War College? Banjo?

"We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way." - Buzz Aldrin
With all the constant work, jumping the TOC, and various other requirements we are faced with daily, it practically goes without saying that I am busy. Sometimes it feels like I am running at 130mph with my hair on fire twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is almost impossible for me to plan out my activities for any given day. Everything is subject to change by the minute. Rare is the day in which I don't have some situation that demands my attention. Mission always comes first and when something mission-related demands my focus it trumps everything else I'm doing. The collateral effect of this is that personal endeavors of mine, such as this blog, frequently have to take a back seat. But I do still find time to do things on a personal level. Army War College assignments have to get done on time, which frequently means I can be found in my office "burning the midnight oil" to get my work done. I'm happy to say that I am still on time, on target for all of my assignments. As a matter of fact, at this point it appears I have turned in the last paper I'll have to write while on this deployment. That leaves the banjo. I haven't written much at all about my favorite instrument even though the blog refers to me as the Banjo Commander. Although I've made significant progress playing the banjo during this deployment, I'm not nearly as far along as I had hoped to be. Truth is I greatly overestimated the amount of time I would have to devote to practicing. It seems like every time I try to plan an hour or two of practice I end up getting back to my room much later than intended and completely exhausted. I'm still practicing though and have a few lessons remaining on the instructional DVD's I deployed with. The foundation is there so I'm optimistic.

And our deployment continues, our mission continues, our battalion keeps moving. At this stage of the game we are more critical than ever to the successful conclusion of operations in Iraq. As everything closes, people and equipment move south in an unending procession. The war has become purely logistical at this point and it's fought with trucks on convoys. That's where we come in. We have the largest intra-theater transportation responsibility in Iraq and we're the only battalion of our type remaining at this point. Needless to say, we are in a sprint to the finish line and will be among the last to leave. Four years ago when I was here during the surge I never would have believed we could be completely out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Now I do believe it and, what's more, I command a battalion that is part of the foudation to making our responsible retrograde a reality. It is a busy, historic time. Even while our trucks roll we find time to hold awards ceremonies, reenlistment ceremonies, promotion ceremonies, and even an evening to smoke cigars and forget about the war for a few minutes. Then it's back to work. Will we be home by Christmas? That's irrelevant. What's important is that we will complete our mission. That's our Christmas gift back to the Army - the safe, responsible completion of the retrograde of forces from Iraq. I'll drink to that when we get home.