Memories...

So today, on the walk back to my barracks from the front gate of the base, I started thinking about Great Lakes outta nowhere... and then suddenly all the memories came rushing back in and I started remembering things like they has just happened yesterday. I remember how late it was when we all checked in to the base across from boot camp, I remember how shitty our first barracks was, meeting my first roommate, who was a buds/seal candidate (but is now an IS on my ship! haha), I remembered getting moved around to different barracks 3 times while I was there, I remembered how close everyone in the Franklin was (we truly were like a big Family in that barracks); I remembered that Michael Stuessy was my best friend, but I don't quite remember how we met... haha all I know is we hung out all the time and times were good. So many memories came to me out of just a single thought; the thought that my second year anniversary in the Navy was approaching. God, it has been a good but trying two years of my life. I miss everyone from the very beginning of it all. Back when times were good. Back in Great Lakes. Those were the good ol' days, indeed. I'd even go as far as saying that those 6 months that I spent in Great Lakes, IL were the best 6 months of my entire Naval career to date. It's funny, too, now that I think of it, because back in those days we were all saying how happy we would be to get out of there, how we couldn't wait to make it to the Fleet..... and now that we're all out here in the big United States Navy fleet, we all wanna go back.... we all would like to return to our old A school days... back when the Navy still cared about us, back when things were still good. We didn't realize how good we had it back in the day.... all we did was complain, complain, complain about how much bullshit we had to go through.... but we had no idea just how much worse the bullshit is out here in the Fleet. Oh, no.... Not a damn clue.

That is such a recurring theme throughout life; when you're somewhere doing something in particular, you complain and say you hate it, but once you're done and you've moved on you tend to look back and wish you were still over there doing what you were doing. Why is that, I wonder?