Tommie Hustle: High Maintenance?

I like to think that I'm a normal guy. I'm by no means affluent, I'm comfortable, and I’m not content. I come from the standard family unit two married white collar parents a brother, we worked hard to get what we have an where we are I'd like to think I'm a normal guy I don’t think of myself as someone who is a member of the bourgeoisie.

As I was flying to Iraq this time, I had a lady sit next to me from Zimbabwe and we traded stories about our lives where we were going, so on and so forth. She told me the most interesting story of how she lived in a hut on the plains of Africa and tended to packs of Lions. If she were Black I wouldn't have believed her but, she was white so that made it TOTALLY believable. It's always interesting to meet white Africans. They have a demeanor to themselves that comes for years of them telling people they are from Africa and people’s responses being "How can you be from Africa? You are white!"

We chatted about that for a while, then we talked about they joys of international travel. I said to her yeah I love how the hand out hot towels for your face and the heated mixed nuts in a ceramic bowl that we get and of course the free drinks I said internationally first and business class is the only way to travel.

She responded that she has never flown business or first class internationally. I responded I would never fly coach internationally. As the words came off my tongue I could hear my own utter revulsion and contempt for the concept. I immediately retorted before she could speak.

"That made me sound like jerk didn't it," I stammered "I mean I do only fly business or first class but, that's because that's the only way my company lets me travel, not that have a problem with coach I mean we all get there the same time right?"

I mean I really sounded like an utter tool, I might as well have said “Congress with the plebeians? Utter rubbish I tell you, that is poppycock my dear woman!"

She caught my shock of my tone but, she decided to have some fun at my expense. She said, “Oh my God you sound too high maintenance.”

I never thought of myself as high maintenance but, look at where I have been in the last few years. I've had a Gatsby-ish transformation. I mean I went from flat broke to now where I own three vehicles, all of which that have been purchased in the last three years (A sedan, a motorcycle, and a high performance European sports car). They have a combined mileage total of about 31,500 miles.

I go out to eat and drink and $100+ dinner and bar tabs don't phase me. I never look at the price of gas I just fill up. I have maids and landscapers tend to own a home that I don't live in or see. When I am in the states I split time between my home in Scottsdale, AZ and my parent home in Atlanta, GA and when I'm in Atlanta all I do is go out and be seen in the hottest spots.

I mean it is part of my personality to never accept less than the best for me but, I never saw myself as someone who isn’t grounded in the reality of the struggle or at least I think I am.

This comes full circle for another reason I was at a Krystals join back at my folks house (White Castle for you northern folks and a place that sells Sliders for those of you who know neither. I pull up in my Porsche and there is the lady there who looks about 42 or so filling out an application. She takes a hard look at me but, I’m kinda used to that when I’m in the P-ride not a big deal. So I order my food and the cashier says they will bring it out to me and a seat. Well, I sit next to the lady and she asked me if I went to my old high school. I said yea (I’m thinking she it the parent of someone I went to school with) then she said yeah, I remember you we went to school together. I was like really? When did you graduate, she was like in 1992 with you? I was like holy shit; I thought to myself you rolled craps of the life after high school table. I mean the lady looked to be a hard 10 years older than me. We chatted for a second and then she left the spot and went across the street to wait for the bus. I was filled with sadness for a bit, I know we all make our individual choices and that I had options that were not available to her but, here we are 15 years later and I’m riding clean and she is scrounging for 1.25 to catch the bus hoping to be a fry cook at a burger joint. At that point I really saw there were two Americas. But, if I had a choice, I choose the nice America.

How I GOT HERE PT III

I know what you are asking, "Tommie, we are three posts in and you still haven't told us how you got back into Iraq."

The easy anwser is that you can't stop my hustle! I can sell bacon to a pig. The real anwser is that one of the units I trained deployed to Iraq and they felt that the support that they were getting in Iraq was not up to the quality that they had gotten back home. As a result a high level officer requested my presence. That changed the entire thought process of the deployment managment this particular officer was not the type of person that would take no for an anwser. With his personality I suspect that he hand not heard the word no applied to him in many years. He is the type of person that would go to McDonalds and ask for some fries if the cashier said we are out of fries his response would be

"Well when you get those fries to me I want them hand delivered by that jackass in the yellow, red, and white clown suit. I want the big shoes, the god damned red afro, and I want it in 6 minutes.

Ronald would be there in probably 4.5 minutes.

So I went from parriah to everyone's best friend. The problem with it was that I wasn't too entirely pressed to go to Iraq. Not from the fear factor so much. I've been in and out of Iraq and largely dealt with my mortality issues. But my experience with the civilian managment was so caustic and so poisonous that I was (am) tired. The idea of mustering that much will to go into an already stressful enviroment wasn't worth it to me. On top of that my current stateside deployment schedule has pretty much robbed me of any type of personal life. The idea of entering the Iraqi monestary once again didn't have much appeal.


So while I played with the idea of going back, I ended up not taking the assignment due to the fact that I had to get hernia surgery that I had put off for over a year and my surgery would make me not deployable in the time frame that they requested.

