47 Minutes

That’s the amount of time I have left as a member of our Active Duty Military.  Today was my last day at work, but the Navy owns you 24-7, for good and for bad, so I’m not out until it’s no longer today.  A lot of people asked me if I was super happy to be done…which is an interesting question.  Yes, I’m very happy to be done.  I’m very happy to be able to pursue something new and different.  I’m happy to be able to grow out my remaining hair and measly facial growth.  (37 minutes now).  Yes, it’s time to be done and I have many things I’m looking forward to.  It’s strange, though, because had you asked me if I was happy to be getting out of the Navy two years ago when I was leaving the ship I would have gone into great detail in describing how ready I was to be done with the Navy and how much I couldn’t wait to put that par t of my life behind me.  Two years of working behind a desk and in front of a classroom have tempered my readiness and now it just feels like the completion of the inevitable rather than a much yearned after freedom.  I went to work this morning a little earlier than i have been, cleaned up my desk, filed some reports, said my goodbyes and walked out to my car.  I have to confess that i teared up a bit as I left the building, not because I was sad to go but because it represented a monumental shift in my life and I started to feel the gravity of that.  Yeah, I know, I probably should have felt that coming a little while before I was leaving the building, but there’s just something about walking out a door and looking back on a place you used to work that makes you also start to think about where your life was, is and is going…everything that’s brought you to now and made you what you are.  Those are big thoughts and they got the best of me.  Ok, well I’ve got 19 minutes left until I’m done so I figure I might as well stay up and bring in my own personal new year.  Here’s to new beginnings.