Tag Archives: career

Back to class, part 1: the Transition Assistance (Management) Program

Posted by Mike Grice on

Transitioning from the military to the civilian world is an inevitable event in the lives of servicemen and women.  It began with George Washington bidding a fond farewell to his militia and regulars at the end of the Revolutionary War and has continued on through a couple of centuries of war and peace.  Decade after decade veterans who have served the flag have hung up their uniforms and integrated back into society- some without missing a beat, but those individuals are rare indeed.  For the rest of us, the road is a little bumpy and has some unexpected turns! Fortunately, somebody up there was looking out for those of us who are easily confused.

Enter the Transition Assistance Program, or TAP (sometimes labelled “TAMP”, for Transition Assistance Management Program).  TAP/TAMP, universally referred to by military types as “tapandtamp”, is a mandated and required training workshop that everyone in the military must attend prior to hanging it all up.  The program began in 1989 as a joint initiative between the Veterans Administration (VA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Labor (DOL), and was designed to provide separating servicemembers with employment and job training assistance as well counseling on VA benefits and services.  It came about because prior to 1989 there was no coordinated or consistent curriculum to aid those on their way out the door; every base and service had its own version of what to do, ranging from formalized classes and aggressive job placement to nothing more than a hearty handshake and a slap on the back as you walked out the gate.  Needless to say, the creation of the program back in 1989 was a great idea, and it has been helping military types become educated veterans ever since – including the one writing this post!

After meeting with my retirement counselor I began coordinating with the base Transition office.  I picked up the phone and called the number listed on the first page of my transition checklist, and was very pleasantly surprised to find yet another retired Marine on the other end of the phone who was thrilled that I had rung him up.  He quickly put my mind at ease with his affable manner and earnest desire to help me out.  After chatting for a few minutes, he asked about my circumstance (“what rank are you?  Oh, that’s great, sir!  Retiring?  How many years in?  When is your last day?”) and by the end of our conversation I had reservations at both the Pre-Retirement TAP/TAMP and the 25+ Pre-Retirement seminars.  It was truly a joy to talk to this guy, who I had figured for a long retired guy who just loved being around Marines.

As it turned out, I was right.  Not long after our conversation I stopped by his office, a tiny room on the third deck (floor for non-Naval types) and met him in person.  An surprisingly spritely octogenarian, he fairly leaped from behind his desk in order to shake hands and introduce himself.  With a broad grin, he confirmed my enrollment in the transition courses.  As I looked around his cramped office, I saw pictures of a much younger man in vintage Marine Corps uniforms.  Too modest to talk about himself too much, we parted company.  I later learned that he had enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Second World War and crossed the beach at Iwo Jima with a rifle in his hand, which to all Marines places him into nearly God-like status.  As if that weren’t enough, he went on to fight in Korea and Vietnam and ultimately ended up retiring as a Sergeant Major.  And now he spent his days helping people like me, who were likely unborn when he retired, transition from the service.  Thank God for men such as him!

But I digress. At any rate, the schedule of events during the seminar is very similar whether you take it in Okinawa, Germany, or California.  More of a symposium or a workshop than a seminar, it is a series of lectures, classes, and briefings presented by knowledgeable representatives on a wide variety of topics ranging from medical evaluations to taxation considerations.  The following is a list of presentations that I found to be very useful as I attended the Pre-Retirement TAP/TAMP seminar at Camp Pendleton, California:

– Welcome/Introduction: this was just like the beginning of any workshop you attend.  They hand out a schedule and promise not to keep you late, which is a standard fabrication for almost any required class.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that these guys could actually keep to a schedule, and we got out on time!  They had this down to a science, and each brief was efficiently and professionally done in the time allotted.  In addition, they provided a broad overview of the transition services center and what they could do for the attendees, which turns out to be a great deal.

– TRICARE brief.  This is a very important brief for retirees, because it details the options for medical care after transition.  In a nutshell, healthcare is free for active duty personnel and there are several different programs for families.  Once you take off your uniform, however, you have to decide which medical insurance plan is best for you.

– Dental brief.  This was pretty quick and to the point.  Just as with medical care, dental work is free for the servicemember and there are pretty good plans for families.  As you transition, though, they options are less good, so you will have to choose which one you would like.

– Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP).  As a retiree you will receive a pension.  Depending on when you entered the service you are eligible for one of three plans- in my case my pension is based on my length of service and average monthly salary over the last 36 months of active duty.  The length of service determines the percentage of the 36 month average salary you will receive for the rest of your life.  Getting a pension is a pretty big deal, particularly now as there are very few companies that such a great retirement plan.  401Ks are nice, but require a lot of management and are subject to the whims of the stock market.  A pension check just shows up once a month, well at least as long as the Federal Government is around.  I think that will be a while, but again I digress!  The pension check only arrives as long as the retiree is alive- once he or she kicks the bucket the pension terminates.  In order to protect the family, however, the SBP allows for up to 55% of the pension benefit to transfer to the spouse (and in some cases, the children) after the passing of the retiree.  Like TRICARE, there is a lot to it, and I will dedicate a post to insurance considerations (TRICARE, Dental, and SBP) in the future.

