have let many people including myself down to levels that feel like God’s disappointment in Lucifer when he was cast down. The confusion stems from wondering whether or not this is all fair, and either way I will be discussing this with legal as such things are too complex for those untrained in the legal profession to decide adequately. I want to appeal the loss of m rank, but someplace in the back of my mind is against that, and another part of me is curious if that is just a sense of selfishness taking over the old ‘but it’s mine’ mentality left in all of us from our childhood days. I thought I’d outgrown that, and there’s another part of my disappointment in myself, that I don’t yet seem to be fully matured into an adult yet based on how I feel when something of mine is taken away, and finally the satisfaction, of a morbid sense of affirmative premonition. I was both wrong and right about a few things I was right that I haven’t been stuck in jail, I was right that meeting with my commander face to face may have helped, and I was right that a discharge isn’t pending, (sorry for those of you who hate me). Those are the petty reasons for satisfaction again, the rest are a little more sadomasochistic, from here on out since I’ve been kicked to the bottom of the pit I am satisfied that every positive action I accomplish will help me climb out of it, I am satisfied that I will continue to serve at least for a time through all of that the overriding sense of myself right now is one of ‘doom and gloom’ partly brought on by a very small amount of soju. I have said it before that I am disappointed in myself at my actions, absolutely I am, and I feel that my time in the military is swiftly running out, and it very likely is, but I’ll try to do a good job as that’s all that I can do.

All of that said I’ll try to not let my situation, or others, get the better of me. If I start walking around in a deep funk somebody please slap me upside the head and tell me to shape up. But by the same token I don’t intend to take any s*** from anyone. If you wish to give me any run it by my supervisor. I’ve worked hard to get my anger issues under control and I’ve been better at it, but I will not allow anything to resurface due to what happened with me. You want to give me any bad vibes here go ahead and do so; they make ‘delete’ buttons for a reason. If you work with me you know who is in charge of me so take it up with them, I won’t take anyone’s disrespect nor will I dish any.

Now, hopefully for a change of pace and topic…..I’ll …I can’t really think of anything aside from the fact I’ll have the opportunity to finally finish Don Quixote, Atlas Shrugged, and the plethora of other pieces of literature I am currently working through. I’ll also have the chance to refine my photography skills, and again everything from here on out will be obnoxiously watermarked as I intend to use my work as a source of supplementary income. While I am typically against the use of artwork in commercialization and for pure monetary gain, it seems that I may have to move in that direction, and for once I have no issue with ‘selling out’ especially as the most I’ll likely be is a freelancer. There’s no ‘selling out’ if you don’t get a regular paycheck from someone. But ah well, guess I’ll just have to learn to love pissing off hipsters and skillfully maneuvering around copyright laws.

Fah who lah who

Ok. So Christmas has come and gone with New Year’s just around the corner. And although I dislike quite a few things politically back home, over here, and just in general. I’ve been ‘re blued’ or have become a patriot again. My reasoning for this is simple. Because we’re overseas not everyone gets mail on time, from everyone, etc.. So they’ll provide cards for us from varied sources. I pick a card out of the box addressed to ‘our hero’. Sure heartwarming sappy, whatever….But the card itself. The card itself brought me to tears.

It was just a generic card though Santa with a tree, the printed lettering saying ‘Merry Christmas’, but thee text written inside it is what brought me to tears. So there I am on a chilly December day in Tokyo opening a Christmas card from god knows who in the door way of a chow hall. And what I see written is the last thing I expect. In simple black pen in young, yet not childishly messy handwriting I see the lone sentence. “Thank you for our Freedom.” I broke down right then and there. It made me realize that I’m not serving to defend my country, the politicians, the overly fattened political system that we have, no. I was fighting for that. The innocent naiveté that is present in all of us at some point. I’m here serving not my country, but hope. I serve to defend that hope in some kid’s heart, hope that will be destroyed if we fail as a country.

That said, yes, we need to change our ways or that innocent little line will be for nothing and there won’t be any more American heroes to thank for freedom, there won’t be any Americans as we recognize them today. All there will be are members of a country that none of us alive today can fathom. It’s that hope, that one innocent line that has renewed my faith that making the choice I did was the right one. Some may question the morality of serving at all such as certain radical churches in Kansas, but seeing such innocence displayed in that way leaves no doubt in my mind that service to defend hope, to provide people with the freedom to be thankful for such an intangible thing is what it’s all about. On paper and in voice as follows:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

But in my heart and my soul, I serve the hope of all those thinking that we are doing the right thing.

Anyway enough of my proselyting and time for an actual blog entry…how about that hmm?
Well a few days ago while cycling to PT in the cold December rain I misjudged the amount of water on the road, went off of the road and straight into some train tracks. While I sustained only minor personal injuries ( a few scrapes and bruises), I still got checked out to make sure I was fine. Something that is smart to do whenever severe pain is felt in the chest. Believe me, landing on hardened steel handlebars hurts like a sonovagun. Anyway I was reporting into my superiors every step of the way, and the doctor seeing me gave me the ‘likely’ injuries from where I sustained impacts. I caught hell for that later as word of my potential injuries trickled up to my Commanding Officer. Mind you, when I reported in I made sure to use the words ‘possible, might, and could be’ in the same places the doctor had used them before broken, cracked, internal damage respectively. They wound up calling me good and prescribing me antibacterial cream for my wounds. Yet I still caught hell for reporting in as I was given information. I didn’t inform them I’d be riding my damaged bicycle over to the base hospital, and the people I informed rightly assumed I’d be doing so, but well. Let’s just say that I learned a lesson about disseminating information that should be obvious. Anyway I’m done complaining as it’s not my style, I learned a lesson about information dissemination, so I’m fine now.
Moving on…

Christmas was decent. Had Christmas dinner at the house of one of my superiors, it wasn’t what I expected in that there were no fresh vegetables on the table, just mayo and sugar covered salad and green bean casserole. I tend to like peas, corn, carrots and other vegetables not out of a can, cooked into other things, or covered in goop, my definition of fresh is, simple plain vegetables either raw, or lightly cooked. Everything tasted good and the bosses’ wife makes an amazing pumpkin pie, so it was overall a decent meal.

As I’m going to a new shift soon I’ll need to alter my sleeping habits and I have that planned out already, it involves another All-nighter, or a set of them in Roppongi. I’ll stay away from the main drag with all of the strip clubs and actually go to someplace where I want to. I likely won’t drink much, but I think that new years at Roppongi could be a very cool thing to do, provided I actually go in a mood to have fun, which of all things is my biggest fault. I tend to take things quite seriously, value meaningful conversation and intelligence and have my sun issue from that. Mingling with a group of strangers is new for me especially for long lengths of time. Then again…if I can strike up a conversation with a German woman in McDonald’s at 3 AM I can mingle at a club for 8 hours right?