He's Got Aces Alright

Who knows what life will bring?  Not I, that is for sure.  It always surprises me how little I know about myself and what choices I will actually make, compared to what I thought I would decide in a given situation.  Did I ever think I would enjoy writing?  Surely not.  Did  I think that I would decide on a whim to take a ten hour drive to seem my family over the weekend, even when I already had other plans here at home?  No I did not.  Can someone ever really know themselves as much as they think they do?  I wish I did know that one.  I have often believed that I knew not only who I was, but how I operated.  I was at one time sure of what I wanted in life and how I was going to get there.  Yet, life always seems to have an ace in the hole, one more trick up its sleeve when it told me it had nothing left.  I remember how when I was only in fourth grade I was absolutely positive that I wanted to be an Oceanographer.  To spend my days under the ocean's surface researching and discovering new life.  I had a dream of finding a new fish and being able to name it myself.  How strange that is to me now.  Now, I am afraid of the ocean, I don't like it, I don't want the stuff in it to touch me and I most definitely am afraid of the animals in it stinging, biting or otherwise maiming me.  Moving through life I swore to myself that I would never join the military after watching how my own father was left high and dry with unfulfilled promises.  Now I have been Active Duty for over four years.  Once again I look back only a year ago and remember how I told my supervisor I didn't need a degree and how the military was my life.  I planned on staying until they kicked me out and I was retired.  Even now those thoughts change as I have almost completed my first few classes and begin to question what kind of life I really want and if this is the career field I am truly happy in.  At every turn, twist, bump, and hill life changes whether it is sudden and dramatic or it sneaks up on you like dirty laundry after a busy week at work, it is still there and still just as astonishing as if you had been sucker punched from the back row of concert straight to your brain.  At every change I have to stop and reconsider life and see how much I have strayed from my original course and think, is it really straying, or is it finally coming closer to the path I should have been on to start with.  Which path is MY path and how will I know when I get there?  It seems to always come to these simple questions.  Is what I am doing right?  How will I know if what I am doing Is right?  For now I have no way to judge which is the correct, right or just path and which is only the path of temptation, laziness or unrealistic dreams.  Are dreams only unrealistic to those people who have not the courage to charge them head on as a Spartan warrior wishing for his most glorious moment?  As I degrade in to answering questions with questions and talking circles like a one legged drunken sailor, I know it is time to close this train of thought for now.  For I know that is will open again soon enough, when life pulls another ace from the hole.