Week well spent

I know that. I didn’t know that. Huh, that’s good to know. Nice to know I was right about that. Validation is a good thing. An ah ha moment. It’s been a week of validation, refreshers, and insight here at the Air Force Communicators workshop in beautiful San Antonio.

Prior to arriving, I merely looked at the workshop as a good excuse to get away from the hectic pace of the office daily grind. I also viewed it as an opportunity to revisit San Antonio, a place I hadn’t seen since earning the opportunity to bowl in the Air Training Command Bowling tournament. Yes, Air Training Command, I suppose that gives my age away. In these days of budget woes, I wonder if the Air Force still runs the various sports tournaments I was able to attend while on Active Duty in the 80s. It was during that 17 day permissive temporary duty when I realized the Air Force was (if I may use the cliche) a great way of life. Where else could I get paid to bowl?

But I digress.

The workshop has been a great break from the office; however, it has not been a break from the daily grind. No one warned me about the 15-18 hour training days I would put in while here, which has left me with little time to rediscover San Antonio.

The week has been a whirlwind. I have been in class all day and out several hours a night shooting photos for our photo assignments. I am a Public Affairs troop who happens to take photos on occasion. The Air Force photographers here have pushed me to take what photo skills I do have to the next level. I am not sure I have reached that level, whatever that is, but I have learned that it is okay to push yourself, break the rules and not settle for the same old photo. I have learned that a dark photo just may be okay. I have learned that sometimes a blurry photo does the trick, and although there is no human element, the photo just might work.

Learning new photo techniques has been great, but the best moment of the weak came during the reputation management class. Suddenly, after a 16 year association with the Air Force, eight years on Active Duty as a radio maintenance technician for the Air Born Command Post and eight years in the Air National Guard as a Public Affairs technician, I finally get the big picture. It was the ah ha moment.

We protect and maintain the skies to ensure global economic trade and prosperity, we develop maintain and own some of the world’s greatest technology, and we protect our Constitutional freedoms. I suppose I knew these things inherently, but to hear Chief Hall, from PACAF, put the Air Force’s mission in such a clear, straight forward manner drove the message home. I now see my job differently. I hope I can carry this new found inspiration to each and every assignment.

I don’t know what the other attendees took away from the Communicators Workshop, but as for me, I know when I board the plane headed for home, I can board with a firm belief that the workshop was time well spent.