akuhidori

So there are two topics in today's little blog. The first one is on Whil Wheaton's feature blog yesterday. He got me riled up on his topic.

Let's make this clear to begin with. I am not riled up against his blog. I am for his rant!!! If you haven't read what it is about please go take a look at it.

First geeking out at con's over your favorite celebrity or icon is perfectly fine to do. It is what a con is all about. Letting our freaky geeky flags fly. Those are great time to get pics and have your favorite person sign a photo (kicking myself for not knowing Falica Day was at ECCC the day I was there). But stalking them to their hotel or to a restaurant is not acceptable at all. We as a community need to stop this bull shit from happening. That is shit that tabloid photographer's do and it is not cool at all. We do NOT need to go looking for aliases of our icons at hotels or restaurants to take a candid picture of them out with friends and family. We do NOT need to surround them like wild dogs and isolate them from their group or family. Especially family.

The fans that went after him separated him from his son. His freakin SON!!!! Now I want everyone to stop and think for a second about how they would feel if a group of people you do not know at all surround you and separated you from your family/friends/pets or stopped you from going on about your business. You would react in many different ways depending on who you are. I would try to get away, or if you piss me off enough I would start yelling and cussing at you guys. Look at what some of the stars of today have done. They have punched and threaten tabloid photographers for doing just that!!!

Our favorite people to idolize are still just people. We need to respect them and give them their space. If you do happen across one of them while out be polite and don't draw undo attention to them. Just treat them like you would an aquantience. Go up to them and excuse yourself. Tell them BRIEFLY how much you like their work and thank them or encourage them on their future endeavors. If you cannot live without something cool to remember this event then ASK if you can take a quick picture or have them sign something. Being polite will get you a lot farther than being rude to them. If it looks like a private setting PLEASE do not ruin it for them. Just smile and know that you saw your icon in a private moment.

I have hated tabloid people and the shit that they have been pulling ever since the Princess Diana incident. We do not need to cause one of these ever again. And if we as a group don't realize this, one of our crazed friends might just go overboard and cause something close to this. Now that is an extreme and I know that but it is a good reminder on what a slippery slope we are on when we do that and how quickly things can change.

Whil Wheaton had one lady FOLLOW him after he was pulled away cussing him out about how rude HE was being. It might not take much more for that fellow fan to go over that line. Now I know that 99.9% of people here are not like that and about <1% of people are going to read this rant. But those who do, please remind your friends at cons and if you do see this happening stop it or find someone to stop it. Yeah it sucks that you might actually have to do something but that might make all the difference in the world.

Now for the second part of this blog and something much more personal. I have been a closed person for most of my life. I was very emotional when I was younger and I grew up on John Wayne movies. You never really saw him cry ever. No show of emotions. That was the true mark of a man. I looked up to my father as well and I have never seen him cry growing up until I had this thought in my head that men do not need to show weakness of crying. I had my first outpour of frustration that day and brought my own father to tears with me.

I don't know why I have never learned the lesson that having emotions and dealing with them in a healthy manner is a good thing to do. Not dealing with things can lead to more problems and hurt a lot of people. My way of dealing with uncomfortable things has been to bury them deep and not bring them up again ever if possible. It really is one of the worst things that you can do cause all you are doing is creating a pressure cooking of issues that is going to explode and cause you 100x more damage then dealing with them as soon as you are able to.

My big issues and stress that has caused this realization all started over a year and a half ago. I was dating this woman whom I fell madly in love with. We were talking for hours upon hours on end. Video chatting right all night and falling to sleep together while on camera. This was such an odd experience for a long distance relationship for me, but it was truly one of the best I have had up to that point in my life. I fell so hard for her I wanted to marry her. Right then and there but that pesky logical side said to just get engaged and do a long engagement (almost a year) and let thing naturally grow between you two.

I found the ring for her and was so happy that I bought it. The next week I got a call from home saying that my grandfather had passed on. I was in shock and didn't know how to deal with this. This only other funeral I had ever been to was for those that my father knew and I have no memory of. So I was never really prepared for this. My grandfather and I were close when I was little but had grown further apart while I grew up due to distance and view points. But he was my grandfather and I loved him. I was just in shock seeing him and nothing registered with his death. At the time I was trying to put a positive spin on it and remember him when I was a young child and he was happy. It brought a smile to my face.

A few weeks after the funeral, I had orders from my station at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes to go across country to Washington State to my new station. Now I had been back from Iraq for under six months and I was about to ask my girlfriend to marry me, move to a new station, and go on my first ship board deployment in my Navy career. Now add a death on top of that and it is a lot of stress in one month of a person's life.

But I handled it like a champ (not) and didn't even register how bad of a situation this could turn out to be. And I didn't think twice about any of it. Well on the day after Christmas (yes one of the most stressful times of the year, can you say big omen) I asked her to marry me and she said yes. I was truly on cloud nine for that one. We were talking about how to move both of our stuff up to Washington and everything that we were going to be doing.

