If the trailers are any indication, James Cameron’s new movie, “Avatar,” will be the most visually spectacular cinematic experience since the Lord of the Rings films. Immersive. Awe-inspiring. Tremendous.

Alas, the trailers also tell us most of the movie’s plot, and from what I can glean, it’s basically Ewoks versus The Empire, this time on a $500M budget.

Uhhh…. Yah. OK. As has already been suggested, the entire film basically looks like, “Dances With Wolves… In Space.”

Ergo, beautiful, environmentally-friendly, ‘wise’ primitives versus the big, dumb, evil, destroying, colonizer, military people.

(sigh) Do we really need another Hollywood lecture-movie, in this regard? I feel as if most of my adult life I have been bombarded with such movies, to the point where I just want to put my hands up and say, “Okay, I fucking get it, jeez, will you stop the preaching?”

If “Avatar” is allegory — and from what I’ve seen of Cameron’s own comments, it is — then it’s just the same old romanticization of the Noble Savage, as has been happening since shortly after the first Euros set foot on North American soil. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I am kinda tired of that.

Personally, I think what happened to the Native Americans is a genuine and grotesque tragedy. But that doesn’t mean I also feel the need to gloss over what the Native Americans really were. And the word ’savage,’ while not politically correct, is an apt descriptor for tribes that enslaved and decimated other tribes, as a matter of routine, or in the case of the Aztecs, regularly cut the hearts out of innocent young people in horrific religious ritual.

Will “Avatar” deign to show us the darker side of the Na’vi? Or will the Na’vi be just the Ba’ku — of Star Trek fame — in blue CGI makeup? Ergo, smart and perfect and all-knowing in a very tell-tale Southern California Liberal kind of way?

I will probably see the movie. When it comes to pay-per-view.

I was lurking at a different author’s blog recently when I found myself becoming profoundly angry. Not because the author’s politics pissed me off — though this does happen a lot — but because the author was whining about how they couldn’t seem to get any grants, now that they’d “committed” to their writing full-time, and suddenly all the bills were due and there was no money to pay them.

Let me just say that if you’re a writer of any description, and you have a spouse and/or children and/or others who depend on you to win bread for the household, it’s near-criminal for you to toss your day job in the toilet before they’re ready. Notice I said before they are ready. Because when you personally think you’re ready is never as important as whether or not the household is, in fact, financially well-off enough for you to gamble the household’s well-being on your freelance ambitions.

Now, the author in question is single — so far as I know — with no children, so you might be saying, hey Brad, how a single person decides to throw their life in the toilet is their business. And you’d be right. What got me was how this person complained about being unable to get grants, and how this person felt severely cheated because somehow they’d come to believe that there was all this government money laying around, just waiting for fledgling authors to swoop in and snatch it up.

Can I just say right now that I don’t think it’s the job of government to be giving tax dollars — money earned by us middle class folk, the people who pay more taxes than any other income bracket — to artists who can’t afford to do their art on their own dime?

If the author in question had simply complained about how tough it was to survive sans day job, with no mention of grants, I’d not have batted an eyelash. But the author in question was seriously upset that getting grants was difficult, that this money wasn’t falling out of the sky on this person’s head, and somehow this amounted to yet another “injustice” against this person by a cruel and imbalanced society.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this author can shove it up their whining, entitled ass.

Very few Americans love their day jobs, author or no. Left to our own devices, I think most of us would do about a hundred other things, every day, besides showing up at work. Work is tedious, boring, often offers little in the way of emotional reward, and very many times we wind up working around or for people we’d rather not have to deal with, even outside of work. The day job leaves many of us in tears, and just about everyone daydreams of that magical future time when, through accident or design, they can quit the day job and spend their time doing what they really enjoy.

So I am not faulting any writer or author for desiring to escape day work. Not even the author I am citing here.

I am going to fault this author — and feel perfectly justified doing it — if this author thinks they are owed tax money so that they can escape their shitty day job, and do it on my dime, well before their actual professional artistic income justifies their quitting. Because that’s just bullshit. Nobody owes this person — nobody owes any artist anything — without their first having produced a product which someone is willing to buy.

Harsh on my part, I know, but I’m kinda sick of the whole entitled and tortured artiste thing right now. There is nothing about being an artist — of any description — which says that we, as creative people, are somehow immune from the realities of the world. Our bills have to get paid just like everyone else’s bills. Those bills ought to be paid from the fruits of our own effort, not from hand-outs taken from a public cash pool towards which all of us are forced to contribute. If you can get a private grant from a private organization which does not rely on taxes, then OK, good for you, and I hope you make the most of it.

