Missing in Action

5 August 2022 21:12

I have been having a very busy last few days, so I greatly apologize for not being able to post anything. I need to sleep now for what will hopefully be the last day of training I got my products from LITTIL I will eventually give you guys a review once things get back to normal. The kids are finally back home as well. It was kind of pointless to send them off because I didn't end up staying overnight at all. They needed to go through since there were some nights when I was getting in late. I know Malice is about to be 17 but I still don't think she is ready to stay home alone overnight with her younger siblings. Mostly just because there are so many little kids, and she is just a teenager.

The older kids start school this week coming up and I feel like the summer went by so fast. I'll a little worried about how well Malice will do this year because she did badly last year. I don't know what to do though because it's not that she isn't smart enough. She just doesn't care. My thing is that I am doing all that I can to guide her and get her to do the right things, but I can't do the homework for her. I know it sounds bad to say but I can’t do anything but be honest I can't be stressed about her schoolwork and graduating if she doesn't care. I have already told her that at 18 if she doesn't graduate, she is on her own. I'm not going to just sit up and take care of her if she isn't going to do what she needs to do. She has all the time in the world to complete her homework. She doesn't work or have extracurricular activities so why she doesn't do her homework is beyond me.

The only reason I ended up getting my GED is that I had her. I was months away from graduating when I found out I was pregnant. I don't regret that decision at all because I still got something. I would let her get her GED and just be done but I know she will fail that test and I don't have money to throw away like that. I just had a conversation with her to let her know my expectations for this school year. I hope she does what she is supposed to do. She is a junior and only has 15 credits. I feel like a failure but it's not all on me. She must take some responsibility and gain some maturity because I can't save her always. When I was her age, I was in 2 extracurricular activities, and I was helping my mom with her afterschool program. Yet somehow, I found a way to get it done and I was expected to keep a 3.5 GPA. All I ask is for their best and I know she wasn't doing her best since I was getting calls from the school that she was sleeping in class.

I know this post has gone kind of off on a tangent, but I didn't have much else to say about training because I've already shared how that was going. I have so many posts that I’ve started and drafted but didn't finish so that is the first task on my list so I can get caught up, so I don't completely lose where I was going even though it is probably bound to happen anyway the way my mind works. We did this class at training talking about leadership and what kind of leader we are. So, the junior enlisted soldiers got to put each Leaders name into a cup for each of the leadership styles.

The choices were domineering, unpredictable, healthy, empowering, passive, and secretive. I ended up getting most people saying I was unpredictable. At first, I was mad because they described it negatively like you never know what you are going to get every time you see them. I decided that was not necessarily a bad thing. Honestly being a leader is not that different from parenting. You must have a little of each style and my leadership style varies mostly based on what the soldier has done. If they are doing wrong, they get dominating. The next time you might get a passive leadership style. Well, I got an early morning, and my eyes are crossing trying to write this so I'm going to get to bed.

Unapologetically,

K