What did I mean by this when I planned these entries so many months ago?  I’m not sure, but I’m going to take it as a “bloom where you are planted” sort of thing.

This month I’ve taken you on a tour of my varied interests.  I’ve tried to keep options open in my life.  Yet, at the same time I was professing that, I was sometimes doing things that closed doors.  Far too late, I tried to teach myself to seek more information before just shutting down a proposal placed before me.  I’m not always successful, but I have gotten a little better.  Despite trying to keep options open, life has a way of ensuring window of opportunity close.

For instance, I’m glad I didn’t wait for perfect health or fitness to run a few marathons in my 40s.  My knees don’t seem like they’re going to permit me to run any more marathons now that I’m in my 50s.  I’m pleased to say I’ve participated in and completed five marathons in my life, and I loved the experience.

I started my college journey at Ohio State University.  My schools of choice were Iowa State University or Wartburg College (my dad’s alma maters), and I was accepted by both schools.  I was accepted to a unique program at Wartburg called Chrysalis, and that would have been pretty exciting, I think.  My parents let me run with those ideas for a little while, then they reminded me of the fiscal realities of out-of-state tuition and private school tuition and encouraged me to look a little closer to home.  This reminder may have come around the same time as the news that I wasn’t eligible for financial aid of any kind, and neither my parents nor I could afford to pay my way through school.  They committed to paying my first semester, and helped me get loans for the rest of my first year of school. So I applied with Ohio State, who also accepted me.

I headed off to school in the fall with a full slate of classes.  I applied for jobs and got a great lab job, except my school schedule didn’t allow me to work there.  I screwed up. Every other job I looked into required me to have transportation, and I didn’t have it.  That first year of school was tough for me.  I didn’t know how to study, so my first quarter was a disaster.  It took me the rest of the year to get off academic probation.  Demoralized that a college education was going to do me any good (in the late 70s, we were in a similar economic position as we are today — people with PhDs were working at McDonald’s), so I decided not to return to school for my sophomore year.

The next year, I moved to western Massachussetts and began making toy drums for minimum wage.  This wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either.  I did not want this lifestyle for myself.  But now I couldn’t afford to go to school.  Caught in a Catch-22.  Or so it seemed.  My fiance suggested I look into the military.  I was very skeptical.  I grew up with VietNam in the headlines, and it wasn’t a positive picture.  The military wasn’t respected, and I had a very negative picture of our people in uniform.  He had served in the Coast Guard, and he assured me that wasn’t the case.

I looked into the Massachusetts Air National Guard, but I left the physical before it was completed because they sent us to lunch.  I had understood it was only to be that morning, so that’s all I’d been willing to give them.  (Yes, that was pretty dumb, but it worked out.)  By the time the Guard called me to find out what happened a few weeks later, I’d already talked to an active duty recruiter, gotten a more reasonable picture and set of expectations, had completed my testing and physical and was signed up for delayed enlistment to the United States Air Force.  From there, I could pursue my education.  Somehow.  If nothing else, they would send me to school and teach me to do something marketable.

Ten years and seven more institutions of higher learning later, I completed a BA in Professional Writing from the University of Maryland University College (which, they will be quick to tell you is not the same as the University of Maryland even though in the College Park area, they use the same facilities).

From there, I began a master’s program to have it interrupted by a trip to Officer Training School where I earned my commission.  At my first commissioned duty station, I began a fresh master’s program in Adult Education and completed it one year later.

I was an electronics technician, an information management officer who cross-flowed to communications when they killed the information management career field.  I spent thirteen years of my career in education.  Near the end of my career, I did a lot of personnel work.  At one point, a communications officer looked at my education record and asked why I didn’t get degrees in my career field.  I didn’t think quickly enough to tell him I’d spent half my career in education, so I figured I had.  It also showed how earning my degree on active duty, when I didn’t have a lot of flexibility in choosing degrees in the available time slots was held against me in promotion and career opportunities.  Despite all that, I had a far better Air Force career than I ever imagined when I signed up to escape a dead end minimum wage manufacturing job.

I’ve been retired for five years.  I haven’t missed much of my active duty time.  I miss a few of the people.  The challenge was interesting.  I face different challenges now.  I still have a lot to learn about life the places it can take you.  X Marks the Spot where you are in the here and now.  What are you going to do with your “X” today?