But if you can’t get private grants, and you can’t survive on your own creative merit, then how the hell do you get off being angry or feeling like an injustice has been done? Nobody told you to quit your job. You did that of your own free will, and you ought to not be surprised — in this economy especially — when things get rough. My suggestion would be to get a damn job and shut up. Imagine if all of us who are less-than-thrilled with our day work just up and quit, then cried about how the government wasn’t throwing checks in our mailboxes, because, you know, we’re just so freakin’ speshul, like we deserve it.

Again, profoundly angry.

It reminded me of a how I felt after seeing a TV news piece from a few years back, covering a Midwestern family who had been picked up from their comfortable Midwest existence, and dropped into the meatgrinder of New York City because the dad had nursed this Big Dream of being some kind of stage or broadway star, and as he’d entered his midlife crisis, decided it was time for him to just throw everything to the wind and pursue his Big Dream.

I don’t fault the father for having a Big Dream. Not one damned bit.

I do fault him for having the nerve to think that he was entitled to basically destroy the lives of his wife and several children, all for the sake of his creative and artistic ambitions.

And no, I don’t give the mother a pass, either. My wife and I agreed that the first response of the mom — upon learning of her husband’s Big Plan — should have been to say, “OK honey, you go do that! The kids and I will stay here in the house while the lawyer serves you with divorce papers. Have fun paying for us with your sparkling new stage career.”

She didn’t. She went with him, as did the kids, and it was evident that most everyone was miserable to one degree or another. The father had forced several of the children into the entertainment business too — so that, you know, they could help pay the astronomical rent on their tiny little New York apartment because, you know, his plan to become this big star was hitting some laughably predictable road blocks.

Again, if you want to be crazy and throw your life down a toilet, do it on your own time. On your own dime. That’s what having individual liberty is all about.

But you can go to hell if you think you’re entitled to take other people down with you — especially family — or if you think taxpayers owe you anything in the way of a free paycheck.

Please, don’t quit your day job. Because it might not just be you who has to “pay” for that mistake, if you quit too soon. Which most writers tend to do, sadly, because as John Scalzi recently pointed out, most of us — writers, that is — are horrible with our money and are prone to making terrible personal financial decisions.

I’d gladly argue that no writer — who has a spouse and children and is the primary financial component in their home — ought to quit the day job before a) the mortgage has been totally paid off, and b) there is the equivalent of the full mortgage in the bank, as cushion.

Single writers also ought to not quit the day job until they’ve paid off all their debt and have a significant reserve in savings. Because if you’re not financially stable and protected before you go freelance, it’s highly, highly unlikely that you’ll magically become financially stable and protected after you go freelance. The odds are tremendously in your disfavor, in this regard. And no, it’s not someone else’s job to pay your bills or bail you out if you decide to freelance before you’re financially prepared to do so.

OK, soap box session over. Just felt it was worth saying.

To quote one of my favorite old movies from the 80’s:

CHARLES DE MAR: I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy.

I originally put this up on the Writers of the Future phpBB forum, but I wanted to repost it here for everyone who doesn’t visit that forum, but is still curious about what it takes to get called up to the WotF ‘majors’ and, ultimately, get a base hit — or a home run!

These are just my opinions, of course. But seeing as how I never got a rejection — four Honorable Mention and two Finalists, one of which won — I do think I have my finger somewhat on the pulse of the contest.

NOTE: Please read recent volumes of the contest anthology. I’d recommend vol. XX through XXV, if you can get them on-line or at your local Big Brick store. My first three entries were all Honorable Mention, but I didn’t crack Finalist until I’d begun purchasing and reading the anthology. Each one has a minimum of 12 good examples of what it takes to succeed with the contest. If you do nothing else, this is the one thing I’d recommend most. Not all of the stories will be to your liking — and I suggest you ignore totally which stories placed where in which quarters — but pay very close attention to the ones you do like. Re-read them if necessary. Let them percolate across your creative unconscious for awhile. Think on what it was about those stories which tickled your fancy, and ponder for a moment what you might want to do with your stories to get them to the same place of impact, with your readers.

Here are some things I noticed, for myself.

1) Put your Science Fictional or Fantastical element right up front. Don’t play around with this, or reach for too much subtlety. Granted, the stories in WotF books run the gamut on this. But contemporary stories where the SF or F element is too subtle, or very abstract, or very under-the-radar, might still be good stories, they’re just not wearing their SF and F credentials on their sleeves enough to make the WotF cut.