– Federal Veteran’s Affairs.  There were several components to the VA brief, all of which were relevant and important.  First there was on overview of benefits, such as loan guarantees, burial plots, and the like.  The most significant brief covered the medical evaluation process which results in the determination if you have a service connected disability.  Being considered disabled opens the door to other benefits, many of which are pretty amazing, one example being the California University System, which will allow the children of disabled veterans to attend college tuition-free.  Whilst images of disability meaning life in a wheelchair, I learned that is not the case.  As with insurance, this will be a post of its own in the future because it is a pretty complicated process, and it is easy to screw it up and deny yourself benefits later in life.  Another critically important VA brief covered GI Bill benefits, which these days are fantastic.  In a nutshell, the VA will pay for school at the state school rate and also pay you a housing allowance while you go to school, but you have to jump through a few hoops to take advantage of it.  Fortunately, there are VA offices and administrators whose job it is to help, and I have found them to be helpful indeed!

– State Veteran’s Affairs.  Like the federal VA program, each state has benefits for veterans.  California’s are largely based on the level of disability (such as the California college education opportunity listed above), but not all of them are.  Benefits range from free license plates if you are 100% disabled to free access to state parks just for being a veteran.  Great stuff!

– Joint Education Center (JEC).  The presenter from the JEC (woohoo!  more acronyms!) also addressed the GI Bill, but also went into much greater detail on the various education programs available for veterans.  For example, many of the schools and jobs that servicemembers have attended and held during their careers may be eligible for college credit, and the JEC can assist with the evaluation process.  It also provides counseling and help with applying for trade schools, college, or apprenticeships.

-Disbursing and Travel.  This brief covered how you will be paid as a retiree.   As an active servicemember you receive a paycheck twice a month, on the first and fifteenth of the month.  As a retiree, that changes to once a month on the first, so budgeting is a little more important.  They also disclose what you will be paid for and what you won’t, which is significantly different from being on active duty.  While serving, your paycheck includes a housing allowance (as long as you live off base), an allowance for meals, various bonuses and special duty payments (for example, reenlistment bonuses or extra pay for pilots and parachutists), and a uniform replacement allowance for enlisted members.  When you retire all of those extra payments go away, and you pretty much just rate your pension.  I don’t jump out of airplanes or fly them, so I won’t miss that money because I never received it.  I will miss the housing and food allowances, though!

– Household Effects/Transportation.  This brief is important for those who will be retiring someplace other than their last duty station. Pretty much everyone wants to retire to Aruba, but the realities of life generally bring that dream to a tragic end.  Generally speaking, people retire to one of three places: where they are, where they are from, or someplace completely new.  Transportation to the first choice is easy because there are no benefits.  You just go home.  The second choice is pretty simple as well.  If you want to go back to your Home of Record (where you enlisted from), the government will pay to ship your household goods as well as pay for you and your family to travel to your new (old) home.  In the third case, it is a little more complicated.  The travel experts figure out how much it would cost to move you to your Home of Record and will apply that amount to the cost of moving you and your stuff.  So, if you still want to move to Aruba and you enlisted from Iowa, you will have to make up the difference on your own.

– Financial Readiness.  This brief covers the financial ramifications of retirement as well as strategies for the future.  Since we are eligible for a pension, most of us have not really paid much attention to the variety of other opportunities out there beyond a Individual Retirement Account and maybe the Thrift Savings Plan, which is a nonmatching 401K type vehicle.  The presenter showed us various investment strategies and a peek into what types of compensation exists on the outside world.

– Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS).  This brief covered the opportunities that exist with MCCS, which is a broad umbrella organization that includes things ranging from portions of the Marine Corps Exchange (like our base shopping mall) to recreational services such as sports equipment rental.  Access to some programs change when you retire, which they covered in the presentation.  There are also a lot of job opportunities with MCCS, which the addressed as well.

– The Psychological Factors of Retirement.  This covered the “softer” side of transition, the side that doesn’t have a rigid checklist to follow or series of classes to attend.  This class really addressed what happens after your last day in uniform- the feelings of loneliness, uselessness, confusion, and in many cases, happiness and joy.  We military types are not the most introspective and emotional folks out there, so this class was a real eye opener.

– Relocation and Retired Activities.  There are a lot of resources out there that you can utilize as you transition and once you become a valued veteran, and the Relocation and Retired Activities office is the place go to access them.  It is really a resource designed for those who are staying in the area because it is a link to the local community.

– Medical records brief and review.  This is one of the most important parts of the symposium!  After an hourlong brief that covered the nuts and bolts of how you are medically evaluated by the Veterans Administration, you are afforded the opportunity to have your medical record evaluated by a true expert on such things (in my case, it was a great guy from the Disabled American Veterans, or DAV).  It is very important that you bring your entire medical record on this day, because the class and succeeding evaluation of your record will provide you insights about which you had no idea.  This is a pre-inspection of your records, but what it does is allows you to follow up with your military medical provider on any physical maladies or problems that require attention before you retire or get out.  This is a big deal because access to medical care is easy while you still wear a uniform, but not so much when you take it off for the last time.  In addition, you will leave the screening with a list of recurrent medical problems that will later determine your medical disability percentage, and with that percentage the possibility of greater monetary compensation.  I will write a lot more on the medical side of transition in future posts.  Don’t miss this day at TAP/TAMP, and DON’T FORGET YOUR MEDICAL RECORD!!

– Job Hunting and Prospecting.  This is a class that could have been a seminar all by itself.  You are introduced to the realities of finding a job on the outside (not impossible, but not necessarily easy, either) along with the importance of networking.  I will leave it at that because the next two seminars focus on this part a great deal.

