Home is where....

The heart is...supposedly.

This is the first time I've made a post about something that wasn't directly related to guns, after all the name of the place is Guns, Guns, and More Gosh Darn Guns, not Guns, Guns, and More Gosh Darn Guns plus some random crap about my day or what I had for dinner etc.

But this one was just too close to home not to share.

I'm prior service Marine Corps, and did in fact leave Active Duty as a "Terminal Lance" although that in itself is a whole other story.

There's a web-comic (also featured in The Marine Corps Times) called "Terminal Lance" and while it is geared mainly towards Marines of the '03' persuasion (it really is a persuasion and not just a job field) I follow it with great interest and down right joy. Despite being a POG (person other than grunt) I did spend a fair amount of time within an Infantry Line Company and even then not all of his strips are Infantry Specific and any Marine can enjoy his work/writings.


Today's strip had me nodding quite a bit with this block of text:

"You’ll meet new people, see new things–new worlds even; and they won’t even begin to understand it. Going home will never be the same again, and being home for too long finds you in the precarious position of wishing you were gone again. The very idea of home becomes a distant memory, because it’s never the same as it was. It’s not that home has changed, in fact it’s remained largely the same. Sure, maybe some new stores or restaurants popped up while you were gone, but it’s hardly any different."

 I'm originally from Michigan and enlisted the fall after graduating high school and not much has changed, even after being out for almost 10 years. I no longer consider Michigan my home, much more now after my mother's passing. For the most part I consider Pennsylvania home, but that again is a different story.

The service, especially the Marine Corps can change your life in so many ways. I owe the Corps a great deal. It taught me a whole lot of things, landed me in my current profession, introduced me to my wife, helped me buy our first home...the benefits of that service have paid off in spades. The one thing it took from me is home, and that is one thing I gave up willfully and ultimately have no regrets over. While there are certain aspects of "home" that I miss, as a whole I have no desire to return.

Sorry for the rambling, in other news....

I've got my P30S!

HK P30S 9mm