Soulless & Feral

Some quick, preliminary goals for my year long montage.

Montage of the Mind

I’m going to finish up as many credits toward a Bachelor’s degree as I can handle. Depending on my workload, I hope to get through at least the first year. I know, I know… a full credit load is a lot to shoot for. I won’t be disappointed if I can’t get to that point, but if I -can- get to that point, well… rock on. At this point, I have no idea what I’d want to study, though. Information Technology is the obvious (and thus boring) choice and Business Administration is general purpose and generally not interesting. I’d love to do something medical, but access to medical courses in Iraq may be somewhat limited. Failing all else, I will knock out the non-specific courses and work on the actual study focus ones later.

What? Yes, I said medical. I’m a “Player Character.” I could always use some basic medical skills. My adventuring party would approve.;-)

I am going to knock out some IT certs. Whether or not I go back for a year, having the extra certifications is going to improve my base pay and thus, my total income. While in Iraq, every extra $1 an hour nets me around $6300 a year… so you can see why getting a few certs and a $2-$3 an hour raise stateside would be beneficial. I’m looking at finishing up MCITP and perhaps a CCNA… but getting the CCNP would be even sexier. We shall see… again, it depends on work schedule and how easy it is to take the tests overseas.

And finally, I think I’ll learn that language I’ve been meaning to learn. Spanish was the original plan, but it seems that Arabic may actually be a wiser choice, considering the environment. Indeed, learning the basics of Arabic would actually improve my future prospects of profitable adventure in the region, so I think that Spanish shall have to take a back seat to Arabic.

Montage of the Body

Okay, don’t bitch me out… but I want to hit and bypass my 165 pound goal. Currently, I am… erm…. not 165, so I’d be happy with that… but if I can do 160, I will be happier. I figure the sun plus the lack of junk food will help with that. Which leads me to…

I intend to take my physical fitness past the “fit” level and into the “kinda badass” level. Being isolated and such should make that easy… I can come back strong and as fit as I’ve ever been. I’m thinking I’ll max out my running distance at 10K trainingwise, but I’ll work on getting faster in that range. If I get bored with that? Well heck… I’ll just bump it up to 12-15K and leave it at that. I want to break the 10 pull-ups barrier, finish the 100 push-ups / 200 sit-ups goal. and lose all remnants possible of being overweight.

If available (one can hope) I want to learn at least the basics of hand-to-hand combat. This is only a hope, though… who knows what will be available?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 7:50 am and is filed under A Wee Bit Fit, Book Larnin', Isolation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.