wonderful dream...

this morning, just before my dog's barking at something outside, I had the most amazing dream. I was in an office type situation where someone had given me a pci card for installation in a computer for some sort of financial transfer from a guy who had died a few years back's savings account. this card i installed had a socket that accepted interchangeable chips of different types. as i inserted the chip the pc was on and a web browser was open. the chip forced the pc to not only open a bank website but begin a funds transfer of $90,000. this all made perfect sense to me and any guilt or wrongdoing was not in the equation as I had got the pc hardware to perform this transfer from his surviving wife. The amazing thing is, she was my second wife, Joanna. I have loved her since I lost her in 96' and have never stopped. She seemed to have been wanting me back in her life and to give me a second chance. I distinctly recall her insistence on buying me a new guitar at a sale they were having at a local store. We went to her home in Virginia and I recall her vehicle was very luxurious. Several various family members were in and out of the home and I remember small parts of interactions with them. We were very happy together and I recall feeling so in tune with her desire to have me in her life.
I was an aweful spouse to her. Very immature and insecure, taking all the negativity I felt out on her. She was always so happy and content and I think I was somehow jealous of that and looking back, it seems I was determined to make her feel as lousy as I was.
I miss her terribly and am sad to wake from this dream but happy for the experience of having it.

more babbling and rambling

it would seem that my blogging is not up to the collegiate writing standard of those more educated than myself. It is for this that I wish to extend my most humble kiss my hairy pimply posterior.

i am in the process of getting my transcripts together for submittal to Columbia College. This IHL has been recommended to me by my closer-than-best-friend Barry. He has achieved more in his life than 90% of those I have known in my life. He has risen from pissed off outcast of the norm at an obscure high school to one whom has literally taken the IT community and made it his foot stool, despite injuries and setbacks that would have left the common man a writhing pulp of unachieving handicapped flesh. One could easily see why I would do more than entertain his recommendations. This man has, despite being totally immersed in a career, family and personal life complete with hobbies the likes of building an aircraft at his home with his bare hands, taken the time to reach out to me in my times of need giving more than the average family member would. Our relationship spans way farther than blood or pact. It is a formidable force the likes of which go down in the annuls of written history.
I shall then attempt to hew my prose into more cogent thought process as not to offend the decencies of the reader and, if necessary diminish the purpose of my blog's purpose, to merely get things off my chest and out of my turmoil filled cerebellum and into typeface.
With this I offer my most humble apology to the reader and beg of them to continue, as this is the closest I have ever been to feeling human in my life and wish to chronicle my days throughout the process.

KDH

true hatred...

in 2005 the newly appointed Chief Hanning checked aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, America's premier aircraft carrier. I Had little to no friends onboard, where I also lived for the first two years. After the 2006 deployment another Chief in the division started hanging out with me. We hung out for a couple weeks and I told him I was trying to get back into church somewhere in California. He immediately agreed and began telling me about his growth in the Lord and we found a church and went there. The longer we attended and hung out, the more holier than thou he got, by reading to me from the bible to me after I went to bed and criticizing me for having a beer with the guys. We soon deployed and he got way worse at sea. This all broke when we pulled into the first port when he went totally off the deep end screwing anyone who was convienient. He persisted in telling me how much he read in his bible almost daily until I told him off, citing all the things he would do in foriegn ports. He then began to do all he could to derail my career by talking about me behind my back to anyone and everyone he could, even the ones we worked for. This all continued until I began to stand my ground and prove him wrong by being the best at what we do and embarrass him at every chance I got. We continued this and things escalated until he finally got me reassigned to the most lamest position in our division. I just waited until I transferred and continued to hate him worse than anyone I knew. I still to this day abhor him terribly and can't figure a way to let it all go.

one of the top 100 things that pains me about her...

