50 Shades of Dave

The story of a guy named Dave and how he deals with his abnormal life!

Road Trip!!

Hey ya’ll!!!

It’s been a while since I was last on here, and I’ve been meaning to get back into the groove of things.. so here’s my sloppy excuse of giving everyone out there an update on what’s been going on.

I recently found myself on an impromptu road trip when I was about to get stranded on some work travel.  I was in Cincinnati in February and had to get back home to Iowa to make it to some personal travel plans I had set up.  

The weather wasn’t cooperating and my flight out of Ohio kept getting pushed back and back, and in my experience with flying (both military and civilian planes) it wasn’t going to be a very good chance of me getting home in time to turn around and travel the next day again.  

So I ended up scrubbing my plane tickets and getting into a rental car to make the 9 hour drive home…  Armed with my phone and a few snacks, I had plenty of time on my hands so I thought I’d get you all up to speed on what’s been going on with my life the past few months.

That ended up in the next 8 or 9 blog posts/videos that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks for you to peruse.  

I’m still trying to get in to the groove of things as little bitty “emergencies” keep popping up for me and my family, but I think I’m finally getting caught up and can get into a rhythm of writing and video-ing and posting.  

As I’ve stated in the past, this blog is mainly for me to get my thoughts and feelings out anyway and hoping it impacts you in some type of way..but I’ve definitely noticed over the past few months that I have been bottling up a bunch of things and need to get it out.  

So without further ado, here’s what I like to call “Road Trip with Dave!”

Enjoy!

Be One Percent Better Every Day

I’m a 1-percenter!

Happy New Year!!

I hope that you took some well-deserved time off during the holidays and was able to re-charge and relax like I did for a few days.  It was great spending time with loved ones and not having to worry about the grind that haunts us the rest of the year.

Of course, with the turn of the new year, everyone is talking about resolutions and goals and New Year/New You shit that you hear each January.  

I got to thinking last night, why do we have to wait until January 1st to celebrate a new beginning?  I mean we talk about it all the time with goal setting and improvement that you should break down goals into smaller, measurable chunks so you don’t get overwhelmed, right?  Then I started thinking why don’t we have a New Day countdown each day??  Why can’t we have a big (or small) celebration each evening and make a daily resolution for ourselves for the next day?  

It hit me when I was writing in my new journal last night (more on that in a separate post, later), that we should be looking back at each day and thinking of ways to improve the next day.  Then in the shower this morning, I reminded myself of the concept of making a 1% improvement each day to see real big changes over the course of time.  I tried doing the math (yes, I do math in the shower sometimes), and immediately knew that it wasn’t just as simple as adding 1 percent each day since it compounded on what you’ve already improved upon in the days prior….so I screwed around on a spreadsheet and saw the actual numbers.  Watch the video to know how much you could improve on something if you actually did improve 1% on it each day of the year!!  It’s amazing!

I guess there’s a name to this approach too, called Kaizen, and found this link that you can read more about it, but I’m definitely going to take this approach each day and celebrate a Happy New Day every day in 2019 and find where I can improve my life by 1%.  

https://medium.com/the-mission/get-1-better-every-day-the-kaizen-approach-to-self-improvement-b79c9e045678

Where do you think you can take this concept and improve your lives?  Let me know and I may have the same ideas and show you how I’m doing it throughout the year!

Thank You For Your Service???

Thank you for your service??

I recorded the video for this one a while ago and kind of sat on it..and sat on it, and got to the point where I totally forgot that I filmed it until a couple days ago.

So now that Veterans Day is here, it seems fitting that this post should go out today. I don’t know why I was reluctant to post it in the first place. I guess it just seemed that it might be too controversial or that my views are not the norm for veterans. But then I ran across this article and saw that I wasn’t the only one out there.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/veterans-share-how-to-thank-them-for-their-service-2015-11

I would feel uncomfortable when people thanked me for my service in the military. To me it was just another job even though it was cool and I could possibly be killed, but nowadays a person could get killed for simply going to the wrong movie theater or place of worship (I’ll save that for another blog post).