A little over a week later I had to leave and get up to my new duty station. I drove from her place there and was excited to being a new life at a new command and be the Shit Hot Sailor that I was at my old command. Boy was I in for a shock. I was put on hold for three weeks before heading out to meet up with my squadron who was already deployed at the time. I was talking with my fiance and getting a feel for the area while I was on hold. About two weeks after I got there the love of my life started acting very distant. Now we had always been open and told each other everything, so I defiantly noticed when she started getting distant.

Most of my ex's have done this to me in the past so I was like praying that this was just a minor bump in the road before I go and that we can work this out. HA!!! Nope. She dumped me a week later stating that she needed time to be by herself to work on her relationship with God. Now that is the biggest bull shit I had ever heard and I called her on it. I know full well that working together with those of similar faith brings them a lot closer together. I was raised in a strong Christian faith so I have seen this first hand for many years of my life.

She could not give me a straight answer and never has (we are still somewhat friends on FB). I was crush beyond belief when this happen. I was hurt and angry and embarrassed as can be. My family me my future wife and liked her, and not even a month later the engagement was called off. Now this is a week before I leave. Her grandmother who thought the world of me, told me two days before I left that she has started seeing her ex (whom was verbally abusive with her and she with him) and that they were talking right after we got engaged.

This is not what I needed to hear right before I was suppose to go to the ship. So I bury this hurt and pain and fly out to try and bury myself in work for the whole deployment in order to get through it. Yes I am that dumb. Everyone in the command knew that I had already gotten engaged and still thought I was. I was too embarrassed to let them know otherwise. So I let all the stress that I had the month prior and buried it all into me and my work. It had work for the first 3 or 4 months. Then my quality of work started to decline, my attitude towards things had change, I was dealing with the long hours fine but the tempo was something different at this command compared to my previous.

I didn't pick up on the cue at all. Then I flipped out when I found my dress whites ruined by mold ... FML, was scared to have to depart the ship and be in whites looking like shit. I never wanted less than a 5.0 ready uniform. Then transitioning back to our duty station was a trip in of its own. We had things get changed 50 times before we left in 4 hours, I had no sleep, and needed to make corrections so those of us loading a truck to ship our stuff back to our station was being loaded. Again took it like a champ and buried the stress.

I get back and do NOT take leave like everyone else cause I wanted to save up my leave days so I could go to my delayed 10 year High School reunion and my college homecoming game. So I didn't get any time to decompress like the rest of my squadron, and I still had to find an apartment to move out into town with. So much fun.

A week later I had found a place, signed the lease and had my stuff shipped to me. All while working 8-10 hour days and my stress level still high from the ship. I was a wreck with a lot on my plate (cause I wanted it) and I was failing hardcore at doing everything. My LPO (basically the person directly above me) counseled me on my lack of attention to detail and how bad my performance was as of late. This is when a group of new bosses came in and my first impression with them is this failure. Not that way to start out. I took my leave and hoped that this break would let me decompress from everything and to be ready to start anew when I returned. Came back ... same problem existed ... slight improvement then a quick decline. And again I was in trouble twice once around new years and again a month later. There was a pattern forming and neither I nor my chain of command noticed it at all.

Now in April I got another counceling chit and I really wanted this shit to stop. I felt like I was the problem child of the officer. The shit poor Sailor who brings the office down and nobody wants around (I should say I kind of go to the extreme at times with my thoughts especially when it comes to myself and how I should be doing). I was given a supervisor position, mainly to see if I could step up to the plate and be the leader of the shop that my LPO and Supervisor thought that I could be. Well that was in May. It is July and I had failed my Chief for the last time, turning in sub-par work of a second class cause I was not focus and catch those SIMPLE mistakes. Well I was written up again for something that this time wasn't even my fault and pissed the hell out of me. I really wanted to scream and I thought hey you guys gave me bad info and now you are trying to write me up for it?!? I felt like they were trying to make me fail. Like I was being gotten rid of in the most dirty of ways cause they didn't feel like putting the effort in and helping me out (when all I had to do is just ask for guidence and they would be happy to help me out). So here I am being removed from position and being threaten with going to Mass (a form of military punishment), and I had to give this huge amount of training to my night crew guys on one of my last days before I am no longer their immediate supervisor.

We started out on two basic topics but the third one we hit was Operational Stress Management for Non-supervisors. While giving this training out I was going over the sceniro and found myself relating almost 100% to the guy who is having problems in the training. I was like holy shit. This is me. Right here we are going over what I have been going through and feeling and no one has picked up on this?!? This is a yearly training that we do. I went first thing this morning when the day crew came in and talked with my LPO. Letting him know what I felt the problem was with me and what I think a good solution is to do. My solution was to talk with a Chaplin about these issues that I have not dealt with and find some kind of closure to move on with my life and stop beating myself up over it.

During talking to my LPO about it I had a small break down and cried for the first time in a long time over things that have been going on in my life. Things that I am not proud of how I handled the situation and what I need to do to get better. I feel comfortable telling you guys this long ass rant cause I am somewhat faceless here. You guys have not met me in real life and really are judging me beyond what you have read here. Most here I found are nice and caring. So I feel safe saying this here without getting a hateful message in my comments about this.

Thank you all whom have read this entire long rant of two topics that I have wanted to get off my chest. Now it is time for me to get some sleep.