– Writing a resume, cover letter, etc.  This class was accompanied by a couple of nifty workbooks which helped you write a resume that actually might help get a job, as opposed to the horrible ones that you tend to write without help.  I say that from experience, because I brought with me a resume that I thought was pretty good but was in all actuality total garbage.  You spend a lot of time (a whole day out of the four day package) learning about business documents and how to write them.  In addition, you learn how to interview and how to sell yourself.  Marines tend to be pretty humble, believe it or not, and it is difficult to get them (and me!) to talk about their accomplishments and the great things that they have done during their careers.  Lastly, the fine art of salary negotiation (!) is covered- something that is completely foreign to Marines who have been paid based on time in service and rank for their entire careers.

All things considered, the TAP/TAMP workshop was a tremendous wake up call for all of us who have attended it.  It is indeed required (and you get a neat stamp on your check out sheet that boldly proclaims TAMP COMPLETE on the last day), but despite the negative connotation of all required classes, it was truly invaluable.  I learned more about the rest of my life in that class than in any single period of instruction that I had ever attended.  Well done!

In my next posts I will cover the  25+ Pre-Retirement and Ruehlin seminars- both fantastic courses with a different spin on transition.

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Lessons learned:

– Start early!  You are eligible to attend TAP/TAMP up to two years before you get out, and if you do you will be a lot better off than those of us who waited until it was nearly too late.  The insights you receive are fantastic, but more importantly the class details what you need to do to successfully complete the transition process.

– Make sure to get the whole week off for the course.  Even though it is required, there are often times when you “absolutely” have to get back to work and miss a brief or two.  Believe it or not, you aren’t that important.  After all, you’re getting out!  Let some hard charger run your shop for a while so you can devote the time and energy needed to make the best of the whole course.

– Bring your medical record!  If you don’t you will miss out on a great opportunity to prepare for the medical side of transition, including making the best of your disability evaluations.

– Take lots of notes.  You will be provided a pile of handouts and workbooks and the like, but if you don’t take notes they end up being pretty useless.  A good idea is to write the name of the presenter and their contact information (phone number, office location, and email address) in the corner of the handouts that they provide.  This will make it easy to call on them later when you have a question- and I guarantee that you will!

– This post is a broad brush of TAP/TAMP, and I will be writing in much greater detail about several topics in the future.  Just some of the future posts will include the medical evaluation process, insurance selection, resume writing, job hunting, interviewing, administration, and more.  Keep reading!

Getting schooled…

Posted by Mike Grice on

I left my last post with the observation that there were three major undertakings that I needed to accomplish before I could consider my transition completed: first, transition training and education, second, administration, and third, medical evaluations.

In terms of timing, the transition and education bit comes first, and here’s why: the administration of transition as well as the medical evaluations are largely based on a timeline that is centered around your transition date.  The transition training and education, however, are not not.  Instead, the opportunity to educate yourself and learn about the transition process is available pretty much whenever you would like to take advantage of it whereas the other areas are closely tied to when you are actually departing the service.

Much to my chagrin I learned that I was eligible to attend classes and seminars on transition and retirement whenever I wanted.  It was quite the revelation!  Had I only known that I could learn about the other side long before I actually decided to retire it would have made the whole process a lot easier, but to be honest the thought had never crossed my mind.  I was too busy travelling around the world and serving in places notorious for the bad food, scorching deserts, and angry locals.  That said, here are the opportunities that exist to learn about the transition process, well, at least those that are relevant to my situation as a retiring senior Marine officer in Southern California:

-TAP (everything is an acronym! it stands for Transition Assistance Program) which is also known for some reason as TAMP (which stands for the Transition Assistance Management Program).  I really don’t know if there is a difference between the programs, but it falls in line with the military’s love affair with acronyms- adding an “M” between “A” and “P” is certainly an improvement!  I hope somebody got a medal out of it.  At any rate, the TAP (or TAMP) program is both mandated and required to actually separate from the service.  Designed for those separating from the service after serving a hitch or two, it It covers the legal, medical, and administrative requirements for transition as well as a lot of information of how to write a resume, what to wear to an interview (which is a HUGE deal for those of us who have not updated our duds since skinny leather ties and white shoes were all the rage) and how to get a job.  This class is of enormous importance because you cannot get out without attending it; your final check out sheet (a document of epic importance that rates a post of its own) will not have the required notation that allows you to stop getting your hair cut and quit wearing a uniform.  It lasts about a week, during which time attendance is mandatory and is the appointed place of duty for the participant.  This is important, because unlike high school or college, you can get thrown into the brig for skipping class.  Needless to say there is rarely a need for a truant officer to go round up class-skipping delinquents…

-OUT, or Officers Under Twenty class.  This particular class is for officers who are separating from the service but do not meet the requirements for retirement.  Generally speaking, these officers are Lieutenants and Captains who have completed their obligated service of four to six years and who are going back to the civilian world.  It is very similar to the TAP/TAMP class, but focuses at the college graduate level as opposed to the high school graduate level.  They don’t spend too much time on how to dress or what to wear, though, because these young officers are still generally in their twenties and their wardrobes haven’t aged to the point of embarrassment.

-Pre-Retirement TAP/TAMP course.  This course is TAP/TAMP for those who are going to retire after at least twenty years of active service.  It is designed for the more “distinguished” amongst us (myself included) who are greying at the temples and are at a different place in their lives than a 22 year old who will use his or her benefits to go to college or a trade school.  It covers the same required topics on benefits and whatnot as the other TAP/TAMP courses, but has additional lectures and classes on things like becoming an entrepreneur, networking, etc.

-25+ Pre-Retirement Seminar.  More of a symposium than a seminar, this one is not required but is strongly encouraged and recommended for those who, again, have been for a loooong time.  It does not go into the benefits and administration of retirement, but instead focuses on life on the other side of the fence.  In addition to job search and assistance with developing a new career there are several guest lecturers who cover topics ranging from financial management for retirement as well as financial management as a career, how to go into business for yourself with a franchise or on your own, and how to dress for success.

