I Think, Therefore, I Can’t Decide

Santa Fe is dope and New Mexico is fascinating. Colorado prison towns give me the creeps, but the newly renovated BNB was quite pleasant. As I read Wikipedia about the notorious criminals that had been caught and were located in a high security prison a mere nine miles from my abode,  I couldn't help but feel that crime series-type obsessive interest.  Living with family in Colorado, it was time to give them and myself some space. The Air BNB in Santa Fe was a cute adobe style casita and had the same square footage as my small DC apartment. I had nothing to complain about except the sofa was kind of itchy. I wasn't sure if it was the fabric or critters. I didn't want to leave a bad review because everything else was nice and the hosts were very pleasant, but I should probably message them to check it out. Being paranoid, once I got back, I left all my things in the car for the last two days because I read that bed bugs die in the hot heat created from the car sitting in the...

Any good officer - military or law enforcement - who has been on the force long enough, probably knows how a Derek Chauvin not only remains in the system, but is is given two trainees to shadow him. Being in the Coast Guard, I experienced a mix of both military and law enforcement cultures and, of course, the worst tends to stay with you. One time I was screamed at in front of the Command hallway by a low-mid ranking member for nearly no reason. No one came out of their office to see what was happening, let alone correct the behavior. (This member was upset he had to get up early for a boat trip across the Long Island Sound. The purpose of the trip was to take me to a CG related medical appointment, hence I was the reason he had to get up early and his adult tantrum ensued. These early trips and training exercises were not rare.) I was low ranking and a woman, so of course he felt his dominance over my rank and cultural inferiority, thus I took the brunt of his childish anger...

In all its irony, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill finally provided some normalcy. I arrived with hesitant enthusiasm, but soon lost my hesitancy and enthusiastically extended my orders multiple times to continue working on the response. I spent six months in the glorious Floribama (Florida + Alabama) region working on the documentation team and was something in my work days I couldn’t identify at the time.  Respect?  Compassion? What was that nice feeling I had when I arrived to the office that continued throughout the day? My project team and its leadership served as a lesson in what motivated employees. The nice feeling developed from mutual trust, autonomy, and a got-your-back mindset. All were incredibly intrinsically motivating. (The extrinsic motivation of making a little extra cash in per diem didn’t hurt my motivation, but it was not the driver).  Also motivating was the threat of having to return to Station Montauk, a harassment-full, manual labor-intensive, ...

“Fisherman hundreds of years ago saw this island glistening with streaks of silver in the sun and named it, “Isla de La Plata,” Island of Silver. It wasn’t until they landed on this little island that they would find out that the precious shining silver streaks were not silver, but historical collections of white bird shit. The Poor Man’s Galapagos was our fix for wanting to keep our trip simple while also appeasing those pesky post-vacation questions, “Oh, you went to Ecuador, did you see the Galapagos?” With this trip, we could answer we most certainly did. The question, though, made it seem as if a trip to the Galapagos wasn't a $500 flight from the mainland, 700 miles from the coast, with its own multi-day hotel/hostel and adventure logistics. It made it seem as if Ecuador has nothing else to offer - which is certainly does, from ‘waves every day’ surf towns to rainforest adventures - there is plenty of Ecuador to appreciate outside of Darwin’s coves. Of course, I am certai...

Before intel training, officer candidate school, and Guantanamo Bay antics I had nearly three years of US Coast Guard Station Montauk New York with which I had to contend. Like many who are not from New York, I was not familiar with Long Island. I thought I was going to Staten Island, so arriving at an earthy, isolated surf and fishing town, 100 miles from New York City, with more secrets that an Agatha Christie murder mystery, I was pleasantly surprised.  I reported to the small 20-25 person unit in August, just as one of the hurricanes that rocks the eastern end of the Island each year was hitting. In the exact hour that I walked onto the unit, the Chief of base was out on a ¨training evolution,¨ that he mismanaged and would cause him to soon be relieved (fired).  Following that event, the unit was the mostly in disarray. There were various temporary replacement leaders who were unable to understand the unit enough to make any progress against its misfit culture. I slo...

My friends and I thought that Coast Guard boot camp would be like a militant version of Bay Watch. We would train on the beach, practice valiant ocean rescues, and learn advanced first aid. However, t he only thing Baywatch-like would be our cheap and ultra thin bathing suits that showed every crevice and nipple detail.  As three woman who signed up for this in Ventura, California, we received tons of athletic swag from the recruiter (who took us surfing on base like he had some kind of backstage pass, which he kind of did). It was a tough reality to find out that the Coast Guard was not sponsored by Billabong and pushups were not going to give us a Pam Anderson physique. We were about to have eight weeks of bootcamp nonsense led by three dudes of varying respectability. Of the three company commanders (CC’s) in charge of leading our group, one was mostly respectable, another was half-way decent, and the third was a grown man taking out his Black Sabbath tee shirt and...

Traveling and failing provide some of life’s greatest lessons and sometimes you can do both! Thirty days in Peru have given me plenty of lessons and two small lessons to share. I learned not to put soccer on the TV during dinner and that failing in understanding the difference between a normal R and a rolled R while speaking Spanish can affect communication. Lesson 1 : While cooking dinner at home during the quarantine with my Peruvian partner, I made the mistake of putting on soccer highlights. By the time we sat down to eat, the YouTube algorithm (following our past 24 hour viewings of Peruvian surf videos) had turned to playing solely Peruvian soccer videos. Having these videos on in this moment was a mistake for two reasons:         1. Every time I took one second to look down at my food, to coordinate food on fork movement, it was demanded by my companion that I,  “Mira! Mira!” (Look! Look!) because Peru was about to score a goal. “I am mira-ing,” I resp...