Tag Archives: active duty

Coming out of the closet…or at least out of the fighting hole

Posted by Mike Grice on

Not that closet.  The “I’m getting out of the Marine Corps” closet!

So you’ve made your decision to hit the right turn signal and head for the offramp.  If you are like me, there are really a couple of stages in making the decision — firstly, you make the call to retire or get out, which is great.  Secondly, however, you have to tell people about it.  All kinds of people, like your spouse, your parents, your kids, your peers at work, your boss, your subordinates, pretty much everybody.

Great.  Easier said than done, or easier typed than said, I suppose.

Telling the family is pretty easy, because they were part of the decision to begin with.  With a sigh of relief, they readily embraced the thought of me being home for the holidays, so that was done.  Telling my extended family was likewise pretty easy; an email here, a phonecall there.  Again, easy to do because every single person in my family supported my career and more importantly my decision to move on.  The same with my friends outside the military.  They were very supportive, as they always are!

Not so easy when it comes to work, though.  In my experience, there are generally two types of people in the military:  meat eaters and grazers at the salad bar of martial life.  I have prided myself on being carnivorous, and have worked diligently and aggressively to be the best enlisted Marine and officer that I could possibly be.  However, with my decision to retire, I left the pack and joined the herd.  With such a migration came some startling revelations.

First, how do you tell everyone that you are, in effect, quitting?  In the Marine Corps we revere our veterans and still consider them Marines.  We expect excellence from every Marine in uniform, and invariably get what we expect.  There is a gulf, however, between contributing Marine and valued veteran.  It is really more of a pit than a gulf, though.  Before you get to wear a suit or a tuxedo to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball you have to go through that etherial process known as transition, a process that I am currently undergoing.  And before you start your transition, you have to tell your boss that you quit, and once those words leave your mouth they cannot ever be unsaid.  Just like death and pregnancy, quitting the service is pretty final.

In my case, I did so by email.  My boss was in Afghanistan and I wasn’t, so stopping by her office was a bit unreasonable.  At any rate, once the decision was made my electronic notice of career irrelevance headed out to the other side of the world, and within hours my email inbox received her reply.  I sat at my desk and just stared at the email header, trepidatious to open it for fear of what it might contain.  After all, I had just uttered the unmentionable, and with that email ended my career.  Fortunately, she is a great boss and was very thoughtful in her reply.  She gave me some great mentoring advice and asked how she could help.  Whew!  One down, about a zillion to go……

Once your boss knows, you can be sure that the word will be out at the speed of heat.  That is when I began telling people, or “socializing” it as we like to say in the military.  Interestingly, my pronouncement was invariably met with one of two responses from my military friends, seniors, peers, and subordinates: either a broad smile and “hey, that’s great!  What are you going to do next?” or a disdainful scowl accompanied by “quitter!”

The first response was always followed by a pleasant conversation.  The second response, well, not so much.  It was usually followed by an uncomfortable silence broken only by the sound of my ego as it plummeted to the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces.

Another interesting note is that with my announcement to move on the conversations that I had subtly changed- I was no longer a part of the inner circle where decisions were made and deals were done.  I now stood on the fringes, watch the action that I had spent many years in the middle of.  Again, bruising for the ego but part of the process.  After all, it’s nothing personal, but in the words of Tony Soprano, “it’s just business.”  The positive side is that I no longer had to stay late when things got hectic, or tell my family that I was on a short list of people who may have to leave on a moment’s notice to somewhere hot and dangerous, so it all works out.

So, once you hit the blinker and head for the off ramp be ready for the conversations that you will have.  The decision you make is your own and your families, but as with all things in the military everyone else has an opinion…

Taking the plunge…

Posted by Mike Grice on

It happens to everyone in uniform.  Sooner or later you take off your uniform and face the reality of a future that stands in stark contrast to the military life that you have led.

It doesn’t matter if you serve four years or forty,  ultimately we all get out.  Lifetime service went the way of cavalry horses and airship pilots and as a result each and every one of us who has sworn to serve our country ultimately ends up returning to civilian life as citizen.  A veteran to be sure, but a citizen.  Just like everyone else.

So how do you decide when to leave?  For a lot of military folks the decision is made for them because they cannot reenlist or they reach their maximum service limit.  For others, they may be medically separated due to wounds received in combat or to accident or illness.  For the rest of us, though, we are faced with a decision that we have to make.  When should we head for the offramp?

For me, the decision was an incredibly difficult one while at the same time one of the easiest that I have ever had to make.  Difficult because I love the life I have led in the military, and it has been my home for nearly three decades.  Easy because the decision made itself.

I woke up one day and realized it was time to go.

Every Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Coast Guardsman has a unique story written by his or her unique career.  Although every one of them starts at boot camp or recruit training or officer candidate school and ends with a discharge or retirement ceremony, the days, weeks, months, and years between the beginning and the end are invariably different.  In my case, I woke up that fateful morning and realized that I had done everything that I wanted to do in the service of my country: I had seen the world, led men and women in peace and war, and been tested in the crucible of combat.  I also have missed countless birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries, and the hundreds of “firsts” that are part of my children’s childhoods.  I awoke that day and decided that I had been gone enough.  It was time to serve my other life- the one without a uniform.  The life that I will live for the rest of my days, the one that starts and ends each day in the same place and the same people.  My wanderlust is sated.  It’s time to stay home.

At any rate, that is why I chose to retire and move on to a new and different life.  A new adventure awaits…after I get done with my final physical, and my veteran’s affairs appointments, and my retirement seminars, and….and….and…

Orders to Nowhere….

Posted by Mike Grice on

Hello there!  This is the first post on what I hope will be an ongoing endeavor.

So why am I writing this, and what does “Orders to Nowhere” mean?  Well, let me start at the beginning, or at least close to it.

I am a career Marine, and I have been serving for over a quarter of a century.  At the ripe old age of 17, while Ronald Reagan was still in his first term, I raised my right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the United States of America.  Soon after I enlisted I received my first set of orders.

Orders, in military terms, are a set of documents that tell you where you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do when you get there.  The closest thing in the civilian world would be a transfer from one location to the other, but the difference between the military and the outside is that civilians have the option to take it or leave it.  Not so much in the military.  You don’t have the option of turn them down because you don’t like them.  That’s why they call them orders…

Anyhow, that’s the way it works.  Every couple of years or so the Marine Corps (or the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and even the Coast Guard) issues out a set of orders to send you to your next assignment, and off you go.  Pretty much everything is decided for you- where you are going, where you will be working, and even in many cases where you will live.  All things considered, it is a pretty good gig because all you have to do is what you are told to do- pick up your orders at your administrative section and off you go!

That is, until you find yourself on the offramp from military service, which interestingly is where I find myself now.  For the first time since big hair and parachute pants were all the rage I am faced with making a transition from a life that I have thoroughly loved (most of the time, anyway- there were times when I hated it, but such is life) to one that I left a long time ago.

This blog is about that transition.  As each day passes I find myself learning things I didn’t know (but are second nature to pretty much everyone else) and doing things I that I have not done in a looooooooong time (like getting to know my hair comb again!)

I hope that you, the reader, get something out if it, particularly if you are in the service.  Someday you won’t be, and maybe I can help make your transition a little smoother by sharing how mine goes…