Soon after I wrote my last entry about tenacity and always working hard towards something, I hit a breaking point. It's so hard to balance my job and working on the things that I actually care about. I have to get up at 4:45 for work. Before I hit my breaking point I would wake up, do three or four sets of push-ups and sit-ups, go to work, sometimes for 17-hours, come home, do more sets, go straight to sleep, wake up four hours later, and do the same thing again. On the bus I would take out a book about Israeli history or my Hebrew flash cards (which was the only time I had to sit down for a few minutes and read) and study them until I passed out from exhaustion. A few times on four hours sleep I would work eight hours in the morning then go to ulpan at night, and load myself with coffee so that I wouldn't fall asleep in class. When I made it home I'd opt to go for a run instead of going to sleep immediately and maybe sneaking in six-hours. I've been averaging less than one day off a week. Getting in writing was harder because I need to set aside a big block of time for that, and I simply had no time between work and chores and other shit like that.
So I pushed my body and mind to a point where I could no longer keep up such a high output of energy, and it infuriates me. The past week or so I've just been complaining and whining all the time and not being dedicated like I should be, but I think I'm back now. A lot of it probably had to do with the sleep; I was almost never sleeping a reasonable amount. And once I hit the breaking point, I started to despise work. I didn't come to this country to be a waiter, and to be treated like I'm not worth anything at work. In the past month I can guarantee that very few people or no one at all put in more hours than I did at the hotel, and I can't take it when a manager is clearly nothing but displeased with me.
My patience is running thin, but I can hold out until this Thursday, my last day of work. The time passes so slowly, the second hand is like the minute hand. I'm not the type to work in the service industry, it's very difficult for me to be upbeat with someone I don't know. Polite and courteous yes, but that's it. I can't smile unless I'm genuinely laughing, and it makes me a very uninviting waiter from what I understand. I guess I need to scratch a career in waiting off my list of dreams.
There are a lot of good aspects of work though. Two of my managers are great, including one with a son in Shayetet-13, the Israeli Navy SEALs, which is the unit that raided the flotillas from Turkey*. I got to meet him one day and I asked him tons of questions, although nothing related the recent crisis, because that was clearly out of bounds and they can't talk about stuff like that. I don't even know if he was on one of the boats, although he probably was considering how small the unit is. I asked him tons of questions that I've been wondering about for almost a year now, I'll recount some of the most informative answers he gave me:
I asked him if it was important to know how to swim really well before the gibush. I assumed the answer would be something like "you don't have be as good as a life guard but you need to know what you're doing." He surprised me when he told me that he had a friend in the gibush (who got admitted to the unit) who was given floaty devices to put on his arm during the swimming portion of the gibush. You know, the things that they give to five-year-olds when they go into kiddy pools. It just reinforces what I love about the IDF, that a strong mind is so much more valuable than a strong body. It's what makes this country's army pound-for-pound the best in the world.
I asked him to give me some advice on the gibush. He explain to me that, for example, if there is someone who runs faster than you, and you have to race, what they will do is exhaust you both until you are even, and then see how hard you try. Again, a much bigger test of your mind and not of your body.
I also asked him about a rumor I'd heard, which is that there's a portion of the training where they drown and resuscitate to "see what your limit is." He said they don't do anything like that. Lesson learned, potential soldiers: there's no shortage of rumors surrounding the IDF and what it's like in unit x and brigade y-- take all of them with a grain of salt.
I told him that my step-father and father of my brother is from Beirut, although not a Muslim, and if this would make it difficult for me to get security clearance. He said it shouldn't be problem and told me something reassuring: "They're receiving you into the unit, not your parents or family. Remember that."
I had also heard there are so few slots available in the unit that in a gibush they're might be twenty or more perfect candidates, and the mefakdim in essence have to close their eyes and pick one person randomly to admit to the unit. He told me that's not true at all, and that they are always out for good soldiers that fit the unit, but it is possible that you show great potential as a soldier but not specifically for Shayetet-13. He said that if there are twenty great candidates for the unit, that they accept twenty in to the training. They don't turn people down because of a lack of room.
My favorite thing that he said to me was when I asked if they ever beat you during the training. He smiled in a friendly manner but with a hint of "c'mon man, are you kidding me?" in his eyes and told me, "Hey, you get into the unit, and you tell me if they hit you." He said, "wait until 'Captivity Week,' when you learn what it's like to be a hostage."
*I'm not going to go into the politics of this, at least not now, I'll just briefly say that I support the Israeli troops and Israel's actions.
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