2) Avoid doing “downer” stories. We all know it’s become chic in the literary field to write “down” fiction, because “downer” stories are basically code for realism, because as every good emo knows, life is pain and suffering and you can’t write real fiction and be a real writer if you don’t write about pain and suffering. Especially on a quasi-existential level. Pah! I say, pain and suffering are fine, but they must serve a purpose in the story. A positive purpose. They must either drive your character towards a more positive outcome, or they must be crucibles that transform your character into a better person(s) than they were before. Pain and suffering — for their own sake — aren’t what WotF is interested in. So have your story and your protag(s) follow a more or less positive arc, or at least end up somewhere that, when you read between the lines, appears to be taking them in a positive direction.

3) Don’t go bashing religion. Here again it’s chic — in SF especially — to get up on a soap box and lecture the unwashed about the evils of Belief. This might be fine for other markets or contests, but it’s my inexpert opinion that you hurt yourself doing this. In fact, I’d suggest taking the opposite road. And I don’t mean bible-thumpin’. I mean, explore a religious theme, make a character or characters sympathetically religious, etc. Religion, as an artifact of human behavior and society, can be endlessly fascinating. It can also be a tremendous informant of a character’s ideals, thoughts, motivations, etc. Doesn’t even have to be a religion we’d recognize from modern day. Make it up! But make it relevant. Delve into what it means to Believe. Or, have your character torn between the secular and the theological. Make this part of the character’s inner journey, either away from an incorrect spiritual perception of the universe, or towards something that seems more consonant with a fundamental truth or otherwise defining aspect of the character’s perception.

4) On that note, your character(s) ought to be going on a bona fide voyage. A trip. A journey. Current literary cant dictates that Good Fiction is a talking-heads, painfully self-absorbed thing. Grand journeys are soooooooo passé. Everything has to be angsty and happen inside the character’s head, or it’s no good. Again I say, pah! Take the reader — and your protag — on a grand ride. Go places. At the risk of sounding corny, dig out that box of “kids cereal” SENS-O-WUNDA™ that you put in the closet long ago, and shovel a few scoops into your next WotF entry. Grand vistas. Big places, with big people and big ideas. Get large with your perspective and your characters. Then, dovetail this Big Adventure Thing® with an inner voyage (see #3 and #5.)

5) Your character needs to be going on an internal quest at the same time he or she is going on an external quest. And no, angsty navel-gazing is not a substitute for personal evolution. Have the events and the travels and the exploits of the story change the character(s) on some level, so that they’re not the same at the end of the story than when they set off. This might actually be the most important part of all, beyond everything else I’ve already mentioned earlier. Because this is where you’re liable to Hook The Reader© with the emotional and psychological and spiritual development of the character(s) as they surmount or face down the external challenges you set before them. In the end, your story won’t matter to the readers if your story doesn’t eventually matter to the character(s) in the damn story.

To recap, I am not an expert, and these are just my theories. If you have been struggling with rejections and rare HM — but no semis or Finalist stories — or if you’re brand new to the contest and would like to have a Cliffs Notes on success, then give my advice a shot. Try it out. Take it for a test drive. See if it makes a difference. It might.

CAVEAT: Of course, if you’re literally brand new — meaning you’re truly a Fresh Aspirant with very limited experience writing anything at all — there is no replacement for homework. You’ll have to write a lot of words to improve, and probably none of them will score you a win — or a sale — right out of the chute. Take it in stride. Do the homework anyway, and enjoy the teaching and the exploration of the words. Don’t fret, just work. And when the rejection(s) come, don’t let it go to your heart or your head. It’s not personal, it’s just business. File them and get back to work on the next story. You can’t win if you don’t enter, and you can’t enter if you don’t write, print, package and mail.

In the U.S. Army we’ve got a Soldier’s Creed. I often think there are aspects of the Creed which can apply to life as well — not to mention Big Dream Pursuits, such as getting published and having a writing career.

To quote the Creed:

I will always place the mission first.
I will never quit.
I will never accept defeat.

That is all. Carry on.

At last, the silence can be broken.

My success I was crowing about earlier?

It’s official!

Took me six tries to hit the jackpot.

Joy!

Of course, mutual kudos to fellow winners: Brent Knowles and Adam Colston.

Yay us!