-Ruehlin Seminar.  This course is a week-long seminar that caters to senior officers and enlisted who are retiring- the definition of senior being length of service and advanced rank.  There is often a difference- it is possible to retire after 20 or 25 years but not be at a senior rank; for example, many officers began their careers as enlisted members- and that service counts towards retirement.  As such, they may have over two decades of service, but are retiring as relatively junior officers.  Also, some enlisted members may have the same length of time in uniform but for whatever reason do not achieve higher rank.  At any rate, this course is very small (around fifteen or so attendees), and is focused specifically on the process of starting a new career and all of the job hunting skills necessary to do so.

So there you have it.  Five different courses, seminars, or classes that anyone eligible can attend.  Amazing!  Each one is a little different in its focus and intent, but each provides a slew of information that is invaluable to one on the path to transition.  In my particular case, I attended the Pre-Retirement TAP/TAMP course as well as the 25+ Pre-Retirement and Ruehlin Seminars.  Suffice it to say the wisdom I gained under the tutelage of the experienced and dedicated instructors was remarkable and very welcome.  Without it I would have been not just a bumbling fool stumbling along until I found myself unemployed, but I would have missed out on education and training that my contemporaries in the private sector pay thousands of dollars for.

In my next string of posts I will go into much greater detail for each of the courses that I attended, starting with the required Pre-Retirement Transition Assistance (Management) Program, or TAP/TAMP.

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Lessons learned:

– Start early!  I was pretty far down the path to transition before I began attending classes.  I found myself sitting with no small number of more prescient Marines and Sailors who were years away from transitioning but were smart enough to start learning about it early.  All that is required to attend the classes is permission from your command (in civilian parlance, that means your boss has to say it is OK to miss work for a few days) and a commitment to attend the course in its entirety because seating is often limited.

– Find out which courses are most suited to your situation.  If you are getting out after four years, then obviously the Pre-Retirement courses are not for you.  You may be in a situation, however, where you may not be eligible for a “senior” retirement seminar due to not having over 25 years in uniform, but there may be an empty slot you can take advantage of.  Contact your local transition program coordinator to see what is available.  Take every opportunity you can to educate yourself!

Learning from “The List”

Posted by Mike Grice on

I left the retirement counselor’s office with a smile on face.  He had given me exactly what I needed to chart my course for transition: a comprehensive checklist of tasks to perform along with a roster of contacts that would help me get those things done.  Happily I sat down and took a good look at the list.

It was several pages long, and I won’t bore you with the mundane and excruciating details, well, at least not all of them! I read through the whole packet and pondered what to do.  Should I just start at the top of the list and charge through until I reached the end, or was there a more logical way to complete the rather lengthy assignment?

The first two lines made me chuckle:

RETIREMENT CHECKLIST
I. CHECKLIST

More repetition!  It only makes sense that the “Retirement Checklist for Retirees” would have a Checklist as the first item in the Retirement Checklist section.  Maybe I could just read every other line and still get all the information I needed?

Nope.  The checklist’s first bullet, which was next line on the paper quickly got my attention:

􀃎12-24 months before separation:

Ack!  I was only about nine months from the big day.  According to the list I was already over a year behind, and I just got started!

Yikes!

I took a deep breath and read through the entire document (which you can read too- just follow the link in the blogroll).  It was arranged in reverse chronological order in a countdown of sorts to the date of retirement.  Beginning two years out, it quickly went to six, and then three months before retirement.  Since I had already missed out on over a year of preparatory work, I decided to ditch performing the checklist as written and instead to figure a different way to get everything accomplished.

What I found was that there are basically three facets of the retirement process, so I reorganized the checklist into those three areas and then arranged the various subtasks in order of importance and time sensitivity- basically, the things that I needed to do right away hit the top of the list and those that could wait migrated towards the bottom.  By regrouping the dozens of things to be done it made them more manageable, and hopefully I would be able to accomplish them more efficiently.  The basic areas I came up with after studying the checklist were 1) transition training and education, 2) administration, and 3) medical evaluations.

Transition training consisted primarily of a series of seminars and classes that prepare the “separating or retiring service member” (me!) for return to civilian life.  As a retiring Marine (meaning I have more grey hair and wrinkles than those who were separating after only few years of service) I was required to attend one course and was eligible to attend two more.  The required class, called the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) Employment Workshop, is necessary for each and every person on their way out of the military despite their length of service.  It covers a lot of really important topics ranging from veteran’s benefits to tax rules, and you can’t get out (at least not legally!) without attending it.  The other two courses were designed for more senior (again, the “distinguished” looking grey haired and wrinkled set) people like me, and they are designed to help with resume writing, and other important job skills.

As for administration, this area addresses the nuts and bolts of leaving an incredibly bureaucratic profession.  There are forms to fill out, papers to sign, and about a billion things to read and initial.  The administrative boxes to check ranged from deciding where you would establish your home after the service (back where you enlisted from?   Where you live now?  Tahiti?  They all have their upsides and downsides…..but you can only choose one!) to what uniform you will wear to your retirement ceremony.  The administrative requirements ran for several pages and would take a long time to accomplish, but fortunately many of the items could be knocked out simultaneously as I met with various administration specialists, which is what we call Human Resources experts in the military.

