Joining the Military: A Tale Told in Three Parts

Our society has an unfortunate tendency.  We expect children on the cusp of adulthood to know what they want to do with their lives before graduating from high school, regardless of further need for emotional and maturity development.   Occasionally, however, a few get lucky.  I consider myself in that latter category, but it has taken me an additional fourteen years to understand it.  While I only signed on the dotted line once, I have “joined” the military on three separate occasions.  With each joining, I grew closer to knowing why.

The first time I joined the military came from my obsession with reading.  Tired of constant trips to Barnes and Noble with his 6^th grader, my father dusted off a box of his old books from the attic and cut me loose.  From that trove came one that changed my life—Fight like a Falcon by Philip Harkins.  In it, the main character is an aimless teen who meets a cadet from the Air Force Academy.  The teen then turns his life around and gains entrance to the Academy, then experiences his doolie year.  I was hooked. 

After finishing the book, I happily informed my father I would attend the Air Force Academy and be an officer in the Air Force.  Having endured the weekly changing of “what I want to be when I grow up” dreams from multiple children, my father patted me on the head and promptly forgot about it.  But the seed was planted and took root.  From 6^th grade on, the Academy was the only college option I considered.  Even after an initial rejection, I kept at it until gaining entrance with the Class of 2013. 

When asked why I wanted to join the Academy, the answer I always gave was that I wanted to do something different.  Only a cousin had served since the draft in WW2, and none of my friends interested in it.  I wanted something beyond the usual nine-to-five gig (joke’s on me, I’ve never had a duty day start later than 0730).  This longing for the unique sufficed to drive me through seven years of yearning and four years at the Academy.

The second time I joined the military was when my initial commitment expired.  My five years came and went while I was stationed in Germany, working for the USAFE-AFAFRICA/A6.  In many ways, the job was everything I had wanted to avoid—I worked in a cubicle farm, spending most of my time on a computer typing emails and plans.  The other part of my job, however, was going TDY to work with our Allies and Partners across Europe and Israel.  That experience is what made me join again.

I spent my first five years firmly at the tactical level.  It had many rewards, but kept my scope so narrow that I allowed the bureaucratic grind of life in the Air Force to jade my experience.  I actively considered getting out when my commitment expired.  However, what I gained from working with our partners in the EUCOM AOR—Israel and Ukraine, in particular—was an expanded perspective. 

I went on dozens of TDYs to these two countries and spent days planning major exercises with our partners.  I saw firsthand what it meant for a country to plan for its survival in what my Israeli friends often called “a rough neighborhood.”  While the War on Terror had been ongoing since well before I initially joined, Al Qaeda and other VEOs never threatened America’s survival.  Israel and Ukraine had to deal with an existential threat every day, one we have seen born out by Russia’s recent invasion.  This took my initial reason of wanting to do something different and gave it a framework.  Now I was not joining just to be different, but to be different for a purpose: defending a way of life I hold dear.

The third time I joined the military was when I cross commissioned into the Space Force.  While I valued my time in the Air Force, I believed the Space Force offered me something more.  My final year on the A6 staff had me standing up a brand new Defensive Cyber Operations cell for USAFE-AFAFRICA, giving me a taste of how satisfying the act of creation can be in an organization.  Now, I had the ultimate opportunity in front of me: jump into the chaos of standing up the first branch of service in seventy-two years and create something new.  Not only new, but something that would leave an indelible legacy on the nation.  My every action could help shape how a Guardian seventy-two years hence found his or her purpose.

Recognizing that led me to better understand my previous two reasons for joining.  Was joining the Space Force doing something different?  Of course—no one in the world had ever been a part of such an effort until we did so.  Was it part of defending our way of life?  Absolutely, and it will continue to do so well past when I eventually retire.  But more than that, it gave specific focus to the How of my Why.  Here was a purpose that no bureaucratic slog could detract from.  The impacts I make now can resonate in a way I find hard to imagine finding anywhere else, and that inspired me to go all in.

I have since committed myself to a full career in the Space Force.  Whether that’s twenty years or forty remains to be seen, but this is the path I have carved for myself.  What else could I look back on after twenty-plus years of effort and find a similar level of fulfillment and purpose?  And throughout it all, I will still fulfill that initial wish that my 6^th grader-self recognized without understanding—spending my finite time on this earth in a different way, one with meaning.