Journal Three - Matthew Elswick

The reading is going great so far. I am surprised at how engaging it is. The biggest strength of the book is the deep personal connections that it attempts to make. It tells tales of otherwise normal people and the adversity or adventure they face in their lifetimes. The biggest pitfall of the book is the juxtaposition of some stories. There is a story about some extremely eccentric individual who runs Hula Ville between a story about a man who was wrongly imprisoned and a Native American woman fighting for her land and her home. How in the 1970’s had people not decided enough was enough and finally leave the Navajo alone? I find that incredibly disturbing. I don’t have a specific strategy for active reading. I am constantly making connections to the things I read and everything else I can think of. I also consider points to be made in a discussion or argument at all times while reading a piece. I also like to ask myself questions or critique a piece as I am going through to get a better feel for it. If something is particularly poignant and I know I will need it more than a week from now I highlight and make annotations. I haven’t passively read anything in quite a while. If I were to get though a six hundred page novel in three sittings that is a different story.

Coming up with a specific event in my life for anything is extremely difficult for me. I have a hard time remembering just about anything. The part of my brain that dictates what is or is not important flags just about every interaction I have with another person as unimportant. The theme of responses to unfairness or injustice really stand out to me. I spent several years in the military and if the military is anything it is definitely unfair. There were a fair amount of things that I would just refuse to do or just not “play the game” so to speak. The culture in the Navy was a perpetual battle between military protocol in the most narrow or oppressive interpretation and ridiculous traditions and pastimes inherent to any club or organization that has been around that long. People in given positions were treated certain ways for better or worse based on status, regardless of what protocol dictated. It was often difficult to navigate. Quite a lot of it boiled down to “Oh, you’re new so we are going to take advantage of you or treat you poorly until you pay your dues and are as miserable as me.” This behavior was often frowned upon by the actual rules. I would say that the worst instance of unfair treatment was when I was on the way out of the military. My “boss” at the time was probably one of the worst human beings I have ever met. At the time I was no longer allowed to do work required of my position because I was being processed out (nuclear work has very specific requirements). Instead of doing what was normally acceptable or reasonable, my boss placed me on the most ridiculous work schedule he could come up with and required me to do the most inane of tasks for extremely long periods of time. I was being punished for getting out of the military. I did what came naturally and went out of my way to either be difficult to find or just didn’t show up when I was not specifically ordered. I did the bare minimum and made every effort to do exactly what was stated and not implied. I did nothing for close to two weeks (tax dollars at work) until I was finally separated from the military. I was almost punished and stripped of rank over this, but my record was otherwise spotless and my boss was too much of a moron to make a paper trail.