2025 – 01 – 31 – If NTC Could be Captured in a Moment

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               So, here I am quietly sitting awkwardly during some Division phone call. For some reason, a bunch of us are in this room while the Battalion Commander tracks a fight that’s already over. We go back from the field today. I guess the information could still be topical for him, but for the rest of us, it’s kind of just a customary thing to do because there’s so little else going on. Most of us could disappear from this room and nobody would bat an eye. But it’s warm in here, so staying here does have its perks. Regardless, it’s quite the image of what my NTC experience has been like. Lots of waiting with very little idea of what they want when it’s my turn to work.

               I would have written last night. I’ll probably have an awkward time dating an article later, if I keep up this recent streak, because this article should have been yesterday. But I was awake for 26 hours yesterday and only got three before my next 18hr shift (and my precious sleep happened to get interrupted a couple times), so I spent most of my fireguard admittedly slumped over with a blanket partially covering my face, only partially combating the sleep at key moments, like to talk to SSG Portell before he fucks back off to another Company after this NTC rotation is over. So I guess today will just have to count for both days' journals.

               It’s a funny image, though, achieving some level of consciousness right before a report that’s honestly way above my level of comprehension to the Battalion Commander was due in a state that’s not asleep but certainly not awake, just ripping my obnoxiously-banana vape because I reckoned some nicotine would prevent me from passing out at my Staff Officer battlestation. Nicotine is a stimulant, right? Mind you, all of this is taking place with Creed’s smash hit, “Higher,” on repeat in my mind, which was a topic of discussion between SSG Portell and I a mere twoish hours earlier. If I could capture one iconic moment of my personal experience at NTC when I actually had to work, it would probably be this.

               Onwards and upwards, I guess.

 

SOTD – no change from yesterday

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