I don’t live and have never lived anywhere hiking can be done on a regular basis, so I only hike on vacation. This allows me to maintain the allusion hiking is super duper fun.
You can entice me into a hike for a good picture.
Hiking doesn’t suck when I’m with people I genuinely like. Exercise is unpleasant, so when I hike with people I don’t truly enjoy being with, I want to punch people.
If there’s a waterfall, I will really hike for that.
I’m a big fan of getting where I’m going. This factor is multiplied when I’m hiking. I will stop when I need to. Otherwise, I am a one direction, uphill, mountain climbing machine.
Humidity doesn’t bother me, even when I’m hiking.
There is a very good chance my hike will double in length before I’m done. This usually happens because I accidentally took a wrong turn or decided I’m superwoman and wanted to go farther before remember I’m not.
I always feel like I’ve lost sixteen pounds after hiking.
When hiking with my bestie or boyfriend, I like to be ridiculous by making them wear matching shirts or in a more recent instance cat ears.
My favorite places to go hiking are Steamboat Springs Colorado and my new favorite place Lake Tahoe. They’re super beautiful, full of mountains, and great for picture taking opportunities.
The best compliment I’ve ever received was when I went hiking in Colorado with my boyfriend. I made him hike like there’s no tomorrow. He’s a retired Marine. He said hiking with me is “worse than the Crucible.” Best. Compliment. Ever.
bisous und обьятий, RaeAnna
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Soaking up the sun in Carson City, Nevada. | Pants | Sports Bra |
Worth A Read Yes: Entertaining and Honest Length 240 Quick Review Mat Best was a Ranger before contracting and becoming known for his youTube channel, tshirt/whiskey/coffee companies, oh, and he made a movie. He’s entertaining as hell in his book Thank You For My Service.
As military adjacent, I’m interested in military nonfiction and memoirs, but as a critic I’m always wary because I’ve read some racist bulshit masquerading as war memoirs. Mat Best does a better-than-most job at balancing the realities of war with humanity in Thank You For My Service.
Best was a Ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment for five active military deployments before working and deploying multiple times as a private contractor. While working as a contractor, he created a youTube channel capitalizing on his creative side to document his time, opinions, and experiences as a member of the military. The channel lead to a partnership, which created a tshirt company, whiskey company, production company, a movie, and a coffee company. He’s kind of a jack of all trades, it seems.
The military is a completely different way of life. It’s hard to understand if you’re not in it. Even as a milso, it’s not my way of life, but I am more familiar with it than others. If you’re not into a morbid sense of humor, don’t read Thank You For My Service because that’s a huge part of the narrative and the military. Jokes and rude humor are essential. To be honest, the book would be super weird if he didn’t include dark jokes. Best redacts certain words, even whole sections of text, to maintain anonymity and secrecy. This underpins the fact he had a dangerous job, and even though he’s cracking jokes, people’s lives are at risk every moment of every day.
I decided to pose with Thank You For My Service by Mat Best at the Aviation Memorial on MCAS New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
War is war. People killing people. War memoirs tend to dehumanize the enemy in a plethora of ways. It’s part of the job, and it would be hard not to when you see your friends and colleagues dying. Best doesn’t sugar coat the feelings he had in theater, but he also makes sure the reader knows on the other side of his gun are people. The fact he didn’t use racial slurs impressed me. He does er on the side of “kill the enemy,” but that was literally his job.
Best is confident, funny, and smart. He writes about his experiences leading up to enlisting, deployments, Ranger school, loss, getting out, private security, joining and being a private contractor, and figuring out his life. He doesn’t shy away from discussing what he went through getting out of the military. Being in his early twenties but feeling disconnected from his peers. So many military guys feel this way when they get out after their first enlistment.
He and I, I am sure, have a lot of differing opinions, but he’s also a person I would have a ton of fun grabbing coffee with or joking over a bonfire. Throughout Thank You For My Service he emphasizes the sense of community he had in the military. It’s true, whether you’re in or military adjacent, when you meet someone who is military, you have something to talk about or bond over.
Memorable Quotes| “Thinking you’re going to die and wanting to die are totally different things. I didn’t have a death wish. It’s just that, in my experience, the more you deploy and face the dark realities that exist in life, the more comfortable you become with the idea of death.” “…being immersed in Ranger culture for four straight years had affected how I saw the world and, more to the point, how the world saw me.”
