Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010.

It has been more than a year since my last post. That means it’s been more than a year since I got home and picked up again with my life with Lauren. In the last 14 months (Nov 2008 until now) we got a dog, had a re-wedding and went to New Zealand. I started working as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in March, but not until after I got to say that I was unemployed during the great economic meltdown. All told Lauren and I celebrated 7 other weddings with family and friends (very fun) and had to say goodbye to one of the best guys either of us had ever met (very, very sad).

Lauren and I live in Old Town Alexandria, about 5 or 6 miles outside of DC proper. We both work in the District and we’ve settled into a really nice routine.

I miss blogging. A lot. I think that I’m not awful at this, and I wish I had been better about writing in 2009. But for some reason it’s been hard for me to look at Army 2.0 for the last year. I don’t know why. In general I’ve had trouble engaging technology. Technology was my entire focus for 2 years at Haas, and I stayed pretty well connected to that world while I was in Afghanistan of all places. Home in DC, I feel more detached from the West Coast than I ever did in the war zone. Weird, I know.

Life is great all the same. Lauren and I are really happy. And we’re going to figure the Coast thing soon (by which I mean before Lauren divorces me for indecision).

So in conjunction with that decision, here is my 2010 to-do list:

1) Re-engage technology—spend less time reading about NBA teams I don’t care about and more time reading tech blogs

2) Blog a couple of times a week—I appreciate that anything I say now is less interesting than anything I said while on the forward edge of freedom, but still. Writing is fun.

3) For the first time, really embrace Facebook and Twitter—read above…poor, innocent social networking sites have suffered for the same reason my blog has.

I Totally Didn't Post While Home...

As anyone who has stopped by in the last few weeks noticed, it turns out that I didn't take the time to post at all while home on my mid-tour leave. It was a great leave, though, and I can't tell you how wonderful it was to see my beautiful wife for a couple of weeks (or how hard it was to say goodbye again).

My tour, as I've mentioned, is winding down, and if the last two weeks are any indication, I have yet to convince myself that I'll continue to blog once I'm home. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but...

I began my blogging adventure with certain goals in mind, and I've been trying to assess whether I've achieved what I set out to do.

First and foremost, I wanted this forum to serve as a road map to anyone coming through the IRR pipeline who is as in the dark as I was in June 2007. By any measure, I've achieved that goal. After an initial dump of information last June/July/August I've cut back on details and toned down the sarcasm, but there still aren't a lot of places on the web that will give future "Civil Affairs Operators" more info about what they're getting themselves into. Google terms related to this blog, and you'll find I show up pretty high in most of the search results.

Going forward, I'll post a bit about the leave process, and what demobilization is like, and call it a day.

My second stated goal was to use this forum as a way to keep up with family and friends. I know some folks who check in every day, and many who stop by once in a while, and the 2.0 is always here for anyone who wants to see how things are going. There have been a few blogging gaps (including this one), and I wish that I'd updated the monthly summaries more often. But otherwise I think I've kept the content decently well organized. I hope everyone out there has and will continue to enjoy a look at a world that most of us don't get the opportunity to see very often.

My final goal, which I don't think I've ever stated outright, was to use the blog to brainstorm ways that my current experience in Afghanistan is applicable to my once and future career path as a business person. I haven't really addressed this issue explicitly to date, but I hope to make this the focus of my blog for the next several weeks (with all due respect to sports and pop culture) as I prepare to go home for good.

The early returns, incidentally, are pretty good. In particular, a working knowledge of negotiation theory, pricing, micro-econ, marketing and strategy have put me at a big advantage. With everyone's help I'm ready to start flushing out these stories, seeing which ones resonate, as I take stock of what I've learned and how I've grown as a business leader through my second go-round in the Army.