in 2004, while forced to live in some tiny space reserved for those three grades my junior, after she turned her back on me refusing to cohabitate, she told me she had changed her life and gave it to God. in short, she still left her back toward me by not even entertaining coming to live with her husband three hours away, or transfer with him to the coast where she belonged.
she would never take responsibility for the things in the marriage she had a hand in and was the first one to bludgeon me with my wrongdoings after saying and doing anything she wanted to to me. her character makeup was explained to have formed at a very young age after getting a frowny face on a kindergarten paper. she watched as her grip on the paper slightened just enough to see the paper being blown away by the bus that was driving by. anything she did that was wrong, she would never take accountability for. she would tell me the most hurtful things and when i would get upset, i was the one acting up. this was carefully orchestrated to be broadcast to those she wanted damaging not only our relationship but my relationship with key people in my church and even my youngest stepdaughter who lived under my roof.
what an awesome Christian she was, on her own crusade to lessen me in the eyes of several of the elders and deacons of my church. then she would put on the biggest heirs in front of them while we were at church. my stepdaughter once told me that one deacon said I made him sick to his stomach when I was asked to participate in the song service. this caused me to bow to my own principles and not attend, warming the seat beside her as she would put her arm around me and pretend she cared about me.
in my past, those who have wronged me in this way have been delt with quite severely from on high. most have lost all they loved or their weighty titles have been abolished entirely. i just wonder how this will all pan out for the one who hurt me more closely than all the others. can't wait to see His rath emptied out on her. i am patient. He will have his just leveling in His own time.

from huge impact to huge failure

Chief's like me have been trained in the fleet, at the very pinnacle tip of the spear of forward deployment and mission accomplishment. Most of us have had such vast loads of responsibility thrust upon us that our very actions could make or break the unit upon which we serve, mine being the US's surge carrier, being responsible for all the launching and recovering capability of that carrier on a daily basis and to not bat an eye in the undertaking. Literally walking through the fire of harms way and wielding that fire as a weapon. it was time for a step back from the fire.
In 2008, from across the globe, deployed, I called the recruiting district that owned a recruiting station nearest my home town, in Rolla, Mo. I spoke to the Officer Programs Director and the Chief Recruiter who assured me they would do what they could to put me in that Rolla area near my home in Salem. I transferred back there in Feb09 and checked into St.Louis.
During my checkin process the Officer Programs Director, or OPO had shared with me I would be recruiting officers for the reserves only, a job that I had no training and which differs greatly from what I had been taught in recruiting school. I finished check in and reported to NRS Rolla to set up my work station and get acquainted with the staff there. I was further trained by the only other reserve OR in the distrrict. she could not train very well at all and seemed to speak a totally different language than me. I new then and there I would be on my own with gaining a knowledge of how to do my job. I had also met the lady who would do the processing of my paperwork for all my applicants. she trained me a tiny bit on what she thought would be important but it was basically common mistakes in the kits she had been seeing. she had been at the job for a number of years and seemed to speak her own language as well. back to square one, again.
i set about the task of getting a handle on my job in any way i could which involved building my own office from a storage space and contacting all the best reserve or's in the nation to get a grasp on how to proceed. these individuals pointed me in the right directions and i learned a lot. the SOP of the department stated I was to find the applicants, sell them and get their paperwork started, the processor would take it from there with the paperwork and I was to assist in this process as much as needed. I knew my job now and proceeded accordingly. I did not know nor care how the processor tracked incoming documents but would aid in the rework as it came up. several months went by and i had presented my work to my CO and OPO who seemed happy with the amount of people i was working.
then came the huge realization that would cripple my efforts and pull the rug out from under me. The processor had not been keeping any track of the documents my applicants were sending in nor did anyone care if she was or not. i was quickly called on the pad for not keeping up with my paperwork my applicants were required to send in to the processor. i quickly asked how it was spelled out in the SOP and was told i was right but needed to be able to discuss in detail what was in each one of my kits intelligently. months of being called on the pad for my people not being sent to board and the like followed and i was asked quite bluntly if i could do this job. I answered like any Navy Chief would, that i was doing my job and needed others to do theirs. the powers that be were not hearing that, and had quickly labeled me as a leadership challenge to be micromanaged in as many ways they could come up with. from checking in each morning from my desk to checking out at the end of the day from my desk. i had been given the picture that what i had learned was my job according to instruction but the system was flawed to the point where the people in place could not do their jobs as they were so overtasked that the OR's needed to do what i heard from my fellow OR's termed as "processing your own kits" and learning how to force them through a broken system with the right pushes in the right places. the biggest problem was the processors did not work for me so they had no vested interest in anything i was doing or how many kits i was working. they just did what was pressing for that day and went home. i began with the squeaky wheel ideology and was told by my OPO that we weren't going to hear any more processor bashing nor using the processors as an excuse not to achieve mission.
this all continued until 2011 when a new position was opened in the department filled by a member of the Chief's community. the key was, this person was in both my, and my processor's chain of command! finaly, a breakthrough! She checked into the department and quickly learned who was doing bad or good and i was one of the first she called. i had told her my sad story and she believed me. we quickly set out to holding the processor accountable for not working my kits. every peice of paperwork i would turn in went through her first before going to the processor. i went from not netting one or two people a year to making my annual goal in 4 months! this was seen by the command as her straightening me out, but i was still happy with the outcome. my marriage was in constant turmoil but i knew i was doing just as i was supposed to do, only i knew the sad truth, I had been doing it the entire time.
this is just one tail of how a system with sacred cows in it's organization can be led afoul. It took a Chief to fix this by actually forcing a command's hand to let them lead where they were supposed to be leading in the first place.

