Today was day two of resilience training as mandated by the Army. It wasn't that bad. Yesterday I was actually pretty happy all day. This morning it is taking a bit more effort to stay happy, but I am resolved to at least try. One thing I took away from the class is breaking down a problem into all the little problems involved in it, then look at what I can and can't change.
My problem is depression.
My problem is being deployed. My problem is being single. My problem is I find it difficult to work for my boss. My problem is that I am tired of seeing my family so infrequently. My problem is feeling like I do not belong anywhere. My problem is that I have nowhere where I feel at home. My problem is I am forgetful. My problem is that I procrastinate. My problem is that I will viciously mentally assault myself when I fail. My problem is that I feel like I lack freedom. My problem is that I have no professional development potential in my current placement. My problem is that I do not feel passionate about my work anymore.
I am deployed. I cannot help that, nor can I change it, but there is only another two-ish months left, and I have already dealt with this since October. I can deal with another fraction of what I have already dealt with.
I am single. I can control this, but being single is preferable to being in a bad relationship. While I am not where I want to be, and where I am is somewhere where I don't really want to be, I am somewhere that is not as bad as it can be. While this is a problem, it is not a problem that I should fret about right now.
I find it difficult to work for my boss. He makes it difficult to get what information I need to accomplish what tasks he wants me to accomplish. I cannot change this, because he refuses to change. I should not worry about this and simply accept that he is this way.
I miss my family. I cannot control this. When I am out of the Army, it is likely that I will see them more than I care to, and when I reach that point, I will try to remember all the years that I couldn't see them at all and complained about it.
I feel like I do not belong. My hobbies differ from most of my peers. My relationship status differs from most of my peers. I get along alright with some of my subordinates and superiors, but outside of four of my peers, there are none I really get along with. Even out of those four, I would only hang out with two of them. One of them isn't even here. I cannot control the people I work with, so I need to stop worrying about it.
I have no home. For the past eight years I have moved every three years, approximately. Even while my family still lived in the last place that I considered home, on vacations I would return and not feel like it was home anymore. Okinawa was the closest thing to home that I have had in a while, and I had to leave. I hoped that Colorado could feel like home, but my hopes were centered around not living in a barracks, which were not realized. Even so, I did find a group of people that I enjoyed being with. We will see what happens when I return. Still have no follow on assignment. I cannot control my lack of a place I call home, not right now, so I need to not worry about it.
I forget. A lot. I can't control this, but I can help mitigate and reduce it by limiting the things I am capable of forgetting by intelligent placement, such as small items with large items. I can write down things I need to remember. Even with my phone broken, I can still write things down that I need to remember.
I procrastinate. I can certainly control this. Procrastination causes me stress because my deadlines approach and I have not completed the work, so I stress. I can control this by not doing it, which is far easier said than done. Even now, writing this, I am procrastinating, in a sense.
I mentally assault myself when I fail. I can control this by refusing to call myself names, belittle myself, and degrade myself. I have been reminding myself today not to do this frequently, even when I don't feel the need to belittle myself, because if I can start thinking positively about myself more frequently, it should help my confidence begin to spread to other aspects of my life.
I feel that I lack freedom. I cannot control what freedom I do and do not have, but I can maximize the freedom that I do have until the time that I can express myself with more freedom.
I have no way to move forward in my career in my current position. I cannot control that, but my position will only exist for a few more months, at which point I will go somewhere else. I need to be patient.
I do not feel passionate about my work. I worry about that, but to be perfectly honest, I never really felt passionate about the Army. I find a lot of the regulations and traditions annoying and dumb. I have been passionate about being good at my job. I have been passionate about protecting my soldiers from stupid things. I am not passionate about either of those things right now because I do not care for either of them at the moment. I can control that because I can be passionate about things that I want to be passionate about. I can still do my job without being passionate about it until I can take the opportunity to leave it behind and pursue something I do enjoy.
It feels good to write this all down.