The medical bit is just as important as the administrative requirements, and is likewise just as lengthy.  For all separating and retiring servicemembers the physical evaluation and rating for disability has potentially the greatest impact on them of any part of the transition process.  Many people departing military service will have developed some physical problems that will follow them for the rest of their lives, and if they are properly evaluated and documented then they are eligible for medical care long after they take off their uniform.  (After all, carrying a 75 to 100 pounds of equipment on your back while patrolling in 120 degree heat for weeks on end takes a toll on the knees just as operating a tank, flying a helicopter, or shooting artillery will likely make you a bit hard of hearing…what did you say?) It is crucial that these problems be evaluated while in uniform, however, because if they aren’t a bureaucratic nightmare awaits should you try to get them evaluated as an ex-servicemember.

So, after revising the checklist into these three areas I set out to check each box on the list as quickly and efficiently as I could.  With less than nine month to go until my retirement date, I immediately attacked those items that I was delinquent on and started emailing and calling the points of contact on the first page of the checklist to schedule everything else.  It was going to be a bumpy ride, but at least I knew when it would end!

In future posts I will go into greater detail on the three areas on my revised list, starting with transition training.  I had no idea how little I knew about how to quit my job, but the transition classes would ensure that I didn’t punt anything into the stands.  All I need to do is check every box on the list…

__________

Lessons learned:

– First and foremost, time is incredibly important.  The recommendation is to start transitioning two years before you take off your uniform because it takes that long to do everything properly and at a leisurely pace.  I started transitioning with less than half of that time, and as a result I find myself working a lot harder than I need to to get everything done.

– As soon as you make the decision to get out or retire you need to get organized!  Obtain a copy of the appropriate checklist (retirement or separation) and start checking things off as far out as you can.  Even if you have not decided on a firm date, there are things that can be accomplished easily (such as reviewing your personnel and medical records for accuracy and researching where you would like to go when you get out).

– Find out what administrative section will be processing your separation or retirement and schedule a meeting with them.  They can provide you with contacts and guidance that you can put to good use immediately, and without the time wasted by adventure learning and trying to do it all yourself as I had done initially.

Cracking the code

Posted by Mike Grice on

Although I didn’t know it at the time, the act of officially setting a retirement date set a lot of things in motion about which I had no idea.  My name was placed on a few lists here and there, and soon enough I began to receive emails and phonecalls asking me to set up appointments and attend transition courses.  It seemed a bit random at first, but all became clear when I met again with the transition specialist.  Now that I had established a solid date, I could move forward with the myriad tasks ahead of me- tasks that I really didn’t know too much about.

As I sat in the standard issue uncomfortable government issued chair beside his standard issue faux wood desk he noticed my blank stare and handed me what appeared to be an unremarkable handful of papers with a government issued staple in the corner.

I looked at the first page and saw that much of my future sleuthing about to find points of contact would be unnecessary.  “Retirement Contact Numbers” it proclaimed at the top, and below the title were over a dozen phone numbers of the various people and organizations that I would be required to coordinate with as I transitioned.  Sure enough, I discerned the names and email addresses of some of the people who had been contacting me, seemingly out of the blue.  Aha, I thought- a method to the madness.  Good stuff!

I turned the page, and read words that set my heart racing.

“RETIREMENT CHECKLIST FOR RETIREES” it said.  Despite the repetitive syntax (although there may be a Retirement Checklist for non-retirees I suppose), it was exactly what I needed.

To a Marine, and I suspect all servicemen and women, checklists hold a disproportionate level of elevated importance.  Pretty much everything we do can in some way be distilled down to a list with little boxes next to every line, boxes that beg to be checked as you perform whatever it is that the list is for.  Checklists rule pretty much every aspect our martial lives…

As a recruit I learned everything about the military by the numbers in checklist fashion, from how to lace my boots (“One-Grasp the laces in both hands!  Two- Insert the aglet in the lowermost eyelets, and cross the laces left over right until you run out of eyelets!) to the intricacies of the M-16 (“There are eight steps in the cycle of operation of the M-16A1 service rifle!  They are firing, unlocking, extracting, ejecting, cocking, feeding, chambering, locking….and don’t you forget it!!).  Our undershirts were folded according to the unyeilding inspection requirement that they neatly fit into 6″ by 6” squares and our socks were rolled into precise little balls that, despite their olive drab color, were reminiscent of meatballs in some fine Italian restaurant.

The predilection for neatly arranged lists followed me through my career.  Just as corporate managers dread the arrival of a clipboard toting efficiency expert, military types cringe at the sight of a clipboard toting inspector.  Necessary evils perhaps, but they share the same method of accounting and delivery- a bit of paper with a grade at the top, based on how well each item was scored on the checklist.  And, of course, everything gets inspected in the military, so there is almost a perpetual state of anxiety that induces ulcers and makes one long for the simplicity of a firefight with Al Queda or the Taliban.

Checklists have been thoroughly and completely etched into my psyche.  I use them for everything, or at least for everything that I need to get done.  In combat we used them to ensure that we had everything we needed (Grenades?  Check!  Ammo?  Check!  Water?  Check!), and at home I write a list of household tasks with little boxes next to them and earnestly attempt to check them off as quickly as possible.  My meeting at the retirement office was neatly written next to a tiny rectangle in my notebook, and as soon as my meeting was done I would gleefully put a tiny “x” with the box and move on to the next entry.

But I digress.  The arrival of this particular checklist produced the anti-cringing emontion of pure joy.  It was the Rosetta Stone that translated all of the gibberish of retirement into an organized and comprehensive compendium of every box I needed to check in order to complete the transition process.  Hugging the packet to my chest, I rose from the standard issue uncomfortable government issued chair and floated out of the  retirement office, marking the little box on my own checklist and happily setting out to check every box on my newly acquired agenda.  More on that in the next post.

