{"id":138,"date":"2012-01-10T00:57:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T06:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeanschara.com\/?p=138"},"modified":"2023-03-28T09:21:07","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T14:21:07","slug":"day-7-picture-of-someone-something-who-impact-on-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/day-7-picture-of-someone-something-who-impact-on-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 7: Picture of Someone \/ Something Who Impact on Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the seventh day of 30 Days of Me challenge, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to show a picture of who or what has had the biggest impact on me. What is it with all these pictures?<\/p>\n

Obviously, my parents had a huge impact on me \u00e2\u20ac\u201d especially for the first eighteen years of my life. But, honestly, that was thirty-three years ago. Of course, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cease all contact and they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quit impacting my life when I went away to college at 18 and moved off to work full-time at nineteen. But, they laid the foundation. You saw their picture yesterday.<\/p>\n

Twenty-eight of those last thirty-three years were spent in the Air Force, so that, clearly had a significant impact upon me. But I concentrated on not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drinking the Kool-Aid\u00e2\u20ac\u009d during that whole time, because I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be completely assimilated. I hear stories of retirees in military retirement homes who have not left the military behind them, and I shudder at the idea of living out my last days in that kind of rank-conscious environment. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very thankful the VA doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry about my rank. They just treat me. The person. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a veteran worthy of respect. As it should be.<\/p>\n

I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deny the Air Force had a tremendous impact upon me. I enlisted for education and a job. By the time I retired, I was serving for something more. I once had a boss who believed everyone should be serving out of love of their country and for only that reason, but I knew that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not how many people begin. People come to the military for a variety of reasons \u00e2\u20ac\u201d some which are never stated publicly \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but I hope the leadership instills that patriotism and love of country that grows with service for many.<\/p>\n

If we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking for a place<\/em> that inspired<\/em> me, we need to look no further than the image below, courtesy of NSA.gov. I was inspired every day I drove up to this building, parked in the parking lot, and went in to work from Feb 1989 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c May 1992. But impact? Maybe not.<\/p>\n

\"impact\"<\/p>\n

I have to credit my ex-husband with having a large impact upon me. He taught me how to drive a standard shift automobile and a motorcycle. I learned a lot of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wrenching\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stuff from him. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the one who suggested the military as an option and convinced me it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what I saw and heard on the nightly news while I was growing up. I never should have married him, but he deserves credit for those things.<\/p>\n

My current husband has been in my life in some way, shape, or form since 1985, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another long-term impact player. I wanted to spend more time with him, so I applied for Officer Training School and was accepted (no, that was not the reason I gave for applying to OTS). He (and the bigger paycheck \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that was not the stated reason either) is the reason I put myself through that really annoying time. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lie on the application, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discuss the factors that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t interest the selection board, either. You saw his photo a couple of days ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the seventh day of 30 Days of Me challenge, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to show a picture of who or what has had the biggest impact on me. What is it with all these pictures? Obviously, my parents had a huge impact on me \u00e2\u20ac\u201d especially for the first eighteen years …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30-days-of-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15400,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/15400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}