If anyone needs to be thanked for a serviceman or servicewoman’s service it needs to be their families. They are the ones who are making the sacrifice and if they had their choices then I’m sure they would easily have their loved one be at home instead of harms way. Also those who ultimately gave their lives need to be “thanked” by remembering why they lost their lives in the first place. I don’t feel the need to be thanked and if someone does feel compelled to go out of their way to thank me then it can be done in more meaningful ways.

Get to know the veteran. Ask them what they did while they were in. Ask them why they joined in the first place. Some of us didn’t have any other choice and some of us wanted to get out of doing anything substantial. So blanket thanking of veterans isn’t usually the best choice. Talk to us. We’re people too.

Happy Veterans Day!

How Do You Get Organized??

I’ve had quite a bit of experience in organization…or more accurately, I have a quite of bit of experience being disorganized and have a huge desire to find something that keeps me organized.

Over the years, I’ve tried numerous systems and some of them have worked, some of them haven’t, and they’ve all had some type of adjusting on my part to suit them for my needs.  I never really had anything during school as far as keeping my thoughts and tasks in order and the first real “planner” I’ve ever had was something they issued to us at the Naval Academy.  It was a Franklin Covey calendar/day planner thingy and it was part of a class we had to take where they issued the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” 

I tried using the planner for a month or so and honestly it took a lot more time in me keeping that thing up to date instead of actually doing the things that I needed to do.  I should probably re-read the book since I remember there were quite a bit of great concepts in there, but it’s been a few years…let me add that to my to-do list 🙂

When my wife and I were first married, she made lists for EVERYTHING..so much so that no matter where I was in the house, I found piles of post-its and scrap papers with lists.  I probably could have benefitted from using lists for myself, but the sheer volume of lists that my wife used kind of drove me away from adding to the pile, so for years, I never used anything to keep me organized.

At some point during my Navy career, I decided I needed to get my shit together and finally get organized.  I found a few different systems and used a combination of them together and that really worked for me in the situation I was in.  Basically, I was a geo-bachelor (a term we used in the Navy that described someone living away from their family during a duty station..my family lived in Maryland and I would drive 3 hours away each week to work in Virginia Beach), so I started researching systems and found something called Get Things Done (GTD) and 43 Folders, along with an app on my phone and computer called Omnifocus. 

Using those systems together, and more importantly sticking to them, increased my productivity both at work and at home and I found myself having more time to do other things.  I could really go back to using those systems again since they proved to be good for the way I think, but since then I kind of fell out of it and really just need a kickstart again.

I did use them once again when I was in the midst of retiring from the Navy and moving my family out to Iowa, but it wasn’t as efficient since I had a lot more on my plate with also trying to run a business remotely as well.  Though I did sign up for some training through Asian Efficiency, which dialed in my use of Omnifocus, but really just need to get back at it again.

Since then, I’ve been floundering.  I’ve been reluctant to get back organized for whatever reason and when I finally do have some time to think about it, I figure that what I’m doing now is half-assed working.  I tried using a Bullet Journal, but the act of writing things out for me is just frustrating…mainly because my handwriting sucks!  I think I still need something app/folder driven, but I am not giving up on a journal so I found a new system that has an app and an associated journal, but haven’t gotten the journals yet.

Once I do, I’ll post again and let you all you know how it’s working or not for me.  In the meantime, what kinds of systems do you use to keep yourself on track?  I want something for my entire life and not just purely work, or fitness, or personal…I need something for all aspects and it needs to be easily accessible and not limited to a filing cabinet or a journal.

My First Defining Moment

This dawned on me a few years ago when our eldest, Carson, was heading to a lacrosse summer camp at the Naval Academy when we lived in Maryland.

He wanted to be a better lacrosse player and wanted to sign up for this week-long camp at my alma-mater.  I remembered when I was a Midshipman there that they would have high-school kids show up at different times during the summer for various sports camps and seminars, so this was familiar to me.  They would spend a week living in the same rooms that we lived in during the academic year since the majority of the student body was out on summer vacations and training cruises…

Anyway, as we were driving Carson up to Annapolis, we could tell he was getting visibly more nervous.  I asked him what was wrong since I thought he would be excited and knew a couple other boys that were going to be in camp with him.  He said something to the effect that he had never been away from home for longer than a couple days and this was the first time he would be “on his own.”  He was 16 and a half at the time.

