Civilian again

I haven't written in this thing for a while, and tonight seemed a prudent night to update. It was my last night in the Army; I had my resignation document signed by the OC so I am officially out, or will be pretty soon. I still have to take my gear back though because the Q-store didn't have their shit together.
I am more sad about it than I thought I would be, considering I have been effectively out for nearly a year. I certainly haven't done any field training in that time. Still, I had planned to come back then, whereas now I won't be.
I am most saddened by the fact that there was still a lot for me to learn there, I have just had to put it aside to learn things that will be more important for me in the future. Maybe I will go back one day. It's funny, if I didn't believe that physics was the more important thing for me to do then I could have been pretty happy in the Army, maybe gone full time. It's just that I still have a chance to be good enough at physics to make a difference, whereas in the Army I would just be another cog in the grand machine. That being said I am extremely proud to have been a member of the Australian Army, and I have certainly learned the power of teamwork and what the larger machine can do.
I am probably remembering the Army more fondly than I would have a year ago. There were a lot of pretty painful things I had to do. I might list things so I can compare....

Things I will miss:
-Night patrol/navigation (awesome atmosphere, and I was quite good at nav so it was fun)
-Sleeping in the bush under the stars
-Early morning mists
-Experiencing bush weather
-Weapon cleaning (kinda sucks, but is also kinda warry)
-Range shoots
-Learning about tactics, particularly at platoon and higher level. Wish I'd done more of that.
-General patrolling. Patrolling is fun. Less fun with a bitch-heavy pack though.
-Observing a Claymore detonation will stick in my mind forever
-The espirit de corp of MonUR. It is good to be part of a good team.
-Being part of the larger Army community.

Things I will not miss:
-Picket duty, especially in winter. This one counts as two, because getting woken up sucks total balls, and then sitting on your arse in the gun pit for an hour or more sucks more balls. I think I nearly lost limbs on some of the colder nights.
-Ridiculous amounts of paperwork. The Army has forms for everything.
-Copping random crap from staff. Admittedly this got less as I became less incompetent.
-Ironing, equipment maintenance, all that kind of thing. Of course it is vital (perhaps not the ironing) but it's still a pain in the ass.
-Missing stuff in civvy life due to Army training commitments.

It is hard to describe what I am leaving behind by resigning. Because it exists to serve the commonwealth in a unique way, and therefore the people, the Army offers a sense of purpose which is very hard to replace, and it is of course one of the important reasons why people join up and stay in. They feel like the things they do in their lives in the Army matter.
It is this search for purpose which makes me resign however. In our lives we spend a lot of time doing all kinds of random work, activities etc. but it is not until we decide to commit to something that we can ever really achieve anything. It is a bit sad really, because it means that in order for our work, or hobby or whatever, to matter, we have to become very good at it, which requires the sacrifice of many other things we might like to do or learn. It is something of a paradox for me, because I have this theory about how we live to learn, so it sucks to have to sacrifice 'breadth' for 'depth', to put it crudely. Especially because, due to the breadth I have gained from doing a lot of different things, I believe that there are many fundamental similarities between a number of fields which one may not be prone to notice at first.

Anyway I have said enough. Oh, I should probably mention PhD related stuff, but I'll do that next time.
For now, I will see if I remember the role of the infantry correctly. It is my duff of the hat to them, if you will:

"To seek out and close with the enemy; to kill or capture him; to sieze and hold ground and to repel attack, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain."

My apologies to infantry purists if something in there is not correct by the PAM.