Things are looking up around here! We have orders up to DC. I’ve started applying for jobs up there and with all my connections and education, I’m sure I’ll find something (eventually). Having a job should make it easier to *finally* get picked up by the Navy Reserve. I’m already in touch with a recruiter up there who is way more on top of stuff than my recruiter down here (who forgot to inform me about the upcoming board until it was too late for me to put in for it). It finally seems like stuff will work out and I can start preparing my happy dance!
But Chris came home from work the other day and announced that he had a new plan since STA-21 is apparently continuing on its path of only taking one person for his community each year. He’s going to finish up his degree — which won’t take very long since he’s only a class or two short — and put in for OCS instead.
This shouldn’t bother me at all. He’s been talking about commissioning for two years now, and I’ve always accepted that he will be an officer someday since I have no doubt that he will be picked up. It’s probably petty of me — ok, it’s definitely petty of me — but I guess this bothers me because OCS was my thing. My thing that I never finished, but he will. It’s frustrating to be reminded of all the ways I’ve effectively sabotaged my career before it even started while his has been happily and steadily progressing for the past two years. And it’s all the more frustrating because he’s doing things that I wanted to do. Things that I was SUPPOSED to do.
I wish that our goals weren’t quite so similar, so it wouldn’t sting quite as much when he achieves something and I’m still just at home baking cookies for him to take to work. Not that I blame him for any of this. He didn’t ask me to drop from OCS and of course his career is going to move forward in 2.5 years — he works hard and he deserves it. I’m proud of him for that and for all the things he’s trying to accomplish.
OCS Graduation (via OTCN website)
But I’m fairly certain that if I’m still only a civilian when I have to go to Newport to watch him commission, I will probably be bawling the whole time.
Does that make me a terrible person?
Filed under: Jobs, Joining the Military, Life, Milspouse, Rants
Nope. I’d feel the exact same way. I feel slightly bitter sometimes when I realize I’ve pretty much been out of work for two years because I moved with Huzzy… while he’s put on another rank and makes all the money.
((hugs))
Yep, exactly! If I hadn’t moved with him, I could be a GS-12 or a LTJG somewhere. Sigh. The sacrifices we make for our military guys…
I know our situations are pretty different, but they’re alike, too. I’m sometimes very sad that I quit a career that had barely just begun to follow him around with the military. Graduate school was put on hold so he could go, too. Now, he’s ahead of me in his MS program AND he has experience in a career. My couple months of being a counselor isn’t impressive to anyone looking at potential employees. I’ll be pretty old when I finally get to have a job that I went to school for. So…yes, I’m slightly jealous. And maybe that makes us terrible, but I don’t think so…I think it’s more like that we’re just human
Our situations are pretty similar! I think I prefer your way of looking at it too… jealousy is a normal human emotion. But I’m still probably going to feel terrible if I end up crying at his commissioning (maybe I can pass it off as tears of joy?
)
I think it makes you a normal person
Thank you
It doesn’t make you a bad person. And just because your intended career hasn’t progressed in the past 2.5 years doesn’t mean you haven’t had meaningful experiences during that time.
I know how you feel though; I’m not looking forward to essentially walking away from my career — and the nearly six-figure salary that accompanies — in 2.5 years when James gets new orders. [And I probably won't even be eligible for Tricare, base access, or any of the other spousal benefits (ahem, extra BAH) by that time, which means I'll need to pick an entirely new career path to start out in, just to make up for those things. No baking cookies for me, alas.] But I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to reinvent/reformat myself professionally and personally, and I’m sure whatever happens will be meaningful in the grand scheme of things. And if it sucks, I’ll just make James move back to DC after he retires and I’ll try to pick up my career where I left off.
That’s true. I’ve made very good friends down here and I can’t imagine not knowing them now. And there’s the whole getting to spend the first two and a half years of being married in the same city as Chris (most of the time anyway) – that’s a huge plus.
I think my problem with reinventing/reformatting is that I didn’t want to reinvent… I liked who I had invented after grad school just fine! I hope it doesn’t suck for you when you leave DC and that you find a new career you enjoy, but I wouldn’t be unhappy if you decided it wasn’t working out and you guys needed to move back to DC
I hope I’ll have time for a lengthier response later, but I wanted to say this morning that you are not a terrible person, and in any case, if that were enough to make you “terrible,” I’d be right there with you.
Thanks for the reassurance. If we are both terrible people, at least I’ve got good company!
I think it’s totally normal to feel this way. I’m jealous that Mr. F is deployed and I have to sit out an Africa deployment this year because I’m pregnant. It may sound selfish and I’m sure I have friends and family that think I’m a terrible person for feeling this way, but just because we have a child on the way doesn’t mean the adventurous side of me just goes away. I didn’t join the Army to sit at home!
Also, I’m up for promotion this summer, which would put Mr F and I at the same rank and he HATES this. But it’s not my fault the Army entered me at the rank they did. I just tell him he’s lucky I didn’t go OCS!
Basically, because our jobs in the Army are sooooo different we just don’t talk about work at home, it keeps the peace!
Oh my gosh! I totally get jealous of deployments. Well, not Chris’s, because he goes on subs and the thought of that freaks me out. But I really want to deploy somewhere and Chris just thinks I’m crazy…. haha.
It’s so incredible to learn how similar the milspouse cry is around the globe… It’s hard, because you want to support your husband and be his cheerleader, yadda yadda, but to what extent? Does supporting your military husband mean sacrificing all of YOUR goals and dreams for the future? I’m new to this military life and could be speaking out of turn (only a year of street cred under my belt), but it also seems as though there is an expectation of milspouses to do more than adjust to this military life – but completely rewrite their lives as they had once planned. Does *that* make ME a bad person?
PS. Hope you get your postcards soon! xx
It’s very hard! I’ve been trying to figure out a middle ground for the past couple years and we still haven’t figured it out. But I do know that I didn’t get a Master’s degree so I could be a housewife and I still plan to be SecDef someday, so we’ll have to find a way to make it work
I got out of the Navy shortly after we got engaged–my leg was still broken and there was no way they were going to let me do what I wanted to. They offered me another rating but I opted for the discharge. And sometimes, when hubs gets an award or promotion, I do miss it. I outranked him, I had more medals than he did, and now he essentially blows me and my very short Navy career out of the water (granted, it’s been six years, so he’d better). I had a job before the Navy that I’d gone to school for, been very good at, and had truly enjoyed. There’s maybe three cities in the country that I could feasibly work in that field again on the scale that I was–assuming I could find someone to hire me, that is. I’m proud of my husband, but sometimes I am jealous too. I miss working, I miss knowing that I’m doing a job and doing it well. I think it’s a normal reaction to this weird lifestyle we have, and I think that as long as you’re using that jealousy to motivate you to do better (and clearly, you are moving forward–working on your resume, already making contact with the recruiting office in DC), I don’t think there’s any reason to feel bad about it.