I told him that there was nothing to worry about and proceeded to tell him the story of myself when I left home.  I was about a year older than he was at the time…heading to the same place, the Naval Academy, but instead for a week long camp it was to begin my indoctrination into the military life and college.  For me, it was 1992 and I didn’t have a cell phone, my parents didn’t have e-mail, and I knew nobody.

I arrived 2 weeks early due to some clerical error in my airline tickets that had me flying from the Philippines to Baltimore during a mass exodus from Subic Bay Naval Base prior to the base being shut down.  I basically had nothing except the clothes on my back, a duffel bag full of clothes and my dad’s credit card that he said I could use for “emergencies.” 

I flew half way around the globe and landed in Baltimore, MD with no clue how to get to the Academy.  I hailed a cab and asked him to bring me to the school and an hour later, I was walking toward the Main Office where I was told that I was waaaaaay too early to report for Plebe Summer.  Luckily a Lieutenant on duty asked me if I had a credit card and he could take me to a hotel out in town where I could stay for the next week or so until I was allowed to check in.

He drove me out into town on his lunch break and I checked in to the Holiday Inn next to the Annapolis mall.  I decided this was one of the “emergencies” my dad talked about so I basically lived off his credit card until I was allowed to come back to the Academy to get a room to sleep in.  I did this on my own, without talking to my parents…remember, no cell phone..hell, my parents didn’t even have a phone in their house in the Philippines.  And I knew NOBODY local!!  And I was only 17!!

I survived my first defining moment where I had to “adult.”  So I related this to Carson and hoped it would ease his mind as we only lived a couple hours away..he had a cell phone…and he had friends that would be in the camp with him.  He seemed relaxed and called us a couple times during the camp and had a great time being away!

I never realized that the moment where I left my parents would be a defining moment for me.  It seemed like more of me just living life, but in hindsight it definitely showed the kind of attitude I have for life as far as rolling with the punches and not throwing my hands up in the air whenever something doesn’t go my way.  I’m sure there are a few other defining moments of my life and as I recall them, I’ll tell you about them.

Until then, what moments in your life showcase your attitude and how you have handled adverse situations?  I think those are the moments that really show us who we are.

I’m baaaaacckkk!! With a New Job!!

Hi guys and gals!

My apologies for being off the grid for the past few weeks, but I’ve been getting my crap in order with accepting a new job offer, quitting my old job, and getting started in my new job, among other things…so I’ve been a wee bit busy these past few weeks.

I finally got some time to catch my breath so I decided to give you all a quick update on where things are at.  I’m typing this up as I wait for a flight back home from my first “business trip” with the new job so other than just this quick update, not too much to talk about this week.

I am going to commit myself to posting once a week to get things back up and running again now that the hectic transition has occurred…so once I figure out a good rhythm you should be hearing from me more often from here on out.

Thanks again for your patience and talk to you all soon!

 

What Was Your First Job?

What was your first job?

Mine involved uniforms, ships, and airplanes…and it wasn’t by choice.

Let me explain.

When I was 16 and in high school in the Philippines, I wanted to have some spending money while I hung out with my friends.  We had just moved to the Philippines after my dad retired from the Navy in Japan, and I noticed during the summer between 10th and 11th grade, that there were a lot of similar-aged kids working odd jobs (like mowing grass, working at snack bars, etc.) In fact, that’s kind of how I met one of my best friends, Oliver..he did groundskeeping stuff around the Navy base (like in public areas, not in people’s yards) and would hang out in the bowling alley my mom and dad would drag me to. 

Anyway, I remember telling my mom that I wanted to get a summer job, and her response was “no.”  She told me that I wouldn’t be paid enough because, being in the Philippines, the Navy base was allowed to hire Filipino civilians to work these jobs too…and the supervisors would rather pay a civilian mere cents per hour instead of paying a teenaged punk like me a few dollars per hour. 

I didn’t care how much I got paid..I was bored and wanted some money so I persisted about getting a job.  Plus, it would get me away from having to hang out with them in the bowling alley for hours and hours on end.