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Lessons learned:

– All of the answers you need are out there.  You just need to know where to go to find them, and in typical military fashion I can guarantee that there is checklist out there somewhere that will greatly aid you in your transition.

-I should have asked for the checklist up front instead of just blankly staring at the counselor until he took pity on me and handed it over.  One of your first stops once you decide to retire is the administration shop that will be processing your retirement as they have a wealth of information and advice that they will cheerfully provide.  All you need to do is ask.

Advice is useful. Who knew?

Posted by Mike Grice on

Transitioning from a career in the military is a bit more daunting than you might think, which is a lesson I continue to painfully learn through various clumsy misadventures.  I have managed to make it more difficult on myself through my own ignorance (really!) and boneheaded assumption that I knew everything that I needed to do, which proved to be shockingly askew.

So there I was, sitting with my retirement counselor when he informed me that my best-laid plans for departing active duty were fundamentally flawed.  I had made all of the calculations to determine the date of my retirement based on my enlisted and officer service on both Active Duty and in the reserves, but all of my mathematical gyrations were in vain because I had to show my math, along with the source documents that backed it up.  D’oh!

I left his office dazed and confused.  He said something about getting with somebody at Headquarters Marine Corps (in Quantico, Virginia, which is a little too far to go from San Diego during my lunch hour) and straightening things out.

In the best fashion of reality-deniers everywhere, I went back to work and lamented about my fate.  Dame fortune smiled upon me, however, when a senior officer heard me bemoaning my misfortune.  After he told me to quit whining, he offhandedly directed me to contact a friend of his who had recently retired (!) and was now in charge of the retirement branch (irony or apropos?) back in Quantico.

The clouds parted, the birds sang, and my half empty glass was suddenly and miraculously half full.  With that happy bit of info I realized that things were not as dire as I had thought.  Giddily I asked my savior if he had any advice to go with the news about his friend.

“Just drop him a line.  Tell him I told you to call, and he’ll take care of you.”

He was right.  I sent off an email, and within an hour I had a response.  Although my quandary seemed epic in proportions to me, he was a little to high in the food chain to deal with my “minor” problem.  He did have just the people to help, though, and with another email I was almost there.  After reiterating my dilemma yet again to the retired Marine (this one was in charge of just the officer retirements), I was linked up with a most polite and supremely helpful lady who was the person in charge of verifying retirement dates.

I could have given her a big hug and a sloppy kiss, but fortunately for the both of us computer technology isn’t quite that advanced as of yet.

After a brief email exchange, I called her on the telephone and set me straight on what I needed to do to- find every Leave and Earnings Statement (LES, also known as a pay stub) that showed my service.  As I wrote in my last post, I had already braved the Dante-esqe cavern of my garage and had found them, so that part was done.

“Scan ’em and send ’em in!” she said.  “I’ll let you know in a week where you stand.”

Several hours of furious scanning later, I sent off email after email with my records attached as .pdf files (nothing is ever easy- the scans are relatively large files, and with our internal email system attachments cannot exceed a megabyte or so….and as a result, I spammed her inbox like a teenage hacker.)  And then I waited.

A week is a long time to wait!  The stakes were, for me anyway, pretty high.  The crux of the issue was the magical date on which I could retire, which I had calculated to be in the fall of 2011 was actually, according to the retirement counselor, sometime in mid 2012.  Although that may seem like only a few months, it would prove to be a significant emotional event if it were true, as I would have to find another assignment in the interim- an assignment where nobody would really want me around (because I am retiring) and my usefulness would be pretty limited (because I wouldn’t be there very long).  I would have been as useful as a typewriter in a computer lab, and just about as annoying.  Besides, I had already told everyone from my kids to my boss that I was retiring soon…..and boy would I look like a complete idiot if I had to take it back!

So that week passed at a glacial pace, with every day seeming longer than the day before.  After watching the grey hairs on my head sprout like a chia pet, a week passed, and sure enough she dropped me a line to let me know how my math stood up in comparison to hers.  My calculations were off by about a week from hers, which in the grand scheme of things was not enough to really matter.  The day was saved, literally!  My retirement date was officially set on the same date that I had calculated and advertised.  Hooray!  I wouldn’t have to go back to my boss with my hat in hand, and I wouldn’t be begging my family for forgiveness.  I almost gave my new found friend in Quantico a big hug and a kiss- but computing technology hadn’t progressed enough in a week to make it work.

Again, that was probably for the best.

__________

Lessons learned:

– The best resource is all around you- the people you work with, and more specifically, the people you work for.  Senior people know a lot about a lot and can give you some great advice, if you are smart enough to ask for it.  In addition, they are invariably connected to other people who can help you out.  Again, all you need to to is ask!

– Regulations and research are a great place to start when you are looking to transition, but they aren’t enough.  I had assumed that everything was hunky-dory with my service record, but I was wrong.  As Ronald Reagan once said “Trust, but verify…”, and his witticism is the cornerstone of administration on the military.  Nobody was going to doubt me, but neither would they accept my word without performing their due diligence to make sure that every “i” was dotted and every “t” crossed.

– Find out who the people are that you will be working with, both locally and at higher headquarters.  An email or two and a few phonecalls solved a problem that had completely flummoxed me, but those emails and phonecalls were to the right people.  Find the right people and your transition will go much more smoothly!

Dashed upon the rocks of reality, or how I came to realize how much of a knucklehead I really was!

