I journeyed to Des Moines for drill earlier this week. The game plan was to kill two Navy Reserve weekends in one week. I have certainly killed them. Drilling in Des Moines is nothing like drilling when I was in Denver. In Denver I was able to work alongside the full time staff. I felt beneficial and worth something. So not only do I not feel useful on my drill weekends, but I felt extremely not useful this week. I sat there staring a computer wondering if this trap would ever end. It is a complete 180 from being on the road, I feel there that I am flying, here I feel like a duck that’s been shot down. I really hate feeling this way. I am constantly full of fear and anxiety. I never know when the other shoe will drop. I really have very little faith left. I am appreciative that they let me reschedule as my weekends tend to be busy with veteran activities. It also means I don’t have to sit around on drill weekends and feel completely useless where people can judge me. Instead I can do it in the silent hum of the empty computer lab.

I have found that this week was good for introspection and planning. Did I mention I am leaving from here to go east? I have never gone east before, by car, to just explore, and without much of a plan at that. Mainly, I know I want to see the cities that I haven’t seen. I have many friends through TR that are willing to put me up, all it took was a facebook status requesting places to crash. I am super excited, but extremely anxious about what this looks like. I was able to use some free time to start detailing this road trip. I now have a plan set up for the next week that is flexible, but is set enough so I can comfortably take off on this trip.

As I have wandered I have gone much by the seat of my pants. There are a few issues with this. The people who I visit are average working adults, so they don’t have drop of a pin flexibility. This causes me to disrupt their schedule when my is altered. I feel shame over this and it makes me question what I am doing. The second issue is that I fear what I do not know, so if I have no plan, I may turn back, or just go in a circle between Iowa and Colorado. Though this could be fine, I would not actually burst my bubble to journey in search of my life. So now I go with a plan that has a reasonable layout, but the expectations are open and flexibility is expected.

So here I sit at the end of the day waiting for it to hit four so I can head out on the road. I am stopping back through Cedar Rapids for the night and then on to Chicago. I am still anxious, and no idea what this will look like, but I am probably more excited than I have ever been, and I have journeyed to many new places and experiences by myself over the years. This time however, it feels completely different and my wild woman is dancing with joy in my soul.

Signing off Des Moines, IA.