I must have gotten on my dad’s nerves because after a few days of me continuing to ask, he told me that if I wanted money, then I could do some chores around the house (big whoop..I was doing that shit already anyway) and he would pay me $80 a week…but he would give me $40 in cash and deposit $40 in a savings account for me.  I said “deal” and basically continued living my life and getting money for it. 

That leads to my “first” job…being in the Navy.  Fast forward a couple years and I got accepted into the Naval Academy.  Yup, I know, it was basically college with some military crap thrown in, but I was getting paid to do it in exchange for agreeing to serve my country for a few years.  So, I count being in the Naval Academy as my first job, because it was a lot of work with all the extra shit we had to do on top of the normal classes we’d take.  And it was nice getting a paycheck every month..even though the first few months ended up being around $50 bucks in my pocket by the time they took out all the deductions we had to pay for by being in school there.  Technically, we all got paid the same amount, but each year, we would get more and more money into our pockets as we paid down items like uniforms and books and stuff.

It didn’t matter since the first year, we were only allowed to be out in town on Saturdays and Sundays.  So it wasn’t like we were spending crap tons of money.  We were being fed meals and didn’t have to pay for rent, so we were good.

At the time of me writing this, I’m working at my 2nd job, since I’ve since retired from the Navy after 20 years.  In looking back, I kind of wish I would have pushed back on my parents some more and took the manual labor jobs that I wanted to do, you know..for character building and shit.  But also looking back, I’ve had a lot of other character building experiences so I guess being in the Navy for a first job wasn’t so bad.

The Longest Day…

Wikipedia entry of the Washington Navy Yard shooting:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Navy_Yard_shooting

This is the third post in a 3-part series describing my experiences with the Washington Navy Yard shooting that occurred in 2013.

If you missed the first post, you can find it here:  http://50shadesofdave.com/2018/07/02/is-this-some-sort-of-drill/

If you missed the second post, you can find it here:  http://50shadesofdave.com/2018/07/08/this-is-not-a-drill/

So there we were..about 100 of us crammed inside a conference room that was supposed to accommodate about 50, so a lot of us took turns sitting in chairs or on the floor or walking out into the hallway and just standing around.

We were told that we were safe and that other people were shuffled off in to other safe buildings nearby. Every now and then I’d turn my phone back on the send off a quick text to Chantel and check notifications from Facebook and then I’d turn it back off. I couldn’t get caught up in the cycle of updating everyone how I was doing or what the latest news was..mainly because we didn’t know any more news than what was being shown on the tv.

We all watched as the body count grew and grew..and then the rumors of another gunman started filling the airwaves. Every now and then new people would filter in to where we were, visibly shaken..one man had a big bloody gash on his forehead, and though I was tempted to ask them what they knew or if they saw anything, I left them alone to process their own feelings.

And that’s how the next 9 hours passed for us. At one point some people came in with snacks that they had foraged in other people’s desks in the building where we were in lockdown. It wasn’t much but we were all just happy to be safe and our appetites weren’t at the top of our thoughts at the time.

A couple hours after starting our lockdown we saw the news that the gunman was found dead and that the authorities were clearing the rest of the building. Having classified areas meant that the cops had to break down a lot of doors that normally were locked with some major gear (huge deadbolts, electronic scanners, etc).

That was what took the majority of the time..waiting for the “all clear” to be announced so we could go home. Then at around 6 pm we were told we could go but they wanted us to walk through some clearing area first. I guess investigators were ready to get any witness accounts of what happened.  I didn’t have anything to provide besides that I heard the first few shots and then evacuated, so I went on my way.

I didn’t have any keys since they were on my desk in the building. My wife had arranged for a second set of car keys to be left where I parked in a commuter lot about an hour away from DC. I just had to get there.

Luckily we were told that the mass transit folks in DC would give anyone a free ride if we we associated with the Navy Yard. So I was able to get on to a metro train and a coworker offered to give me a ride to the commuter lot.

My car was the lone car in the normally packed lot by the time I got there. I found the spare keys in the wheel-well where Chantel said she taped them and sat in the drivers seat and took a deep breath.

