It’s a lot like I’d expected: 14 hour days, 7 days a week (well, the XO grabbed me around 1430 yes­terday and ordered me to take lib­erty for the rest of the weekend). But it’s inter­esting work and lever­aging skills that I most want devel­oped, so color me happy. I think I’ve written on this blog before that I am most com­fort­able when I’m uncom­fort­able. That’s the case here, and I’m doing the req­ui­site moaning while feeling the *right­ness* of going 100 miles-an-hour with my hair on fire.

And that made me think of some­thing: I was watching the recruits of one of our training com­pa­nies in a close order march. Column of twos, about thirty sailors long. Their com­pany com­man­ders jogged along­side, shouting instruc­tions at them, unflinching and unwa­vering in their deter­mi­na­tion to train these kids for rough seas, for toxic chem­ical spills, for bar­ri­caded crim­i­nals, for war. The recruits, as you can imagine, were ter­ri­fied, sweaty and shaken, faces pale and eyes wide.

And *I* remem­bered those days. I went through the same thing on the Academy grounds. I remember the terror, the exhaus­tion, the hyper-vigilance. It was gru­eling. It shiv­ered me down to the roots. I thought it would never end. I thought I would never make it.

But as I look at those recruits now, I realize that there was a kernel of pride in those shiv­ered roots, a secret voice whis­pering to me that I *would* make it. That I *could* do this. That every­thing would work out. It’s only in being tested that you learn what you’re capable of. There are whole sec­tors of life that are open to me by virtue of my will­ing­ness take risks. I’ve been step­ping off cliff edges for over twenty years now, and each time I’ve fallen into some­thing more and more wonderful.

And as I watch those kids, I realize that I love those days. That I cherish them. That I wouldn’t trade them for any­thing. Because I did make it, and every­thing worked out just fine. A few, short years later, I am an officer assisting with the training of these men and women, working to tell their story.

That’s a good lesson to remember. I cur­rently live in shoebox sized apart­ment in a bad neigh­bor­hood in Brooklyn. I am watching the pub­lishing and book retailing indus­tries roil around me, just as I quit my job and commit myself to the writing dis­ci­pline as a way to feed myself. There are times when I feel there’s no way I can do this. It’s gru­eling and exhausting and terrifying.

But I’ve got gold on my shoul­ders now, folks. And the only way to get it was the slough through the mud. To trust the process. To hold fast as the kraken fas­tened itself around the hull and squeezed. Something tells me it’ll be the same here. The out­come may be dif­ferent, but a day will come when I’m going to see a strug­gling, starving new author mooching drinks at a con­ven­tion bar as he tries to work the angles. And I’ll look at that kid and think “man, I miss those days.”