The Waiting Place

One of the books I got for the kids through the USO's reading program was Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go!. I know it's something you typically give for someone's graduation, but hey, I figured, why not...

There's a passage that I particularly like:

You can get so confused that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place....

It's an appropriate label for this coming year because there are so many things that I'd like to be doing, but can't -- I have to wait.

I've served as a platoon leader for two and a half years in both garrison and downrange environments. Although -- yes -- there is more I can learn, it doesn't compare with the amount of stuff I could be learning from another position.

Before deploying I had applied to be a general's aide, but a recently-returned-from-deployment lieutenant was chosen for that. Something like that would be awesome, but division commanders don't typically work according to my schedule.

I wouldn't mind taking a battalion staff position, but my battalion has no open positions right now. And since other companies are in pretty much the same position as mine, I can't find a XO (executive officer) position anywhere else.

I can't schedule my captain's career course since I've not yet been designated as "promotable" (something that will happen this summer).

And though my own company's executive officer (having already made captain) is vacating his spot, my commander chose the lieutenant with prior service to fill his spot. I was disappointed with that: neither of the two lieutenants who've spent the past two and a half years in the company -- those who've been our commander's clay to shape, so to speak -- are not the best candidates to move up.

(True, the guy's a better candidate, but I'm still upset about it.)

There's a Foreign Service Officer written test coming up in February, but even assuming I pass, there's no telling how long that process would take.

At the moment, I don't mind -- it's the holiday season and I can focus on studying Japanese -- but I hope this doesn't last too long.

But for now, I'm just waiting in that most useless place.