When I recovered from surgery, I was then sent to support another unit. Different scneario, same result. I impressed the command and they wanted me to support them when they came to Iraq. But, this time there was something different, one I was healthy, two the unit by and large that understood what it meant to fight within the assemtric model of counter insurgency. Most my training predated the latest techniques of counterinsurgencey while I trained in that model US forgien policy would not allow what was going on in Iraq to be called an insurgency. So it was an open secret of what was being requested and what was being trained but, until the beltway decided to have their mouths match what everyone's eyes were seening as far as militray policy was concered insurgency didn't exist.

This unit motivated me and I know that they are going to the next level and I wanted to be a part of that. So when I got back to the office I let my boss know under what conditions I was willing to go to Iraq. Even at that I drove a hard bargin but, they came back to me and said yes. The gave me an offer that was too good to refuse or so I thought...


NOTE TO SELF: Never take the refuse option off the table.
NOTE TO SELF's SELF: FUCK! Why didn't you tell me that before I took the option off the table!

How I got here PT II

Well in reality, this manager had me nailed to the wall or so he thought. The reality is that I am someone who documents everything. My nature demands that emprical evidence needs to be present in all things. So while he rambled, insseantly about the fact that I wasn't a team player I was sending detailed documentation with sources back to my true stateside managmement chain.

Had I not done that I probably would have been screwed. The lesson learned there is that as an employee you should always take notes of your challenges and accomplishments. It's not someone else's job to make you look good. So my managment knew that I was on point but, they knew that they lost me as an Iraqi asset on this project which was fine by me. However, my job wanted to still use me as an asset on the project. While I was pesona non grata in Iraq, there was a loophole in this "ban" I was not banned from stateside support. The Iraqi manager's thought process was that if you were kept out of Iraq then you were denied the fat bonus checks. What he didn't realize is that my interest in the project was not primarally financial but, philosophical.

Right now the US military is going throught a remarkable pardigim shift on how they think about warfare. This is an amazing challenge for the military which is until recently been trained wholesale on the thought of symetric warfare (i.e. fighting battles with roughly equally equipped emenies) well the battle that we fight today are asymetric (i.e. battles where the emenies do not have a equal capability set in this case our emenies have a reduced capability set). In the long view this is changing how the military traditionally is thought to operate (and more importantally how the US population needs to look at war). This process is going to take a while but it is exciting to be a part of.


Back to the issue of this blog. My company found a loophole to this ban clause so as a result over the past year I was sent to seveal training centers around the world. For there I was able to ply my trade and work with all different types of military orgnizations. I have spent the past year milling of military field manuals, I voratiouly consumed any and all books and news articles I could find on Iraq, Iraqi policy, US forgien policy as well as learning military techniques from the operaters. I took (I'm still taking) all of this information and appling them with the training I supplied. I am somewhat of a Johnny Appleseed if you will. I am a natural storyteller so captivating people is fairly easy to do and for the most part I make sense. The more I trained the more that military leaders wanted me to train. Word of mouth about the "trainer guy" got out in some circles and it has gotten to the point now where I am requested by name to support operations this is a huge and a humbling honor for me. So the manager that thought he would be rid of me acutally made me bigger assest to the customer.

The bottomline is this, in life your heart can't pump kool-aid. You have to have a conviction somewhere and stick to it. You should always be mindful of fear but, don't let it take you over. You are going to have haters in anything you do, that's a haters job to hate. But, like Kat Willams said if you don't have haters that means you aren't doing it.


So at this time I'd like thank all of my haters.

How I got here: PT1

Well it's been a while since I've written on this thing and before I start into the weeds of this I suspect I need to go back to where I've been.

Last time I was here in Iraq it was nothing short of a debacle. To make a long story short I was kicked out of Iraq and banned from coming back. This wasn't an Army decision mind you, this was a situation generated due to the fact that the manager I was working for had a fundamentally different world view that what I had on what it means to be successful. On top of that the manager is an egomanic and (I would argue parnaoid) of the highest order. If you didn't move lockstep with sometimes hairbrained schemes then you were out of order. The guy managed out with a philosophy of fear.

That in itself didn't bother me so much I can deal with egomanics they are a simple lot when it gets down to it. The problem was that I never took him seriously. The thing is this projcet that I was on didn't take in to account the fact that I had

1. Been in Iraq for a year previously. That meant that the financial impetus and pressurers of NEEDING the money wasn't there for me. You have a fundamentally different type of employee when they don't have debt guiding their decsion making fucntions. I would argue that a debt free employee has a larger potential of being a more vocally principled employee. The will work from an ethical view point over a financal viewpoint (which I did my first go round).

The manager's motivator was the fact that as manager the power to you fired was this mangers perogative. This fear worked for alot of people but, for me...not so much. I'd been laid off before, I learned early on I could get another job, losing a job isn't a problem for me on top of that I squirreled away a pretty good nest egg. While I couldn't retire on it, I could easily last over a few years.

2. Been in a leadership position for a large part of my deployment last time. This allowed me to generate policy and work independently with my mandate being focus on results (results = customer satisfaction) candor for the most part was the order of the day.


This manager stifled innovation, the manager had one world view and that was it. If the manager didn't come up with the idea then it wasn't a good idea. I never worked in an enviorment like that. So in hindsight I could have just shut up and color but, the manager was out and out wrong. These arguements resulted in me getting sent home becasue I wasn't a team player.

Trust me I cried all the way to the bank.