Posted by Mike Grice on

As I was saying in my last post, going from decision to reality when it comes to transition is a whole lot harder than I had anticipated.  Much to my surprise and chagrin, I was not nearly as savvy at the ins and outs how things work as I thought I was!

I have been around the block a few times in my career, and was smugly secure in my assumption that all I really needed to do was tell my admin shop that I was retiring.  After all, that was one of the things that administrators were for, weren’t they?  Didn’t they administrate, and wasn’t processing a retirement simply an administrative process?

Well, yes and no.  Yes it is administrative, but no, it is not simple, as have learned and continue to learn.

As I sat at the desk of the retirement counselor, I was sure that I had figured out everything I needed to know in order to get the retirement ball rolling.  That happy assumption was dashed upon the rocks of reality when he cheerfully told me that I couldn’t retire yet.  After my head got done exploding and my guts unwrenched, I asked him why.  Because, he said, you are not eligible to retire yet.  The pressure between my temples shot back up, and I the room started to spin…

Backing up a bit, the basis of my smugness was that I did what I always have done during my career- I prepared for the meeting with the retirement counselor by doing my homework.  I logged into the Marine Corps website and surfed to the retirement section, where I started researching how to retire.  There was a wealth of information (including a nifty letter from the Commandant commending retirees for their service- very classy!) that I read through to prepare.  In particular I read the MARCORPSEPSMAN, which is Marine-speak for the Marine Corps Separations and Retirement Manual (never say in six words that which you can say in one barely pronouncable super-contraction), which had all the information that I thought I needed.  Boy was I wrong!

My assumption that I could announce my retirement was based on some calculations that are articulated in the manual.  Here is how it works:  there are several key dates that pertain to your career, and these are the Pay Entry Base Date (PEBD-more acronyms!  Yay!), the Armed Forces Active Duty Base Date (AFADBD), End of Active Service (EAS), and a few others that I will throw out along the way.

The PEBD is the day that you raise your right hand and swear to support and defend this great nation of ours.  For some people, that is the day they ship out for recruit training, but for most people there is a gap between signing the contract and swearing in and heading out for the apocryphal yellow footprints, which are the actual painted yellow footprints, located on the grounds of the Marine Corps Recruit Depots, that are every Marine recruit’s initiation on how to stand with your heels together and your feet at a 45′ angle whilst being informed by your new bestest friends what a baaaaad idea it was to sign on the dotted line.  At any rate, I digress.

The time gap between signing and shipping is filled with what is known as the Delayed Entry Program, or DEP (another acronym!).  The recruit or officer candidate signs the contract and swears in, establishing his or her PEBD.  After a period of time, the recruiter shows up at the door and gives the unsuspecting recruit a ride to the airport, whereupon the hard part begins- recruit training or officer candidate school.  The day that the recruiter picks you up is your AFADBD; the day that your active duty begins.  Your retirement is calculated based on your AFADBD- you are eligible for retirement 20 years and 1 day after your AFADBD.  The AFADBD only counts time on active duty, so your DEP doesn’t count, and neither does any time that you spend off of active duty (for example, you get out and come back in or are in the reserves or National Guard).

For enlisted Marines and junior officers, their time in service is determined by the length of their enlistment contract.  Generally along the lines of four years or so (a little different for officers), and it begins with your PEBD.  So, now we have three different dates: PEBD, AFADBD, and EAS.  PEBD is when you sign up, AFADBD is when you ship out, and EAS is when you get out.  Pretty simple so far.

Except for my case.  I have both active duty and reserve service, which takes the simple and makes it complicated!  I initially enlisted into the reserves for eight years.  What that meant was that I had a PEBD, which has remained unchanged throughout my entire career.  I had an AFADBD on the day I shipped to bootcamp, and my active duty time continued until I was released from active duty and entered reserve status, whereupon my AFADBD became obsolete because it only applies to active duty types.

After a great time in the reserves, I finished my undergraduate degree and made the commitment to be an active duty officer, should I survive OCS.  With that decision, several of the dates I wrote about earlier changed.  My PEBD stayed the same (because I had no “broken” time in which I was not serving on either active duty or in the reserves) but I established a new AFADBD and a new EAS.  My new AFADBD was the day I shipped to OCS, and my new EAS was 42 months later (again, officer’s contracts are slightly different than the standard four year gigs for enlisted types).   After a year on active duty, my status changed from being a reserve officer to a regular officer (known as “augmentation” in the Marine Corps), and my EAS changed from an actual day on a calendar to “Indefinite”, which means that I served until I either quit or got thrown out.  Or retired, as I was trying desperately to do when I sat down with my counselor.

Easy enough.  I should be able to retire 20 years and one day after my AFADBD, right?  But what about my reserve time? Does any of that count?

Why, yes it does!  And that takes me back to the shocking revelation with the retirement counselor.  The time that I had served on active duty during my reserve contract counted towards retirement, and even though I had studied the arcane and byzantine rules and regulations applying to retirement rules and had done the math to show that I had enough time to retire, that wasn’t good enough.

I needed proof.  Lots of proof.

It turns out that even though we have a lot of records in computer databases and whatnot, there are a lot of records that aren’t so digitally available.  It turns out that since I enlisted back when Reagan was in his first term and typewriters were all the vogue, there were no digital records to prove that I had served.  Even though there was a document that showed my service (called the Career Retirement Credit Report, or CRCR for more acronymical dominance) there was no digital copy of the source documentation to provide a record of my service.

