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Group Writing, Order: (Back) Into The Cage
I turn 52 today.
Funny, the old broken guy in the mirror doesn’t look like the strapping, barrel-chested freedom fighter in my head.
The vast majority of my adult life was spent in the Army. I retired just shy of three years ago. Adjusting okay to civilian life; as “civilian” as being a DoD contractor gets.
I realized, though, during a recent exercise, that I’m doing it wrong.
Wrote about how my unit hosted a bunch of our Partner Nation brethren for an exercise. Adding to the complexity of support planning, the first weekend was a Reserve training weekend and we reside on a Reserve base.
So, had to find an off-post place to house all my brethren. Did that, great place, solid contract all around; PN, Hotel, US taxpayer: Everyone got a good deal.
I was sucking, though. Add the commute and the stumbling around the house trying to get dressed for work at O-dark-thirty and trying not to wake up the kids home from college, it wasn’t pretty. When the drill weekend ended, 05 August, I promptly moved into the BOQ, about 200 metres from the exercise site, and could dedicate full-time priority to the exercise. I stayed there through the 11th. My life revolved around the exercise; the local Air Force Inn was just a place to put my head down a couple hours, and then get back to it. The linchpin, though, was my cage.
My unit has a large locker room, the cages are lockers. They are bigger than, say, a wall locker; smaller than an NFL guy’s walk-in changing space. Big enough that you can launch from work on a no-notice contingency. Coat and tie for the Embassy? Check. Outdoor civilian roughs for romping around the hinterlands? Check. Tactical gear for when the schnitteth headeth southeth? Check.
I lived out of my cage before I retired. Roll out of the rack, put on a grungy (yet offensive to anyone who read it) t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, and hit the road for work. Personal hygiene, physical training, dressing for work, all happened at the workplace, on account of I had my cage.
When I came back on board the unit as a contractor, my Directorate issued me a cage. I put a couple contractor-type polo shirts in there, a couple of personnel hygiene items, some workout clothes “just in case.”
Over the course of the exercise, though, I realized I wasn’t ordered enough. I wasn’t using the cage mentality.
Now, I got it. At least the concept. Still getting the details dialed in.
Roll out of the rack and take care of business (dog out, trash out, dishwasher emptied/reloaded). Roll out for work in “Keys casual,” as mentioned above (not, note, “Keys super casual,” which is usually just flip flops, a jockstrap, and a light coat of vegetable oil), get to work, and use the cage as the center for my daily rituals.
I’m a big believer that rituals help impose order. Morning shower and personal hygiene? Night is done, day has come, transition to wakefulness and readiness. Donning the uniform (in my case, a very classy polo shirt, cargo pants, and good footwear–usually with a brand name like Merrell or Salomon)? A ritual that signifies, “hey, you’re not on your time anymore; game face on.” After work, putting on the PT clothes and pulling the GI off the hanger? Now it’s time to push, and become better than I am and hit the dojo; in our case, a contracted master of mayhem that instructs every day out of a tricked out old hangar at/about 1700 hours. After the dojo, a quick clean water rinse in the showers, back into ratty tee and cargo shorts (still good footwear), and transition to going home and “my” time. Sobriety optional.
Getting back into the cage is key to leveraging ritual in order to be better. I’m not saying I’m getting extreme with the ritual schtick, just saying I need to do better.
Published in Group Writing
Your profession is one dedicated to imposing structure — ultimately, though with a detour through channeled mayhem (to use your word) — on entities which for whatever reason would rather not comply. It would seem almost unnatural if you didn’t embrace structure yourself, both at work and in your private life. Structure can include flip-flops, I suppose.
My own vocation involves imposing structure, the most meticulous, minute, nit-picking structure, on machinery. I don’t think of myself as overly rigid in my habits, but I sometimes suspect that I’m a good-natured web of subtle but obsessive neuroses.
You might not be that… irritating. (But I’m going to guess you are.)
Yay, Boss! Happy and Blessed Birthday! Wisdom and truth here…My beloved and much-missed Uncle-Colonel knew that I’d need the guardrails of honorary Marine status to jumpstart a new phase of my life (minus my folks and a job I truly loved). Between Honor. Courage. Commitment. and Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome (bound together with Always Faithful), I can keep strolling along my path every day, too. Glad you’re here…The world is better with you in it! HooWah, dear Mongo!
Uh, okay, not a vision I needed in my brain.
Understood. I’m a fan of ritual myself.
This conversation is an entry in our Group Writing Series under September’s theme of Order. If you’re new around here, Group Writing was created to help encourage members to write and to post on topics that aren’t necessary the news of the moment. If you’re not new around here, it was still created for that reason. We still have eight openings in September. Come sign up. It’s good for you. Like spinach.
When @bossmongo irritates, you know you’ve been irritated. (And why are you in a hospital bed again?)
Hugs and Happy Birthday, O Great Boss-guy!
Happy Birthday! I remember (barely) when I was 52 myself. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Happy birthday, Boss!
I can’t remember a single thing from when I was 52. A spectacularly unmemorable year. Well, other than when Hillary lost. That was memorable.
¡Felicidades en tu día y que cumplas muchos más!, Boss. Sounds like the cage helps keep things startin’ out right side up, though admittedly things can go pear shaped PDQ judging by the stories you share :-).
One ‘Bad’ass Mongo…is one indispensable magnificent Mongo. Happy birthday, boss. Let’s spend the next couple of Ricochet years getting to read more of these great stories of yours out here where we can read ’em.
You’ll get used to it.
Happy birthday, Boss! We love you even if you are an old warhorse.
May the vision always persist, and may the difference never matter.
Happy Birthday!
Many happy returns of the day, Boss!
Your writing is so visual. You should develop it. Jungles. Cages. Mongo. Home. It just all goes together so well.
Happy birthday, Mongo.
Boss, in my 51st year I was still out there hiking in the New Mexico mountains carrying a 55 lb pack (I learned how to reduce that for later trips) with my son and the boys from our Troop.
If it was not raining, we were not training was the mantra. 10 days of living out of my bag, ranging from 6,500’ up to 12,000’ and back seemed like the life. I have been to that mountain 2 times since that trip, and I know that if I had to, I could probably manage another trip, but it would have to be soon.
Grace at this point is learning to accept that the image staring back in the mirror, is going to have more limitations. So enjoy 52, and keep the creeping ravages of time at bay, and keep kicking butt until you cannot get your leg that high.
Happy Birthday. Good thing tour not a chicken.
Happy Birthday Boss, and many, many more – !! Thank you for your service and dedication to our country – you made it this far – don’t break anything now!
Make that “because” you are, and you’ve got me on board, Chauvie. :-)
Happy Birthday!
BOQ? Bank of Queensland?
“Bachelor Officers’ Quarters”, iirc… :-)
Got any tips Boss? I’m a creature of habit and stuck in a bad rut. If I could just get a week/10 days in a row into a new, better, routine I’d get stuck in that new-and-improved rut and force of habit would carry me a long way.
But how to lever ones-self out of the old and into the new?
I’ve read the above and agree with everybody, so have a happy birthday!
Remember, it’s not the years but the mileage.
Well, there were the 90-Day Challenges, but they sort of died off.
Quick jump to the comments to wish @bossmongo a Happy Birthday! Tonight’s bourbon will be raised in your honor: “Here’s to us…”
See … we’re too unmotivated for the 90 Day Challenge … hence the problem.
Feel free to start a new one for us.