Music:The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - In Fate's Hands
Dispatches from the Deep: #8 (August 20, 2008) - this one's a little different...
I've been at sea for a few days now, and this underway doesn't quite have the same feel as a lot of previous ones. Prior to the Submersible Death Trap's time in New Hampshire, I never was particularly sad about going to sea. I regarded it as simply something that had to be done, no matter how silly the underway's purpose may have been. But the combination of nearly a year on shore with the boat and the approaching end of my enlistment have again made me acutely aware of what I'm deprived of while I'm underwater. It only provides me more justification to rejoin the "real world" (or as many here say, be "on the outside") in a paltry nine months. At the same time, it gives me more respect for the people who did this job in the generations before ours. How in the hell did they survive down here without portable music players, pornographic video, and PSPs? How did they relieve all the stress they must have had? Oh, wait...never mind.
This underway has opened with more of the standard silliness to which I am accustomed. We brought the cremated remains of a Master Chief with us for a burial at sea. Upon hearing that we had a dead person on board, one of my compatriots actually wondered aloud whether we actually had a dead body stowed somewhere. We gently reminded him that if that were the case, everybody on the ship would know about it. I was personally treated to a slew of gruesome images during this morning's drill invitation. The sequence is designed to desensitize the viewer to the types of injuries sustained in war; surprisingly, I wasn't grossed out by them. Other than that, it's been much of the usual - watch, training, drills, screwed up sleep, a workload that never ends, a job where one's best is never good enough, and as much "rack to the future" as possible so as to fast forward to the date and time when we're once again moored.
(This entry was originally written 20 August 2008, 1446Q.)
