Here it is...
As promised:
Almost exactly two years ago- 1 March 2012 if you must know- I was laid off from a full-time job for the first time in my life. It wasn’t till 3 March 2014 that I finally had a full-time job again. Those two years were a roller-coaster of uncertainty, gratefulness, accomplishment, fear, shame, disappointment, hope, unforeseen hardships, persistence, personal humbling of the soul- and, eventually- just before all hope was lost- an arrival on the shores of success.
This is my story:
In March 2012 I was “force shaped,” “administratively separated,” “discharged,” whatever you want to call it, from the active-duty Air Force. In hindsight, I was practically and completely unprepared: I had confidence that with the severance pay, the GI Bill, and the one-year Master’s program in Criminal Justice that I had waiting for me, that I would be able to “comfortably transition” not only from military-to-civilian life, but from unemployed-to-student-to-imminently-employed-again. This confidence proved to be painfully false.
The rest of 2012 actually wasn’t all that bad: the University of Cincinnati’s distance learning program meant that I could do absolutely all the work I needed from the comfort of my own home (or anywhere there was a computer and internet), which was a tremendously-welcome change of pace from the nearly-unpredictable schedules that plagued me in the Air Force. That year my wife, 2-year-old son and I took many vacations (mostly visiting family, for so long at a time that they/we would actually get tired of us being there!), as I could simply complete all my class readings and assignments via my laptop any time we were away. Of course while we were at home, I got to spend a ton of quality time with my son and wife, all of which was wonderful. To top it all off, my return to academia was smooth- I started out with straight-As for many of my classes- further feeding my (over)confidence and starting a spark of complacency.
The first “shock” came to me that December: we were going to run out of money! The meager severance pay the USAF dished out forced us to stringently budget out a lot of our activities (except for our vacations, since time and gas money were trivial to us), but some happenings like appliance and car repairs, loans that were no longer in forbearance, major delays in GI Bill repayments, etc. meant that we were not going to keep our heads above water for much longer- and that we would quickly sink to the bottom. I was stubborn, and pretty much refused to get even a part-time job while I was still “in school,” so instead I decided to cash out the balance of our Thrift-Savings Plan (kinda like a 401k), infusing our available funds with nearly the same amount as the initial severance pay. I thought to myself that once I graduated (in July 2013), I would have plenty of time to get a job after that (and before the money ran out), and employers would surely be tripping over themselves to get a prior-military member with a Master’s degree to work for them, so once again I took the easy (stupid) route and didn’t do any job searching whatsoever.
Well, July 2013 came and went, and my Master of Science in Criminal Justice diploma finally arrived in the mail by August. Job searching/applying had finally begun, but to put it succinctly, my resume writing sucked, my job ambitions were WAY over (or outside) my experience and/or knowledge base, and I out-right refused to consider any “interim” part-time job, or any job that paid less than $15/hr. All those things together meant that I remained jobless from that point all the way through December 2013. I had never been so externally and internally frustrated my entire life.
I’m going to talk a little bit about state-level Unemployment Compensation (or Unemployment Insurance, or whatever you might call it) here: always, ALWAYS take it if you are eligible to take it. The UC/UI money you are paid with comes from your former employer! It is NOT a taxpayer-funded* hand-out, as I’d previously believed it is. As “fate” would have it, I only collected about $3,600 in UC/UI because when I initially applied in July 2012 I was told “you can’t collect any, because you’re using the GI Bill,” so I didn’t try to collect any until after July 2013. That GI Bill “exemption” was a complete lie; but since I believed it- and didn’t get a second opinion- I missed out on over $7,000 in UC money. All of the legal sources I’ve talked to about it said that since it was over a year ago it’s too late to try to “make that right” (ie, try to collect it after the fact). So, always get a second opinion when it comes to Unemployment money.
*Alright- technically since I was employed by the USAF it was taxpayer-funded…
During the month of December I applied to a “headhunter” staffing agency, in (desperate) hopes that they’d find something for me and get me employed ricky-tick as possible, seeing as how by this point I was quite desperate. I was so desperate that when the agency told me that they’d “ask around” to different employers around the city in the late half of the month, that I stayed home over Christmas (in case a job offer popped up during that time) while my wife and son went to Indiana for 10 days, to celebrate Christmas and also to visit her ever-worse-ailing mother. I received NO job offers, and every time I called the agency to check on them all I ever got was “oh, we’re still looking into it for you.” After December 29 I never heard from them again.
So, in January I reached out to my arfcom HTF (hometown forum) for help. I received a flurry of job ideas and a couple references, and I pursued almost all of them. My confidence in getting a job was finally maturing into something reasonable (not to mention positive) by this point. I am eternally grateful for the outpouring of support from my OK HTF friends, especially Ed and Bill (you know who you are).
