Pick Up Game

I've been back now for about two weeks and have gotten back into a routine. I'm convinced, after seven months here, that it is the key to maintaining sanity. Having a routine makes the time go faster, or at least it seems that way. However, for the first few days being back, time absolutely crawled, my routine wrecked. The pleasant and all too recent memories of being with my attractive wife and precocious, talking two-year old son for fifteen short days were bittersweet.

Complicating getting back into a routine was the degree of change that occurred while I was away. Many billets here turnover this time of year, more so than in the winter when I first arrived. For example, both my teammates – my team chief and my co-worker -- went home while I was on leave. Two additional co-workers on other teams also redeployed. And shortly after I returned, our Australian coalition teammate went home. This meant the office was full of newly arrived people. With all the new people, the entire office dynamic, in fact, had changed.

One would think this would be bad but here is the amazing thing about this place: everyone who walks in the office here is top notch. At Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), General Petraeus’ staff, we are somewhat jealous of the divisions and units at Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I), our subordinate unit. They largely deploy as a cohesive whole; that is, they were all serving together to begin with in the same unit before coming here. At the staff, we are assembled from all the services (army, navy, air force, marines) and across all commands. The result is a large pick up game; we need to learn to be effective teammates with each other while simultaneously learning a new skill set. Sometimes it works very well, other times less so.

I’m happy to say, the new guys all appear great and already I have a new team dynamic. It’s very different from the first team when I arrived. For example, I have had four team chiefs and three teammates since arriving here. For the most part, every iteration was great. The good news is that this is the team that I will finish with here four and half months from now.