And for Jakob Drud, Geir Lanesskog, Dwayne Minton, Robert Pritchard and Tom Waters, keeping at it, people. Brent Knowles had to enter the contest like 19 times before he scored a 1st Place win. Both Brent and I were Finalists who didn’t publish, before we became Finalists again, and won. You just have to get back up off the mat and try again. Besides, being a Finalist is still excellent because you get a shot at being a published Finalist. Depending on how thick the volume is — due to the 12 winners — there may be room for multiple published Finalist stories, which is almost as good as winning because then you can still go to the workshop and you can keep entering until you finally win.

It’s been a week since I got the news about my break-in success. Wish I could be more specific about it. Still enjoying the rush of the win. But I’m already feeling some anxiety about the next, most obvious goal: completing a 100,000 word novel in time for the Lincoln City workshops with Kris Rusch and Dean Smith. I’ve got until the end of January to have the novel complete, while a 50-page sample and proposal of same is due two weeks before that. On my spreadsheet it says that I owe 1,200 words a day — every day — starting next Sunday and not stopping until February 1, 2009.

The flake in me says it’s madness. Even if I do 450 words before work, 200 words at lunch, and 450 words after work, this leaves almost no time for Goofing Off. And I dearly love to Goof Off. The freedom to Goof Off is perhaps the most precious freedom of all, to me. I hate deadlines and structure and being on a schedule, especially when it comes to doing Creative Activity. And especially since my last bona fide novel project royally crashed and burned at 100,000 words, what makes me think it’s going to be any different this time? At least with shorter material, when it goes bad, you can usually at least get to the end, say, “Frak it,” and move on to the next piece without feeling too bad about the time you’ve invested.

Not so with a novel. That’s a considerable investment, both in time and in creative capital. I screw that up — again — and it’s gonna feel ten times as shitty as it feels if I screw up a short story. I’m going to have to work very hard to resist the Internal Critic who will doubtless, by 25,000 words, be screaming loudly about how the book is a bust, it’s all wrong, the whole thing is a joke, avert your eyes and turn away, and so forth. Otherwise I am going to throw in the towel, and won’t have anything to show in Lincoln City, and that’s just not an option right now.

I think part of my problem is that I’m kind of skullfrakked about what it is I want to actually write. I don’t have any illusions about writing The Great Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel. It’s 99% likely that this novel will be practice only — because virtually all first novels are. I console myself with the knowledge that maybe because I’ve begun — but not finished — about for or five novels in my lifetime, maybe some of the lessons I learned on those abortive attempts will finally percolate to the top and help me make this one not only finishable, but sellable too.

In the longer scheme, I actually want to have two novels done by this time next year. Getting one wrapped before February leaves me most of next year to work on the second one, so maybe if I relax and just tell myself that this first one is a warmup exercise for the second one, I can stop psyching myself out, get a plan put together, and get cracking next week?

It was 17 years ago this month that I first got it into my head that I wanted to be a 4 Real writer. As in, paid. As in, professionally paid. I am thankful nobody told me then, at age 18, that it would be almost two decades before I’d get my first taste of bona fide pro success. And while I am not — yet! — permitted to speak on that success, I do want to reflect a little on what went into achieving the milestone.

138 rejections and 870,000 words.

The bulk of those rejections and those words have fallen in two periods: 1995 to 1998, and 2006 to 2009. Two four-year bursts of short production activity, in between which I fooled around with several novel projects, the largest of which went 100,000 words before I realized it was a hopeless, bloated mess, and stepped away. So I can’t really say that it’s been 17 years of constant, arduous effort. More like, surges of activity directly followed by long troughs of relative inactivity.

During which I wasted a hell of a lot of time. Oh Lord, so much. A whopping amount. If I’d had more discipline when I was younger, I am sure I’d have reached this point much sooner. Lack of discipline is still my #1 concern, as I now climb over the top of The Wall and survey the new series of obstacles that I have to climb en route to the next goal. Because The Wall is not the end, it is the beginning. Just like making your first basket as an NBA player must feel good, but you have to follow the first basket up with countless others in order to make a career for yourself.

My historical lack of discipline frightens me, because without significant effort on my part to change my own behavior, I risk becoming a one-shot writer; the kind of person who gets one or a handful of credits, then disappears into obscurity.

Still, I can’t feel too bad. Nobody gets to 870,000 words without some kind of effort. And even though almost all of that remains unpublished — and, probably, upublishable — it did get me where I am today. As practice. Practice with the goal of selling, yes, but practice all the same. I couldn’t have reached 500,000 words without first writing 250,000 words, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I despaired over the quality, and other times I felt totally lost, as to what editors frakking wanted in a manuscript, beyond having a Big Selling Name in the byline.

