Bad Mood

 Election day and I spend it at a small outpost with a bunch of heavily armed deranged racist hillbillies. I wish more people would use birth control.

Good Mood

 It's November 5 now and I am writing from one of the smaller outposts I cover-- one I haven't been to since early September, and I feel pretty good.

It was a quick flight on a Chinook—no more than 30 minutes out of the broad river valley where my home FOB sits and then down into a huge forested canyon system that gouges a path towards Pakistan.

A corner has been turned and I seem to be able to see light through this thicket of months, weeks, days and hours. I've even started to ask myself if it was really that bad… how quickly I forget.

In the spirit of forgetting I have been enjoying my time here at this outpost. I've gotten two workouts in at the luxury gym here. They don't have much cardio equipment (a stair climber and an elliptical) but they have a decent selection of weights and kettle bells and big Afghan rugs on the floor for diabolical sessions of ground work; a painfully large selection of core exercises and push-ups.

As far as real work goes, I still have to brief the medics on managing suicidal patients in theater and I have to see two to three patients. The military doesn't get much bang for the buck by having me here, but I suppose it is better than the Soldier not having any treatment or having the Soldier leave the outpost for a week or more to see a doc at Gardez or Bagram.

The guys here try to make it more interesting for me… Yesterday afternoon I turned down an invitation to go on a mission to the Paki border. The words "fuck that" just popped out of my mouth before the invitation was fully formed by the commander. I had second thoughts afterwards, and I asked myself if I would regret not going on that mission. I silently argued that it would develop some good camaraderie with the platoon, and that it would be pretty cool getting a photo of myself in battle-rattle standing on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

 

I believe in luck but I believe that I create my own luck. I'm going to keep my lucky streak going…