My reality has been my friends. When I'm lost in the World, in-between my anchor, my truth is the love my friends have for me, and I for them. I've been away for a long time. Too long. My reality is starting to fade away from me. I'm more fearful now than I ever have before that I will no longer have a home when I return to Washington. My life for the last 5 years has been travel. Temporary. Meet somebody who is supposed to be your boss for two weeks, size them up in your head in 10 minutes, then pretend to be someone they would like, and do whatever job is asked of you. That mentality made me incredibly successful at the 'elite' command. Career wise, I figured it out pretty easily. It has been a while since I've had a 'career' problem. I've never thought my personal life would consume the large portion of my worry, but here I am. Connections are what I'm missing. Not sure if 'intimicy' is the correct word, but that's pretty much as real as it gets, right? I volunteered to go to Pakistan for 9 months today, and then immediately following that I will be posted to some other location in the World. I know I'm supposed to be enjoying this. Traveling the World as a "Super Secret" government type, doing pretty much whatever I want and getting paid great money to do awesome work....But it just feels wrong that I can't share these experiences with my friends. Eating big-ass lobsters on a white sand beach in Haiti's finest resort on their northern shore was supposed to be great, but I couldn't enjoy it because I couldn't share the beauty of the moment with my boys. I know that my loyalty will never faulter. I just hope that in 3 years I will be able to latch on to some kind of true comfort during my transition from servant to leader.