But I made it. And everything I did up to this point, helped get me here.

So don’t give up, all you aspirants out in Aspirantland. 138 rejections and 870,000 words are what it took for me to climb over the top. If you’re more mature and disciplined than I was — am — then it might take you half as many rejections and half as many words. If you’ve got a clearer picture of what it is you aim to achieve — something I am not sure I had in earlier years — you probably are again liable to get to that first pro milestone more quickly and with less heartache than I’ve experienced.

Because it’s worth it. Oh my goodness, it is worth everything!

It’s official.

Click here to see the announcement.

My sincerest best wishes to Adam Colston, Jakob Drud, Brent Knowles, Geir Lanesskog, Dwayne Minton, Robert Pritchard, and Tom Waters.

It’s been the better part of a week now, and though the official word still hasn’t been put out, enough people have been informed under-the-table that I may as well just blog about it. Hopefully Joni doesn’t mind.

Yes, I am a Finalist for Q3, Writers of the Future vol. XXVI

Yes, it’s my second call-up to the WOTF Majors this year. Hopefully I don’t get sent back down again. Hopefully I connect for a single, a double, or a triple. Or, like Emery Huang most recently, the Golden home run.

If nothing else, making Finalist twice in the same year ups my chances at being a Published Finalist. Which to my mind is almost as good as a placement — because you still get your work in the book, which means superb word rate and potential royalties, and you get to keep coming back and submitting to future quarters in the hopes of winning.

Eric James Stone did it. I wouldn’t mind doing the same.

We’ll just have to see what happens. Wait time ought to be 8 to 12 weeks, just as before, so nobody will probably know anything about the winners until around Christmas or so. Unlike last time, I’m not expending a lot of energy fruitlessly daydreaming about The Big Win. I am instead tempered by the knowledge that it’s good to be in the queue, but nothing is guaranteed, so best to just keep tapping those keys and firing out those manuscripts.

Q1 of WOTF vol. XXVII is currently open for business. Maybe this time I do an about-face and turn my submission in way early, instead of writing and mailing at the last minute like I always do.

I’m also going to begin entering the Illustrators Of The Future contest as well, so Q1 will see me sending two envelopes to Hollywood. There has been only one double-winner to my knowledge: Stephen Stanley. As with Eric, I wouldn’t mind following in those footsteps.

Hey, maybe I can be the first guy to get a Published Finalist, a placement, and a win at the IOTF as well?

As always, you can’t land on the moon if you never launch your rockets.

Best to everyone still waiting for news about their entry. If you’re struggling with anxiety, why not pour that energy into a new piece. Get your mind going on something else. I spent too much time stewing over my Q1 Finalist and it resulted in nothing.

It’s been almost a week since they pinned my Warrant Officer bars on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to come down off the high of achieving this goal, but am pleased to say it hasn’t happened yet. Making WO1 was the culmination of years of planning, preparation, and execution. It was neither quick, nor easy, which perhaps explains why it feels so terrifically satisfying having achieved what I have achieved.

It’s also gotten me to thinking, as a wannabe writer, about the value of concurrent or alternative objectives. So often, we aspirants spend every waking moment running around fretting about our writing goals. We get wrapped up in this obsession — because that’s what it means to be an aspirant, right? — thus the rejections and the slow progress can often be maddening, depressing, angering, and so forth.

It can be enormously beneficial having other projects going on in life — at work, at home, in the military, etc. — towards which you apply yourself at the same time you’re working on your writing. So that while the writing might be a drag — and as aspirants, can we all please admit that it is, very often, a drag? — things don’t suck quite so much if you’re able to make progress on some other, also meaningful endeavor.

I’ve noted elsewhere on the InterToob that I’d never considered — seriously — being in the military, prior to 9/11. Since I joined in 2002 I’ve found that my Army Reserve career has presented a whole host of daunting challenges which have pushed me — often far — beyond my comfort zone. Sometimes I’ve dreaded these trials, other times I’ve gone into them with positive anticipation. In each case, I’ve always found a way to make it through; to succeed. And I’ve been thankful, after the fact, that I stuck it out and did the hard work and put in the time and the sweat and the blood and the pain. Because the rewards — on a personal level — are indeed satisfying.

This satisfaction is difficult to quantify or qualify, suffice to say I feel as if I have become a larger person, at the end of each new military challenge. I feel as if I’ve been driven beyond my usual self, and been forced to grow in some subtle yet important way.

