So Full of Beautifully Broken Things

While intimidating and having a prerequisite to be able to multi-task like a mother fucker, this job that I have is not hard in any sense. The hardest part is anticipating what people may need and having the ability to read an instruction one way, and also possibly interpreting it another.

So, when my counterpart decides to order 44 evaluations with complete disregard to any rater situation (i.e. one he ordered, the rater has separated) it irks me. It is our job and is expected of us to stay on top of this sort of thing. All he has done is now create more work for either or both of us.

That’s a reason I am glad I have decided to get out.

But, even that is dependent on whether or not I passed the FSO exam which is the first step in applying for a job with the Dept. of State. I took the FSO in London on the 8th. The test is broken down into four sections and you have up to four hours to complete it all (each section is timed differently though) and I was done before everyone else in not even two hours from when I started. I breezed through all the questions and the only place I got hung up was the narrative portion of it. Give me multiple choice questions all day long and have me critique sentences, etc and I could be fine. Throw a narrative on top of that which asks my opinion on something I have absolutely no knowledge about and I froze. For twenty minutes I froze in front of the computer not knowing how to start it, what to put, what my opinion even was on the subject itself. Like I said, I had absolutely no knowledge of it what-so-ever. I’d imagine that is what is going to hold me up the most. The results come out about 3-5 weeks after so maybe around the beginning of March I should know if I can go on to the next step, or if I’ll be trying again next year. Of course, if I do end up passing and eventually get a job, I will practically live overseas for the rest of my working life. I’m ok with that. I’ve spent 23 years living in the US before going overseas and quite frankly, the US, as a place of employment to work stateside, doesn’t have anything to offer me. I think my path in life has been revealed and it is to do this sort of work and be stationed around the world.

But to say that I am officially over being in the Military would be an understatement. I think I’ve been over it for quite a while but I never saw any viable options outside of this. So, now that there is something that I can go for, I can easily walk away from this with no regrets. It will help being 100% completely debt free. Hopefully.

Taxes were filed (Federal on the 3rd of Jan, State on the 16th) and both were received within a day of each other. With that money, I finally paid off my car. Instead of being selfish and buying stuff for it, I took the $2,000 (well, $1800 and change for the payment) and paid it all. Almost 6 months ahead of when the loan would have matured. It feels good and on top of this upcoming deployment, not having to pay that every month I am gone helps a lot in the savings. My goal for this deployment is to not necessarily save, but to not spend it on stupid things that I tend to do. Every deployment I have been on, I have ended up buying a laptop/notebook. I hope to not have to do that this time. That’s $1,000+ saved right there. Provided I don’t buy anything stupid, and minus my regular bills such as insurance and this one card I’m still paying off (evil, evil thing) I can save around $19k over the course of the six months. Six of that will be reserved for said card, roughly 2-3 of it might be car related stuff to get it where I want it, and the rest will be saved.

If I don’t get the job this year, then I’ll be going back stateside for a year. It would be a dream to go back to where I was in NC if I could. Despite all that talk though about saving, I am already looking at cars. But, the ones I am looking at would be a decent car to get around in. One I wouldn’t buy things for to enhance this, that or the other thing, I could just enjoy it.
 

On a side note, I get to fly back home to Ohio on Monday just to renew a license. Fuck my life I don’t want to go home for just a couple of days to do something so trivial. Alas, doing it by mail is just too time consuming.

I just can’t wait to be out of here for six months. It is much looked forward to.