I have never found interest in gambling. I have neither the attention span nor confidence that I could bet on anything that would ensure a return on my investment. Besides, why bother with Vegas when you’re already surrounded by a virtual casino of life experiences?

Less than a year after obtaining my bachelor’s degree in Dublin, I found myself with chopped off hair and working aboard a gray ship. Joining the Navy was a way to keep my broke ass traveling. All knew about the future was that I was keen to remain in Europe’s orbit—and the Navy had bases in Europe.

On that first ship, you can imagine the excitement to learn that my first port visit would be familiar, a place where I had a blood connection: Cork. What good fortune! Already I would return to Ireland far sooner than expected! The old ship, commissioned a month before I was born, set sail from Virginia in late spring, and I put in a leave request for a few days off in Ireland once we moored. I was a new officer. I was only just learning about the workings of a ship: how to stand a bridge watch, how to manage a division of very human sailors. The length of my hair was a direct indicator of my depth of knowledge for how life actually worked. Theory versus application would quickly become a very real thing.

One day as we neared the eastern fringes of the Atlantic Ocean, our public address system suddenly delivered an announcement from the Captain:

“You know how when you go to the races, the favorite to win isn’t always a sure bet? Well, we’re gonna be pulling into Plymouth instead of Cork in order to change out an engine. We’ll be there in a day and a half. That is all.”

And with that, my return to Ireland was suddenly gone. The immediate future was rewritten but the rest of the deployment following our modification went off without a hitch. I still had a great time, but I did not yet understand that this kind of ad-libbing would be the rule, rather than the exception for how the next twenty years would go.

I’m a slow learner, and as such I invariably need to get bumped around a good bit before I really digest something. Know it cold. But I am also never hesitant to embark upon a new experience—no matter if I don’t quite know what I’m getting myself into. Maybe that’s why I was okay in sticking around the Navy for 20 years; I can think of no better place than the military to be constantly slotted into an unfamiliar job where you are suddenly decreed “the expert”. You’re almost never the expert, but somehow, you know enough to find the smart ones and politely seek their assistance. This too is rarely an easy or stress-free evolution. It’s all just one big problem-solving life experience with no guarantee as to the individual outcomes. 

If you read about my drop-in visit to an Irish warship that pulled into London not too long ago, then you have some awareness that my time in the Navy was coming to a rapid conclusion. In visiting the ship, I felt nostalgia coupled with a readiness for the big unknown that was my future. Twenty years on, I still wanted to remain my close ties with Europe…but this time I didn’t want to sign up for a job that would start off with a horrific Marine Corps Drill Instructor-approved haircut. I am now too old and sensitive for such things. But apart from obvious vanity, I still felt very open to new things. Ready to learn. Focused on a different future.

I can also remember about three years ago, the time when I had decided that I wanted to leave the Navy. My boss at the time was very supportive of my decision, and he served as a trusted referee when communicating with Big Navy. He came back to me and said that they supported my decision, but at the same time they’d be looking for something that might keep me sticking around.

“Sir, there is nothing available that even looks remotely interesting to me. I am retiring. I dare you, Navy, to find something good enough to make me change my mind.”

So. 

It is now October 2019 and I had retirement orders in hand. Black and white. Thank you for your service.  I have every confidence that the Navy long ago cast my file aside and was moving on without me, despite the conversation I’d had with my boss three years prior. But still, much like how my first ship was diverted from Cork—I suddenly find myself making preparations to leave my current job in London…and take up another Navy job.

I’m sticking around. I get to keep my long hair (although with age, I now have to dye it every three months). I believe my placement officer said “thank you for continuing to fight.”  One could argue that life in all of its dynamism still catches me off-guard. I told you that I was a slow learner.

But it’s unproductive to get too keyed up around the details of the future. For now, I’m tending to the immediate tasks associated with moving, rather than plunging my brain into snaking tunnels that try in vain to figure out what it all means. I suppose that as long as I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, I’m not quite sure that it means anything at all. 

So as is always the case, the next month or two will be filled with cardboard boxes, plane tickets, travel receipts, a new language, and getting acquainted with faces who will help me to look like I know what I’m doing. In a broad sense, I’m very excited. And now that I’m moving past the twenty-year mark in the Navy, I’m hoping that I go into this with less of a death-grip expectation for how things will go. If I don’t, then the only thing that I could bet on in Vegas is that I never learned anything at all.