Sweet November

This morning a buddy of mine left a voicemail message on my cell phone. At the beginning of the message he said, "I'm sorry if my phone call woke you up." He was calling from Norfolk, Virginia, which is three time zones ahead of San Diego. He thought that he might have woken me up, since it was only 6:45 am here when he made the call.

My buddy is also a Navy pilot, but unlike me he did not do a tour on a ship, and therefore is blissfully ignorant of the type of schedule a ship's officer like me holds. He just assumed I was still on a pilot's schedule. I called him back and reminded him of that. I let him know that he did not wake me up, and, in fact, I had already been at work for over an hour and already awake for at least two, just like every other day in my crappy job on the ship.

Now I am not meaning to imply that a job that requires you to get up at 4:30am is bad just because of that, because there are probably millions of people who have jobs they love and do just that each day. However, this phone message just reminded me of one of several reasons my job is so incredibly undesirable.

Which is why I am so glad it is November. A few days ago I found out that the guy that will be replacing me on Peleliu is due to arrive in April. This means that I will get to leave the command some time in April as well. So as you can see, the fact that November is here is pretty sweet. It isn't because of the beautiful fall colors; I don't see the seasons here in San Diego anyway (the picture above is New Hampshire). The fact that any new month is here is good, because it means I am one more month closer to leaving my crappy job on the ship.

I really hate it when I want time to pass fast. I know I should stop and smell the roses, live in the present, carpe diem, and every other live-for-the-moment cliche you can think of, because life is short enough without me wanting the time to pass quickly. Right now, though, I want the time to just pass so I can move past this stinkhole in my life.

So thank goodness for November, December, January, February, and March, because it brings me that much closer to to the end of my floating misery. Think I'll be counting the days? There aren't many guarantees in life, but that's one of them.