I'm getting a little tired of saying that I'm tired of all this, so I'll just start with some stuff that happened this week and move on from there.

We've been having our Crew Proficiency Tests these past two weeks, with Wednesday being the night addition. It was my first time launching under those conditions, cause as a trainee we didn't have the opportunity to go outfield for our night launches and did them at D801 instead, with the streetlights shining in the distance. It was a pretty novel experience as a result. My first one was done closed-hatch, imagine it being so dark that upon looking out the periscope from within the tank, everything was pitch black, I couldn't make out anything at all and had to resort to the tank's infra-red camera instead. Which sucked; I don't know whether that tank's particular display/camera was faulty or whether it's a characteristic inherent to the system, but the display would lag constantly and exhibit something called 'ghosting' whenever there was any movement, leaving multiple afterimages spread across the screen. It was more than a little disconcerting to follow Nelson's hand signals after he had dismounted via the screen, and quite scary to have multiple images of him appear on the screen, the only way to differentiate which was the actual one being following the one that was moving. A surreal experience overall, encased in the metal shell of the tank, sitting in relative comfort in it's cool interior, a feeling of extraordinary distance from the outside world, linked only by what I could make out from the shifting black and white display, with the steady throbbing of the engine at my back the only thing I could hear. Somehow it feel like it didn't matter whatever I did, while ensconced inside, a dangerous sentiment I suppose while having to maintain absolute concentration on the screen at my side. Thankfully it passed without (much) incident and the moment ended when I opened the hatch, switching to my night vision goggles instead and confronting a 2D world depicted in shades of unearthly green. Much easier, but still tough with next to zero depth perception. It started to rain heavily after that, so we buttoned up in the L2 once more, it's really not bad inside, air con for when you're too hot and heating via the engine when it's a little chilly. And that's how the night went, more rotations between vehicle commanders and operators before finally RTU and washing up.

It's been quite a dreary week all that aside; we didn't do much work, surprisingly, just washing the tanks and stoning around in the office, it's not a very fulfilling life alas, but it's all I have for now, in this time stuck between dates, held in limbo :/

It's been a year since we returned to RJ to collect those result slips, and I'm really not sure whether to say "only" a year or that it's "already" been a year. A lot has happened in the intervening time, that's to be sure, and yet when you tell me that out of the 22 months of service I've already completed 13 I'm honestly so, so, so, pleasantly surprised. Some things you don't realize till they're laid out before you. In all this time, the importance of those grades has dwindled all so significantly. A potentially damning statement but an honest one I feel the need to express. Rather than thinking about whether I'm a better or worse person for my grades, which is a totally irrelevant/nonsensical question I guess, I find myself wondering whether I'm a better or worse person for this period in NS. And as I weigh up the changes I find evident to myself in my head, I'm afraid the scales seem to tip heavily towards the latter rather than the former. The army has a fearsome ability to strip away whatsoever naivete one may possess, I don't really like what it's left in its wake. The self-analysis I'll save you the bother of reading through, but that's where things stand, really.

Amidst all this I really know that I should be looking ahead rather than at what's right in front of me, that these times which drag on so will come to a blessed end, but I'm honestly afraid. While others look to the future with hope, I look to it with no small measure of trepidation. I hate making choices, indecisive creature that I am, yet a choice I shall have to make. But I suppose if I were to be decisive about being decisive - as opposed to being purely lazy - I'd go all out to make sure that when the time comes, I do have those options at my fingertips rather than speculatively letting them slip away eh?