I needed to actually show, with original documents, that I had been in the reserves.  More importantly, I needed documentation of each and every day that I served on active duty during my reserve time, because each active duty day (for training, deployments, and such) would count towards my AFADBD, in effect moving it backwards in time.

Holy mackarel!  I needed documents pushing three decades in age!  Whatever to do?

Fortunately for me (and to the chagrin of my wife) I am a bit of a pack rat.  In a box somewhere in my garage there lay a folder, and in that folder was every Leave and Earnings Statement (LES for you acronym lovers!), which is the pay stub for military types.  So, donning my best felt hat and with a whip in one hand and a flashlight in the other, I did my best Indiana Jones impersonation and went spelunking into the depths of my garage (anyone who has seen it can attest to the heroism I displayed that day) and found the folder!

Happy day!  I blew the dust off of the folder and sorted through the pile of dot matrix documents.  I sat down at the kitchen table to sort through the three inch thick sheaf of brittle paper, and a couple of hours later I had a source document for every day I had served on active duty during my reserve service.

Unfortunately, it was there that things got complicated.  My counselor informed me that he was happy I had found the documents, but that there was nothing he could do with them.  For that, I needed to go higher.  A lot higher.  Up to the Headquarters of the United States Marine Corps, where there was someone, somewhere, who could help me.

Since I was (and still am) happily living in the San Diego area, the requirement to bring my pile of papers to an office in Northern Virginia presented some problems.  That is when I abashedly swallowed my smugness and looked around for some help, and that is where seeking the advice and help of others comes in.  After sleuthing about and doing my own adventure learning and research, it was time to admit that I couldn’t do it all myself.

I made some calls, and realized what an idiot I had been to try to do it all on my own!  More on that in the next post…

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The main reason I am writing this blog is to help others as they transition.  In order to best help, I am putting the salient lessons on transition for the post at the end, under the line at the end of the post.  Anyhow, here are the takeaways for this post:

– Do your research.  Find out what rules and regulations apply to your situation (service, active/reserve time, etc.)  before you talk to someone.  That will help you have a much more intelligent conversation than I had, and will smooth out the rough spots.

– Get your administrative ducks in a row.  Make a folder of all pertinent information (LESs, enlistment contracts, dates of commission, etc.). This is particularly important for reservists and those with reserve or broken service, as there may be no other copy of the documents you have.

– Do what I didn’t do- talk to people and get advice!  I didn’t, and it set me back a month or so as I pulled my head out and organized my files.

– Links to various agencies and documents that I refer to are on the blogroll to the right of the text.  I added the MARCORSEPSMAN and a few others today.

So now what?

Posted by Mike Grice on

So you have taken the plunge and let the world know that you are moving on.  Now what?  Unlike pretty much every aspect of military life there is nobody grabbing you by the noggin and telling you what to do.  So it is time for a little adventure learning, some sleuthing, and a seeking out the advice of those who have either gone before or are transitioning now.

I’ll start with the adventure learning part.  For my entire career people have told me what to do, and in doing what they said I learned a great deal.  As I got older and higher in rank the telling softened from short pithy phrases like “WHAT THE F*%#$^! DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING??” to more more genteel greetings with “Sir” on both ends of the sentence, like a “Sir” sandwich.

“Sir, would you like me to bring the HMMWV around front, sir?”

“Sir, would you like some broccoli with your unidentifiable brown meatlike substance, sir?”

“Sir, everyone is at the table…can we start the meeting now, sir?”

(For what it’s worth, Marines come by the “sir” sandwich honestly.  When I was a teenaged and petrified recruit my Senior Drill Instructor sweetly informed me that “the first and last words out of my filthy sewer would be SIR!”, just like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from the movie Full Metal Jacket.)

I far prefer the latter to the former, but as I am now transitioning I generally get neither.  I do get the polite “Can I help you?” with an occasional “Sir” thrown in for effect, but nothing reminiscint of my carnivorous days in the pack.  Now it is the pedantic pabalum familiar to the herd.  So it goes.

Back to adventure learning.  I quickly ascertained that being a rank-conscious martinet would make my transition both painful and annoying, so I opted for the more low-key approace, which suits me and my personality just fine.  I wandered around various administrative sections and asked what I needed to do to retire.

“Excuse me Marine, but could you tell me what I need to do to initiate my retirement paperwork?”

After the Marine gave me the blankest stare I have seen since I asked my ten year old where the empty candy wrappers in his pockets came from, I asked to see his boss.

A motivated noncommissioned officer came up, and sure enough, he didn’t know either, but he knew who did.  I talked to his boss (by now I had made it to the Warrant Officer ranks- the experts in their fields) and he pointed me to just the guy I needed to talk to.

A retired Marine who was in charge of outprocessing Marines who retiring.  Who would have thunk it?

So, armed with the who, I set out to find the where; where he works and when I can meet him.  Employing my best Sherlock Holmes impersonation, I employed my digital Watson (aka my tired, slow, yet generally functioning work computer) for some help.  After a few emails zorched across the cloud, I had what I needed- an appointment!

Off I went to a decrepit old concrete building with a lot of civilians and a few Marines attentively working on whatever they were working on.  I met the transition guy, who was absolutely great!  He asked for my social security number (the Holy Grail for identity thieves, but the single most important number to a military type because every aspect of his or her life is pinned to it) and entered it into his computer.

Lo and behold, he pulled up all the information I needed to start the process!  Happy day!

Until he told me I couldn’t retire yet.  D’oh!  More on that in the next post…and how I should have spent more time seeking out the advice of others before I arrived at his desk…

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…