I believe this growth not only illuminates my writing, but provides an additional buoy if ever I let the rejection slips and the eternal waiting game get me down. My military success is a reminder that tough challenges are just part life, that nothing worth doing is ever done quickly or easily, and that while I’m still a nobody in the publishing world, I’m becoming a Somebody in the military world. And with that knowledge comes a certain satisfaction and surety that I’m not sure I’d otherwise enjoy.

I’ve had a lot of disappointments this year, regarding my writing. But now that I’m back from WOCS and relishing my victory, I feel pumped up about the writing like never before. I want to keep the mojo flowing! I’m on a roll! I want to follow up my success at WOCS with increased production, more submissions — capitalize, man! And why not? I’ve gotten three personalized rejections in the last 45 days. A record, for me. I can’t see the end of the aspirant tunnel, but then there were times in the midst of WOCS — and other Army schools before that — where I couldn’t see the end of the tunnel. Only solution was to set small, incremental goals, take it a day or a week at a time, and muscle through. So I look at the writing wall — which I’ve spoken of before — square the straps of my proverbial ruck on my proverbial back — and keep climbing.

Anyone else have concurrent or tangential goals which fire them up, outside of or beyond their writing? What sorts of things are you doing — or have done — which make you proud and make you feel good about yourself? I’d like to know.

(said in best Sidney Portier voice)

If making SGT felt seminal, making WO1 feels ten times that. A new realm. A new experience in the Army. Things won’t ever be the same, and I can already feel it.

It’s interesting, when I think about it. My mentor when I came into the Army was a CW3, and from the time I was a pre-Basic troop helping out on an SRP weekend, she had plans to send me to WOCS and get me set up as a Warrant. For the first five years of my USAR career, she became more and more insistent, until she finally retired and said, “Sergeant Torgersen, you will go and do this thing!” Well hell, what can you say to that other than, “Yes ma’am!”

WOCS Ph. III was a tough two weeks, punctuated by blowing my (already blown) left knee two days before the capper — a six mile ruck march out of the Alabama woods. Short distance, yes. But not easily accomplished on a fucked up knee. But after mile 1, either God or the motrin or the endorphins kicked in, and I was humping like a mofo. Because I wanted it. In spite of the pain. I wanted the bar. It was so close. All the effort over this year and last, between the packet process and Phase II and Phase III… Nothing short of a coma was going to keep me from finishing my mission and getting the bar.

I’m home now, and feeling pretty damned good about things. I am sure the reality of being a mere “wobbly” will set in soon and I’ll find a whole new vista of peaks that I have to surmount, because one thing about Army life is your work is never done. Ever. Not until you die, or retire. And sometimes not even then.

Anyway, I flew out for Ft. McClellan on September 11. Take what significance from that you will. I myself found it not just a little…. Deep? Interesting? Without 9/11/2001 I’d not even be in the Army Reserve right now. And suddenly 8 years later I am a gottdamned Warrant? How does this happen, especially to a computer geek like me, with bad eyes and a bad knee and no delusions of being any kind of Rambo?

I have said it before on other forums, my initial want, upon enlisting in 2002, was to participate. That’s all I wanted. To participate. To give back in some meaningful way. Not not just be some guy getting PO’d over 9/11 in a chat room. I wanted to do more than that. Put my money where my mouth is.

I still want that. To give back. To help. To be the kind of man that stands up when standing up is needed. Because I won’t ever be a hero, like some of my battle buddies at the WOC school. One guy in Phase III had gone to Iraq with the Marines, then turned around and went to Afghanistan with the Army National Guard. CIB and badges and fruit salad over his left shoulder. I was in awe. He was cool as hell and to see him on the street you’d never suspect he was the kind of man he was, with that kind of history. A real hero.

It’s guys like him I want to do right by. I’m just a 420A paper pusher. My role is to HELP the real fighters who run, jump, fly, and drive into the teeth of battle. Someday the battle might find me, and maybe then I’ll have a little fruit salad of my own, instead of a fruit cup like now. Until then, my mission is to serve and help the warriors with whom it is my profound privelege to serve.

Not much else to say, other than that. Glad it’s done. Glad I did it.

WOBC next year. I hear from the same Marine/Guard dude I talked about above — whose wife went through 420A WOBC recently — that it is indeed, “12-ounce curl time.”

Meanwhile, I am back at my civilian job and looking forward to a productive and enjoyable Fall season.

As Mr. Rork might have said, “Smiles everyone, smiles!”