Well, I made it. I freaking made it. I crossed the finish line and I’m on the other side. As I write this, I’m about 2 weeks into Military Retirement and still trying to process it all. No retirement ceremony, no party, no big dinner or speech. Just FREEDOM. I’ve never been the type to want big celebrations or even attention, but I’m happy, blessed and grateful to be in the position I’m in today. After 23 years, multiple combat deployments and lots of injuries – I know that I am blessed to have my health. After crossing such a big milestone in life, I feel like I’m supposed to do something big and celebrate – but maybe I’ll get to that later.
There are definitely a lot of emotions. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know how I feel and it’s a lot to process. I got reflective, I spent a lot of time thinking and dreaming – but I am definitely grateful. During the whole journey, I learned a lot about myself and that set the tone for what I’ve felt driven to do. I talked myself out of it for nearly a year and still rode the line of getting a military contractor or GS job, but for now – Fudog Finance is where I feel fulfilled, happy and excited.
Running a business is new to me, but it’s requiring every skill I learned in the military and is like this puzzle I feel drawn to solve. I wish I could say my experience is the same for everyone, but it obviously isn’t. I met soon to be retirees less than a month out from retirement stressing because they were just starting their transition at that moment. I know others who have known no other life except for the Army and were having a true mid life identity crisis, holding on to the Army for dear life. It’s a lot. It’s more than just retirement, it’s the closing of a significant chapter in life and trying to write a new one. Its an all around life transition and can’t be taken lightly.
I’ve had lots of friends ask me for advice going through military transition and I never felt like I had the right advice to give cause I was stumbling through it all myself. Looking back at my own trials and tribulations, I can confidently say – Don’t focus on the job, the resume or the interviews yet. Pump the brakes and start with you. Focus on you. Whenever things start getting crazy, or not going your way – the answer is to focus on you. Knowing who you are, what you stand for, your strengths, weaknesses, values and passions will guide you toward what you were meant to do. But it takes focused discipline and work to know what all those things are.
Take off the rank, take off the uniform and ignore what the Military says that you are. That may be a big part of you, but when you take those things away – who are you? Do you remember anymore? If not, that’s okay – go find out. Take personality tests, take strengths tests, get reacquainted with who you are because sometimes we forget.
Then go back to dreaming like you were a kid. What did you want to be when you grew up? Now that you’re older and wiser – What do you want retired life to look like afterwards? Write it down. Now get into your core values. Do you know what they are? Please don’t rattle off the Army Values or your unit’s values. What are YOURS? Do you live according to them? Take all those things – your personality tests, your strengths, your dreams, your core values, your passions, your purpose. Now chase that shit with reckless abandon. It might not be perfect now, but you gotta experiment and chase what makes you happy and makes you feel fulfilled. Stealing a page from Jay Shetty – Your Passions + Your Strengths in service to others = Your Purpose. Its on you to find it.
As for life on the other side – right now it’s chaotic. My final paycheck was split in two across two months. I’m still waiting for the last half of it. Disability pay won’t kick in for at least another month. Retirement pay should hopefully hit in the next few weeks.
Administratively, I can best describe it as overwhelming. You’re basically Inprocessing yourself to a new unit. This unit is called the VA. No one is there with a checklist and map of telling you where to go to get inprocessed. Instead, you’re going to get flooded with a ton of emails the day you retire outlining benefits and everything else you are owed. Your retired buddies mean well, but they sometimes feel like Barracks Lawyers giving you all kinds of crazy advice that may or may not make sense. To make matters worse, your active duty friends will also give you advice on what they think you should do next – but the reality is, they forreal don’t know. Again, they mean well so take it all with a grain of salt.
I am blessed to be good friends with a VA Benefits Counselor who is helping me navigate through it all. If you don’t know one, find one and ask everything you want to ask. It’s a lot to get through. Focus on what’s key at that moment – getting your disability rating squared away, and getting proper healthcare. After that, you can focus on doing the fact finding mission of understanding all the State and Federal benefits you have as a Vet.
For me, my priorities of work are: My VA Disability Rating, Signing up for TRICARE and getting enrolled in the VA Healthcare system. After that, I’m focused on College benefits for my family, The Veteran Readiness & Employment (VR&E) work study program, and possible property and vehicle tax exemptions. There’s so much more but it’s a lot to take in at one time. The VA offers a solid start program to help orient you to all of this alongside a counselor, and once you fill out the 10-10EZ form for VA Healthcare, you’ll receive a call from a social worker to help get your medical chart in order and set your first round of appointments. Sounds fun right?
What I’m learning thus far is that the training I received in the Army to do mountains of administrative paperwork have served me well. You’re going to need to use those skills Inprocessing yourself into the VA.