He's Jogging the Distance. He's Not Jogging for Speed

 It's not often I ever feel like I'm proud of myself. Most of the time, even if I do something someone else might think I should be proud of myself for, I feel like, "Who tf am I to be proud of anything I've done?" Even on the rare occasion I've accomplished something I think is worth being proud of, I have some sort of personal caveat for it. For example: when I finally got my blue belt in jiu-jitsu, I felt a small sense of pride for sticking with the hobby despite how much easier it would've been to just quit long before that. But at the same time, I felt a lot of shame (for lack of a better word) for how long it took me to get it and how inconsistent I was during that whole time.

I've posted on social media during this deployment quite a few times and I imagine anyone that has seen this posts thinks I'm having a pretty decent time. The reality is that in a lot of ways, this has been my worst deployment yet. While it's not really worth the time to go into details, I will say that leadership at all levels while I was here was by and large a joke and the base itself gets my vote for worst base in all of AFCENT (at least as far as established bases go). There have been any times during this deployment I questioned my resolve in both remaining here and in remaining in the air force. 

That being said, I didn't spend the majority of my off-duty time sleeping, which is what I did during my last deployment (albeit for different reasons). Nor did I get on social media to constantly whine about how much I hate things here (as I so often seem to do about things that make me unhappy). That's not to say I didn't do any whining; I certainly commiserated with coworkers and then whined about those coworkers to a friend back home. But beyond that, I dealt with my misery here by focusing on me.

Because of that, I was able to achieve the one goal I had set for myself on this deployment before coming here and for that, I'm actually proud of myself (no caveats attached). In addition, focusing on that goal helped me in achieving secondary goals as well. 

That one goal was to lose 20 lbs while here, something that I originally thought would be a lot easier than it turned out to be. My first month here, I didn't lose any weight (and in fact there were a couple times I got on the scale to see I'd actually gained a pound or two). The mere fact I hadn't lost any weight in that first month had me pretty disheartened and I was considering just giving up and sleeping this deployment away. By the end of the second month, despite a regular gym routine and cleaning up my diet quite a bit, I'd only lost about 5 lbs. It wasn't until the end of the third month I'd noticed what felt like actual weight loss, which was about 15 lbs. At this point, I was feeling good about things only to be smacked in the face by the end of the fourth month with a loss of just a couple more pounds (even though I was eating less and jogging more!). It wasn't until about a week later I was able to see those last few pesky pounds come off (and staying off when I double-checked a few days after that).

In addition to losing 20 lbs (plus a little more at this point), I've jogged over 200 total miles in this place, including doing my first ever 10k. I've also put in over 50 hours on the jiu-jitsu mats (plus I did a jiu-jitsu-ish tournament that I didn't do so well in). Maybe this is all weird/trivial stuff to be proud of myself for, but I nonetheless am.

I'm not gonna lie, it feels kinda weird to feel proud of myself. But this time around, I can't seem to help it. Don't get me wrong, I still thank God I was able to do all this as I don't think I could've truly done it all on my own. But I'm not beating myself up over how it could've been more weight lost or more miles jogged  if I just tried a little harder - I'm able to be happy with these results and just leave it at that.

Of course, now that I'm getting ready to go home, the new goal will have to be seeing how quick I can gain all the weight back :P