I called my wife on the way home and got home about 30 minutes later. I dropped everything in the foyer and just sat and hugged my family and had some leftovers.

They gave us the next few days off and I checked my email to see what was expected. I basically worked from home for the next month until they found us a temporary office situation to work out of.

I finally got my personal belongings and laptop about a month later and we eventually got back into the building about a year and a half later after they renovated from all the bullet holes and broken doors.

Grievance counseling was offered but at the time I didn’t feel the need to partake since I didn’t know anyone personally that had been killed. It was about a year later that I was told that I show signs of PTSD and that I should seek help…

 

This is NOT a drill!

Wikipedia entry of the Washington Navy Yard shooting:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Navy_Yard_shooting

This is the second post in a 3-part series describing my experiences with the Washington Navy Yard shooting that occurred in 2013.  If you missed the first post, you can find it here:  http://50shadesofdave.com/2018/07/02/is-this-some-sort-of-drill/

This is NOT some sort of drill..

At this point, I’m walking down an alleyway between a parking garage and an office building. Someone had decided that we should go to the food court since it was an large enough area, had tv’s so we could follow what was being covered by the news if they were covering it, and we could eat.  Made sense at the time.

While I was walking, a heavily-armored (like flak jacket wearing, helmet on) police officer ran past us as a group going the opposite way we were.  He slowed down just enough to yell out “Where’s building 197?!?!” which was the building we were in and where the shots were initially fired..

A few of us pointed behind us and gave him cursory directions and he began his full sprint toward the building with his weapon ready..

This is where I thought: “Oh my god, nobody knows what the fuck is going on…” 

I mean, think about it.  This is a Navy base.  To get on the base, you have to show appropriate identification to an armed guard (usually 1 of 3 guards at the gate), be willing to have your bag searched at random, and then for our building, we had to have an access card to swipe to get past the security turnstiles once we enter the building.  And at the turnstiles, there is at least 1 other armed guard monitoring the entry of everyone.  This was just a normal building…there are other buildings that have even more security protocols (have to be buzzed in by a security guard or have a separate access card to gain entry).  This place was supposed to be secure!

And now there are DC cops running toward the building with no clue of the layout, no clue of what’s going on, no clue if the shooter is still alive or how many shooters there are…

At this point, I’m starting to think this might have been a terrorist attack…so I’m literally going through my head and trying to figure out if this was something coordinated, and trying to draw correlations to the date..anything.

And now is when I start freaking out.  The buildings we’re near are at least 4 stories tall.  The parking garage is at least 5 stories tall.  I’m looking up at the roof tops to see if there are any snipers that are just waiting for us to walk into their crosshairs.  This is when I became afraid for my life.

The last time I had felt this way was when my mom chased me around our condo with a butcher knife when I was a 4 year old…never was ever afraid to die in all my years of flying, landing on aircraft carriers at night, going through swim survival or prisoner of war training..never was afraid like I was at these 2 points in my life.

Now the pace significantly picked up as I scanned the rooftops for any terrorists, and we all finally got into the building that housed the foodcourt.  By this time, there were a couple hundred of us in there looking up at the tv’s hanging along the walls and columns that were perpetually tuned to all the cable news channels…and NOTHING was being reported.  It was the normal Monday morning news cycle so far…

The thought of a coordinated terrorist attack was still on my mind (and other folks’ thoughts too), because then I thought, “Well, if whoever is in charge of this wanted to kill as many people as possible, then it would make sense to plant a bomb wherever a bunch of people would normally congregate, like the foodcourt…”

I think a few other people had the same thought too, because we only were in the foodcourt no longer than 5 minutes before we were all told to evacuate to a more secure building.  We then trekked outside, again keeping my eyes peeled and made it to one of those higher-security buildings that I mentioned before.  I think I might have sent off a text or 2 to my wife before entering to let her know that I was still ok, and then we were camped in one of the larger conference rooms where someone had figured out how to tune in the overhead projector to one of the news channels where we spent the next 10 hours…it was now 9:30 or so in the morning..

The lifestyle blog of a veteran named Dave and how he deals with his abnormal life!