Three Years Removed

This past Saturday marked three years since I served my last day in the Army! Making the transition from career Soldier back to civilian is not the easiest. When I stepped away, I left a profession that shaped me as a person in every sense of the word. The military permeated every part of my being both physically and mentally. I know I am not alone.

The decision to leave service began long before 2019 and my adjustment back to being a civilian continues still today. Leaving the military is life changing! How does an old Soldier (or Airman, Guardian, Marine or Sailor) make sense of all this? They conduct an After-Action Review of course!

I hope sharing my lessons learned in a free eBook could help a service member come to grips with the decision. Or perhaps sharing some of my experiences will help that recently transitioned veteran not make the same mistakes I did. Most importantly, I hope my testimony will let a fellow veteran know they are not alone. We all joined for our various reasons and at some point, we had to take the uniform off. It isn’t easy! But the very nature of our military service equipped us with all the skills we need to successfully transition back to being a civilian again. 

I like to remind our two sons frequently that everything, absolutely everything, in this life is the result of a decision. They will often retort, if someone dies in a plane crash, that wasn’t their decision or some other witty counter. Well, the passenger certainly didn’t decide the time of their death, but they did decide to get on the plane! Another favorite of our kids, I didn’t pick my parents, how was that a decision? True, but it was a decision to have you, just not yours! Everything that happens in life is the outcome of a decision.

Thankfully, as former members of the U.S. Armed Forces, we are supremely equipped to make decisions. Regardless of rank, we were taught detect, decide and act. Decisiveness is one of our many qualities that makes the U.S. fighting man and woman unique among almost all other militaries in the world.

It is my humble opinion that this propensity for decision making is also what will make our inevitable transition out of service successful, regardless of the conditions “on the battlefield”. We all served our country successfully, when it’s time to move on, we’ll be fine. Don’t let the headlines scare you and don’t over think it! Just do what we’ve always done- detect, decide and act.

In almost 100 pages, Military Retirement: An After-Action Review shares the decisions I made during my retirement journey. Some were “sustains” but more were “improves”. In some cases, I’ve pointed out where I failed to make a decision or did not decide timely enough. In most cases, I just didn’t know which decisions I needed to make. Regardless, at the end of the day, like millions of other veterans, I navigated retirement successfully and landed softly back in the civilian world.

I truly hope sharing insights from my retirement experience will help a fellow veteran not only transition back to civilian life smoothly but more importantly, reach new heights of success in the important next chapter of their lives.

Check out all the sustains and improves from just about every aspect of my own transition from career Soldier back to civilian in my new book, Military Retirement: An After-Action Review. Free eBook download or paperback purchase on Amazon. If you do read my AAR (or any of my books for that matter), please don’t forget to drop a review on Amazon! Thank you!

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The views, opinions and biases expressed in this blog are the authors and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army or Department of Defense.