Somewhere around this time, two years ago I wrote a blog about why I was joining the military. After going back and reading it I find it imperative for my personal records as well as the blogosphere that I do a “long term road test” of how things actually turned out.
As usual, the reality of life and the vision of living were two different things. They always are. Pictures are always embellished and nobody looks as good as a playboy model. Welcome to yet another perception > reality reference. Seems to be a pattern throughout all I’ve ever known, however, that’s not why we are here. So let’s continue.
I would like to start with the money aspect of the military. Let me start by saying they don’t pay for shit. No matter whom you have talked to, who you have heard it from, or what you have seen, it’s an illusion. What the military pays for, is “everything”. Food, House, Salary, and Education are all paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Sounds like a good deal right? Let’s break it down.
Food- The military deducts $300 a month from my pay using the justification that the chow hall is “free”. No, it’s not. It costs $300 a month from my check. That’s not free. That’s a service I pay for. It would be like AAA billing you once a year for a membership then telling you that you can call for their services anytime you like. Well, No Shit. You’re a member, why would you expect anything less?! Same concept applies for the military chow hall.
House- When you first become enlisted you are a “first term airman” which means you live in dorms much like you would if you were to go to college somewhere as a freshman. First term freshmen get to stay in the dorms, usually mandatory for the first year. Well with the military, that “freshman” phase lasts till you are a 3year Senior Airman. Means if you have been in less than 3 years, suck it up, your 15x15 cubicle is what you are going to call “home” for quite a while. Get used to it. Only way around it is to get pregnant or get married. Both options are worse than just living in the cubicle for 3 years. Once you get to leave base, they give you a housing allowance (around $1,000 a month) plus the $300 you spent on the chow hall put back in your paycheck. Now that isn’t bad. However, that happens at your three year mark, not until. They do it that way because re-enlistments are at the 3-3.5 year mark. So they make sure to put you in a good frame of mind when “election season” comes around. It’s all political and has nothing to do with being in “your best interest”.
Salary- I made more money working 30hrs a week at walmart and doing contract mowing in the summer. It was a sweet gig, far sweeter than the military is. Required you to think outside the box, something the military discourages with commanding fear and threats.
School- It’s true the military will pay for your school while you are in. However, think of this. If anyone has ever been in school and worked a job at the same time they will remember this. Finals week comes around, you have work, you have 3 finals due, you either swap shifts, call off, or do w/e you have to do to make sure that final gets done. Work is not that important that you can afford to tank a final over it. After all, your work starts and ends daily, the class starts and then ends, 2-3 months later. Who wants to go through all of that again just for one dropped ball? I almost had an incident with the classes I had taken; our leadership decided we were all going to do a bunch of extra random bullshit because a couple people we worked with were too uneducated to count correctly. We all got punished because of the ignorance of a few. Welcome to the military as a whole. If one person screws up, everyone gets to pay for it. It only took one person to walk out in front of a moving vehicle before everyone had to wear reflective belts so we would look like neon rainbows when a car’s headlights would hit us. Instead of holding people responsible for their stupidity the military makes provisions for it. Decides it wasn’t the dumbass’s fault that walked out in front of a moving vehicle, or even the person driving who hit the person. It had to be the fact that “they just didn’t see them” . Well, now we all light up like Christmas trees at night because of someone else’s dumbassery.
Naturally, I have issues with all of this. There isn’t a part of it that doesn’t piss me off. However, there is nothing I can do about it. While I accept it, I don’t condone it.
The only good thing about the pay and benefits of the military that hasn’t disappointed me is that, you don’t “have” to buy much of anything. If you can be content living in a 15x15 and eating the same food over and over, your food and roof over your head are taken care of. Granted, it’s not much of a way to live; however, it is free and beats a cardboard box and ramen noodles. Living like that allowed me to pay off a fairly large deal of debt in just over a year. Most of which was brought on by my own stupidity; more on that later maybe.
I talked a great deal about experience when I was out and the ability to go to school when it was over. That “supposedly” hasn’t changed but more on that later.
There were so many things I was right, but wrong about. I said I would come back with a better understanding of “how life works” but I had no idea it would work the way it did. Well, let me rephrase, I hoped it would have operated differently than it does. Deep down I knew everything in life was driven either by personal gain or government agenda. I just didn’t think it would be so blatantly obvious to even the mildly educated. I also claimed I would come back unchanged. My brother actually commented on how it better not change me. I laughed and confidently said “no worries”. That’s not how the cards fell though. I did change. I changed from a person who wasn’t easily shaken, confident, and respectful of people who deserved it to someone who lives in a constant state of anxious insecurity, paranoia, and limitless frustrations with the standard of life and work I purposely surrounded myself with. It was a dumb decision. Looking back, If the GI Bill actually works like it’s supposed to, it will have been the only military benefit that was ever as “cut and dry” as it was described to me. IF it works as I’ve been “promised” it will still be worth it, however I had to revamp the plan to make it worthwhile.
All in all I thought this experience would be better for me than it was, however, that’s not the way it happened. It did however turn out to be just what I expected it to be, just very little I hoped for it to be. A stepping stone to Ohio University is an understatement… If I play my cards right, it will damn near build me a bridge from Point A to Point B. From there my future is solely in my hands… which is the way I like it. I used to have a theory about team vs individual sports. The team sports weren’t something that interested me; too many people could screw up a victory for you. Individual sports were different. If you lost, it’s because you lost. There’s no “I” in “team” but there is an “I” in “failure” and in “win”. Which slot you fill is entirely up to you, I never saw the need to share a win or put blame on failure; there is an “I” in both for a reason. One person is all it takes to accomplish either.
My life has been undefined for the past 4 years. It’s time to redefine what I’m about. Not to prove it to others but rather to remind myself. Four years without an “identity” is a long time feeling faceless. I joined the military for various reasons hoping for a variety of benefits. None of which have actually happened and only a few remain to still be seen. It’s time to lay the cards on the table. When you know you’ve been dealt a bad hand the best you can hope for is not to get caught in a raise, as it stands I might be able to slide an ace out my sleeve, pack up my chips, and walk away from the table with nothing more than a few dirty looks from those who’s money I just won. In the end it’s not what cards you were dealt; it’s how you played the hand. The military was more of a wild card than I figured but when you set out to use every aspect of a system, it’s only logical you get a couple failures. As it stands, I still made out like a bandit in the grand scheme of things. I just wouldn’t do it this way again. The miscalculation doesn’t prove I’m normal, but it does prove I’m human.
-brandon
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