failure motivation leads to heavy resentment

i would guess in any separation or divorce there are many stages of emotion. I am at the one where i basically resent anyone who shows me any type of caring. i was treated like i didn't matter by my estranged in so many ways. this effects me not only when those who do care about me show it or if i see a show or story in the news about how to keep your love alive, it shows me so many simple things that i was doing and she just refused to do. this makes me wonder what motivation she had in this refusal and what the desired outcome would be. i'm of the mind to believe she had very vindictive motives such as what would make me hurt worse and for the longest time. this makes the hatred and resentment worse.
i also wonder why, for so many years, i was like the cartoon i recall of Daffy Duck loading a black powder rifle and it going off in his face. each time it would go wrong he would go running back saying "I know what I did wrong!!!" with a sense of hope and a hunger to get it right. the saddest part for me is what makes the cartoon funny. The little mouse hiding down by the trigger, pulling it to make the gun go off in Daffy's face. i would set up so many safeguards or try so many different methods of righting our relationship. she would have something to say each time, like i simply needed to make more money or if she had to go to work, she'd go home to Missouri. I was expected to come up with the fix for all our woes and when i would
she'd sit back on her laurels waiting for some small part to make everything blow up in my face. i was not perfect and would, most of the time, go off on her. the fighting would lead me to apology and a new fix to insert and try.
after 15 years of this, I feel i haven't the emotional fuel left nor the motivation left to be of use in any relationship. this really hurts, as for most of my life, i have either been married or trying to be in a relationship.
I have no idea how to do this with no failure motivation, but i guess i will figure it out in time.

My Core Competencies

in 2005 i was selected by the beaureu of the navy to the position of Chief Petty Officer. This is different than the rank of E7 as the other branches are merely advanced by their respective departments. It's the epitome of prestige within the enlisted paygrades of the Navy. We have been for generations, asked to undergo a form of initiation. over the last ten or so years, the Navy and it's beaureacrats have tried to water down this by restricting and prohibiting different parts of the process to include renaming it to induction, transition. I'm certain this has made somewhat of an impact on the Navy in positive and countless negative ways.
i recall being made to memorize countless phrases and lists, many of which seemed pointless at the time. the one that has stuck with me were the core competencies. a list of principals a Chief should live by.
in every line of work there are those who have risen to paygrades and positions when they have absolutely no idea how to lead people. the Navy recognized this nearly a hunderd years ago and made it one of the responsibilities of the Cheif, training these higher ranking boss types on just how to go about the task of leading those who work for them.
the ones i worked for as a brand new chief did not know i was to be offering them training. it took me nearly a year to learn my own way of training these officers who thought they knew it all already. they were not the problem. it was the ones who had risen to higher paygrades from the enlisted ranks who had forgotten where they came from. they shunned the process of the initiating of a new chief or thought they would impose their own brand of training which ripped the training from the hands of those capable, the Chiefs, and ramrodded the ways in which to train those selected as well as constantly stripping the Chiefs of their power to run the command removing their ability to make the sometimes drastic changes the task needs.
as a recruiter, i discovered the most rewarding portion of the task was interacting with those bright young minds in local communities who had what it takes to be an active part of something great but with no idea or resources to get them into the position. I termed it "Handing out new lives" to future generations who would lead the Navy and maybe the nation to it's next steps. this was shadowed by those i worked for who didn't recruit but thought they knew how to lead those who were. Recruiting has taken people who have failed at other jobs and allowed them to progress farther than those of us who volunteered to go recruiting for three years to give something back to our Navy. they are the ones who run things in recruiting and have severely lost touch with the afloat Navy and her day to day tasks of which they were not good enough at to make the cut, so they went recruiting. the 800 lb gorilla in that room is that those they lead were and still are good enough to make it in afloat leadership. these Sailors are treated like cattle for the most part and they don't know the difference between a leadership position in career recruiting and the afloat leadership. they blindly follow anything asked of them or blindly accept the ways this leadership somehow strangles and hampers their proven abilities already shown in the fleet.
I could go on and on but this is idiotic and I can see no immediate solution to the problem.

