I Tried To Make This Perfect
In Coast Guard boot camp they give you free food That's right, I said free. Free food, free lodging and free health insurance. The same goes for any branch of the military I guess; it's an interesting experience. If you've never had the privilege, I highly recommend it. You want to know how to do well in boot camp? Just do whatever your superiors tell you, and do it exactly how they tell you to do it. You really don't have to think for yourself. I wish I could still live like that. I'm not knocking the military or being sarcastic, I'm totally serious. I'm tired of thinking for myself. Everything was spelled out for you. It was like having a giant "to-do" list, and as long as you checked all the boxes on the list, you made it one more day. I miss that way of life sometimes.
I miss polishing my shoes and ironing my shirts. It was some of the most simple and strangely satisfying work I've ever done. Whey you polish a shoe, you rub and rub and it starts to shine. It's that simple, you work and you see the results, almost immediately. The more you polish something, the more it shines.
I also did a lot of cleaning in boot camp. That's pretty close to shoe-polishing and ironing. It's a lot of work with clear results. The more you clean something, the cleaner it looks. But sometimes, you never feel like it's clean enough. That's my problem.
When I clean my apartment, I can never seem to clean the whole thing in one shot. I always set out to clean the entire place, but I almost never make it past one room. I don't have obsessive-compulsive disorder or anything, I just have an obsession with details. If you gave me twenty minutes to wash a sink full of dishes I probably couldn't do it. Why? Because I'd spend 19 of those minutes making sure the first spoon was completely clean. Then I'd spend the last minute freaking out because I spent 19 minutes cleaning a spoon.
I'd like to thank Coast Guard boot camp for kick-starting my obsessive attention to detail. I never had the "cleaning problem" until boot camp. I suppose it's some reflection of what's going on inside my head -- "I'll never get my shoes shiny enough" somehow equals "I'll never be good enough." But hey, I'm okay with all that. I've been okay so far. I just figured that I'd get all this off my chest now, so that twenty years from now, when I'm wearing tissue boxes on my feet and sealing up my bedroom door with masking tape, you won't all be surprised, and you'll know who to blame.
"The way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future. . . . "