Spannungsbogen

That is, the self imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp it.

In other words, Patience. Something I'm learning a (frustratingly) lot about.

As some of you are aware, 2010 was not my best year ever. I won't go back through all of it, If you're fuzzy on the details you can ask me elsewhere.
HOWEVER.
2011 has gotten off to an excellent start. I conquered one of my dragons-in the form of a PT test, then I got to go home immediately following that victory. I spent a good two weeks at home, seeing my friends and family, and had a fantastic weekend in Dubuque. Also, Ruebens. As soon as I got back to Iraq, I got promoted to Private First Class. While this is a significant increase in pay, It is also a great boost to my confidence, and people will not stop reminding me of it for a good while. 

So, I will toss out some of my thoughts from the past two months(I can't believe it's been that long.... wow.)

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle 

Words to live by- 'Speak only if it improves upon the silence.'

'You never know until you ask.'

'Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.'

'Adaptability is Strength.' 

Time goes by, and nothing we can do can change that. I wound up wasting a lot of time over R&R because I didn't plan to use it. If I could go back and change things, I would have planned a lot more activities, instead of just going with the flow. The other downside to just 'hanging out,' especially when under a time constraint, is that you wind up not really doing anything. And while I enjoyed my last Saturday, I found my self very frustrated by the end of the day, feeling almost like the time was wasted. but, I have learned, and if I should find myself in the same type of situation, I know how to better deal with it.

A lot of you have been wondering how my Christmas(and subsequently New Year’s) went. I’ll be perfectly honest, It really hasn’t felt like the Holiday season at all. For starters, there’s no bloody snow! The weather feels like late fall does back in Iowa. It has, however, been very cold. And rainy. Add rain to large amounts of dust with high traffic patterns and what do you get? Mud. Yeah, it has also been very dirty lately. But I guess the real reason it hasn’t felt like the holidays, despite all the decorations and parties and other shenanigans that have transpired, is that I equate the Holidays with family and friends. You meet up with friends and go sledding dressed in jeans and a hoodie, you meet people to have coffee or cocoa at your local caffeine emporium. You share copious amounts of wonderfully delicious food with relatives, talk to people you haven’t seen in years, stay up to the wee hours of the morning playing disgustingly long games of Risk, and spend days curled up on the couch with a good book or movie. That’s what the holidays are about for me. But I didn’t get to experience that at the time everyone else was. So this Christmas was a ‘Non-Holiday.’ (I made up that term, call it a Kapp-ism) 
My 'Holidays' while on R&R went really well, though. I spent a good first weekend with my friends and family, and then spent my second weekend at Emmaus, my favorite home-away-from-home, and home to a couple of my favorite people in the world.


Those who know me well, know that I really don't do the whole 'New Year's Resolution' thing. I do, however believe in self-improvement. So, from that, and the challenge of my buddy Joe, I aim to read through the entire New Testament in February and March. If anybody wants to try it with me, you're more than welcome- here's a link to my plan. http://www.mybibleplans.com/reading_plans/1604
I am also going to try to put up a blog post everyday, with just a few of my thoughts from what I've read. 


Thanks for putting up with the dry spell, I'm excited to be back here to entertain you for a couple more months. If this post seems a little disjointed, It's partly because I'm insane, and partly because it's about three different unfinished posts I rolled together for one.
I do intend to stop posting here and start a new blog when I get home, so i'll be updating y'all on that process as it goes along as well.


And remember! Any plan where you lose your hat... Is a bad plan.