(Updated on 26/10/2023)
I have been recruited to reserve duty since that horrible, now historic Saturday on October 7th. I am writing this on my second excursion home for some downtime and personal battery filling and will return for what seems to be gearing up to be a long war. I have not yet got to the point of processing it - anything, what has happened on 7/10/2023, what has happened since to our country, and to our family and to myself, and right now am focusing on small stretches of control - what I can do within my job in the army, which is very technical and hands-on and fills my time and my mind with the ability to be useful. I am not asking myself yet, useful for what. There will be time. There will also be time to ponder what happens with the other things that are supposed to go on in my life while I'm not there. I am concerned and fearful and anxious for what is happening here and there, in both places where there are victims of decisions and plans and purposes that I'm not aligned with.
Among other things that have changed because of this war, my children have gone back to a shaky form of school - they are calling it hybrid learning where they mostly study on Zoom and - so far - attend the actual school building once a week. This will be the third time for them working through part of a school year in this manner in the last four years, with COVID and now two wars throughout these years.
I am continuing to read a lot of books but have managed to settle back into a cadence of four books concurrently - three which are generally eBooks and one which is a physical book. Currently, I have just finished Booker T. Jones' autobiography, "Time is Tight", and also reading "The American Way of Death" by Jessica Mitford, "The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, and "The Examined Mind" by Stephen Grosz.