Drudging through the mud

i have not blogged in forever but here is an attempt to catch up. I left my marriage in September and had a flighty few weeks afterward. staying with friends and family for a week or two each until renting and moving into a home in Rolla. after speaking to my command about my situation i was soon released from recruiting officers and ordered to not interact with any applicants. earlier when i had spoken to my master chief, he offered to have someone pay for me to go to this years initiation. when i arrived the day of, i had several things to take care of on the trip and arrived a couple hours after the other guys and he went off on me for nearly two hours, accusing me of blowing important things off and disrespecting him and the chiefs mess by showing up two hours late. the rest of the guys had been told about my predicament and had taken up a collection. it was given to me after the riot act had been read to me.a week or two later i had begun feeling tingling in my arms and fingers, my heart palpitating, i made an appointment with my psychologist as soon as i could see her. this prevented me from attending a retirement ceremony of a chief from the command that was apparently a sacred cow. i was called and railed upon by the command master chief who in the beginning of the conversation said he had half a mind to make me pay back the money given to me by my brothers and sisters for missing that ceremony, no matter the reason. by the end of the conversation he told me to pay it back and squeezed a date out of me for the next payday. I didn't have the money but in turn formulated a better plan to set up the mess' first pay pal account to benefit all the folks who had given to me. when told about this plan, again i was bludgeoned by the command master chief saying i was just doing whatever i wanted and not doing as i was ordered and not when i said i would. i saw this conversation was the same as all the others he had with me to try and make me his bitch one more time. at the next get together in tan tar a i payed the mess 250 to shit him up and at least go out quietly.
all this has rocked em to my core of my standing in the overall chiefs mess, not just the one at this command. we are led to do for each other in times of need and support one another by changing things that are wrong or at a standstill for different parts of the navy. i am a good chief and have led those in my charge to better standing than they were. I love being a chief because i get to be involved with shaping the future of the navy by bolstering those around me and make a positive change wherever i am. this has extinguished any light i had for leaving the navy as a proud navy chief at a retirement ceremony delivered by those who care. i now know that under the wrong direction, a chiefs mess with a cancer at it's top end can be not only a hindrance to it's command, but a bludgeon to the very people who could make it great, as it's supposed to be. i am ashamed to be a part of a consciousness which allows the things that my experience with this guy is a symptom of. more people's careers have been ended and curtailed by this stained tapestry of leadership.
all of this is happening while my family has crumbled around me in a fierce divorce that has been stripped financially by me supporting two separate households. i feel i am not only divorcing my wife, but also divorcing myself from my navy that i have loved for so long.
after hearing from my friend, a retired senior chief that he had a house for me to rent for cheap, i quickly moved in there. the house is awfully run down, just as my standing as a chief. i have to force heat it with small heaters and one gas unit of which i had to borrow the money from the landlord friend to get the gas for it. this is all so figurative of my life and how i feel as a chief. forcing myself to rise to any occasion professionally by external negative forces.
i feel as if all my wanting to make anything better, both maritally and professionally has been thoroughly exhausted, leaving me worn out and hollow. my only hope is a tiny shard of light in my future that shows through all the fog and mud i feel like i'm in. this tiny light is me signing up for college and sometime in my future, an end to this divorce and a bankruptcy to settle all my affairs.

throughout all this, somewhere very deep inside me, there is a roaring dragon driving my sould forward by telling me, you will not only survive, but rise above all of this. how i don't know but i have been hewn into this "broken buildning" type personality with a coursing metalworks in it's basement. this is sewn into my very soul by knowing the bedrock of belief in scriptural form, He will not put more upon you than you can bear, and there is always a way of escape, not only into calmer waters but to stride the highlands that have been purchased for you in the very blood which was beaten and torn from He which sacrificed all so that i may have not only peace, but actually excel in this life and someday actually enjoy being alive again, something whick i know very little about.

kdh