Amazingly, at pretty much the same time, the Oklahoma Veteran’s Employment office (who had given me exactly zero helpful job leads since July till now) notified me of an oilfield company doing interviews in town as well. I did an initial interview with the company recruiter, and was assured I’d get a second interview. The exact same thing happened with one of the HTF-recommended jobs I’d applied to- a phone interview with a pending second interview in-person. Even more amazingly, the second interviews for both jobs occurred on the same day (oilfield in the morning, the other closer to the evening). The oilfield company called me in the middle of the other interview (my phone was on silent) and left me a message saying I was hired! The other job called me later the next week and said they’d hire me too, but I ultimately chose the oilfield job because it looked to be more challenging and paid better. This all occurred somewhere around mid-January, so the HTF job prospect(s) turned out to be fruitful to me after a very short time- imagine how it would have been had I asked for HTF help back in July!
Unfortunately the oilfield job wouldn’t be able to train (ie, pay) me till March, so to fill in the time I (finally) took a part-time job delivering pizzas- and ended up really enjoying it. Again, imagine how much better off I’d be if I’d made this discovery back in July…
Anyway, I’ve been doing safety/field training with the oilfield job for almost two weeks now, and I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy this job. I’ll be going to an actual field very soon, but even if I don’t end up sticking with this job I wanted to share the long train of events that made this possible. However, as Churchill might say- this is only the “end of the beginning,” and I’m genuinely excited to see what lies ahead for me, my friends, and our nation as a whole. For me, 2014 is a year of realized hopes- and I’d very much like it to stay that way.
One extremely important point to note is this: though I will continue to reflect fondly upon my service and peers during the time I was in, I am NOT “thankful” for being forced out of the USAF, even if it has ultimately resulted in this unprecedented opportunity. I am (still) furious that I was not able to leave the USAF on my own terms- so much so that I have unconditionally refused any and all subsequent offers of joining the Guard or Reserve (and there have been many). After being betrayed- in every practical sense of the word- I will never put my trust in that system (much less the scumbags in DC) ever again.
It was, practically, nothing short of divine intervention that I happened to receive the job opportunities, interviews, and offers at the times that I did. Even now, knowing what the outcome would have been for me either way, I acknowledge that I should have started looking for a job much earlier than I did- even if it only ended up being a part-time one.
I am not writing this as a means of conveying some pitiful sob-story: everything unpleasant thing that happened to me and my family was 100% preventable- and even then, the “unpleasantness” we endured was, admittedly, very soft. The wife and I both have some inflated credit card debt (that my new job should help me pay off quite quickly) due to our bank balance shortages, but I’d say that’s the worst that happened to us, really.
My overriding point I’m trying to make is this: keep looking, keep working (no matter how great or small the job!), keep hoping, and never give up! I was a proud fool, and was still granted success at almost the very moment I turned myself around- how much better could it end up for you!? Hopefully, a lot better!
For direct reference, here's the actual arfcom post itself.
There's more to add, but not at this time.
God is good, all the time.
Almost exactly two years ago- 1 March 2012 if you must know- I was laid off from a full-time job for the first time in my life. It wasn’t till 3 March 2014 that I finally had a full-time job again. Those two years were a roller-coaster of uncertainty, gratefulness, accomplishment, fear, shame, disappointment, hope, unforeseen hardships, persistence, personal humbling of the soul- and, eventually- just before all hope was lost- an arrival on the shores of success.
This is my story:
In March 2012 I was “force shaped,” “administratively separated,” “discharged,” whatever you want to call it, from the active-duty Air Force. In hindsight, I was practically and completely unprepared: I had confidence that with the severance pay, the GI Bill, and the one-year Master’s program in Criminal Justice that I had waiting for me, that I would be able to “comfortably transition” not only from military-to-civilian life, but from unemployed-to-student-to-imminently-employed-again. This confidence proved to be painfully false.
The rest of 2012 actually wasn’t all that bad: the University of Cincinnati’s distance learning program meant that I could do absolutely all the work I needed from the comfort of my own home (or anywhere there was a computer and internet), which was a tremendously-welcome change of pace from the nearly-unpredictable schedules that plagued me in the Air Force. That year my wife, 2-year-old son and I took many vacations (mostly visiting family, for so long at a time that they/we would actually get tired of us being there!), as I could simply complete all my class readings and assignments via my laptop any time we were away. Of course while we were at home, I got to spend a ton of quality time with my son and wife, all of which was wonderful. To top it all off, my return to academia was smooth- I started out with straight-As for many of my classes- further feeding my (over)confidence and starting a spark of complacency.
The first “shock” came to me that December: we were going to run out of money! The meager severance pay the USAF dished out forced us to stringently budget out a lot of our activities (except for our vacations, since time and gas money were trivial to us), but some happenings like appliance and car repairs, loans that were no longer in forbearance, major delays in GI Bill repayments, etc. meant that we were not going to keep our heads above water for much longer- and that we would quickly sink to the bottom. I was stubborn, and pretty much refused to get even a part-time job while I was still “in school,” so instead I decided to cash out the balance of our Thrift-Savings Plan (kinda like a 401k), infusing our available funds with nearly the same amount as the initial severance pay. I thought to myself that once I graduated (in July 2013), I would have plenty of time to get a job after that (and before the money ran out), and employers would surely be tripping over themselves to get a prior-military member with a Master’s degree to work for them, so once again I took the easy (stupid) route and didn’t do any job searching whatsoever.
Well, July 2013 came and went, and my Master of Science in Criminal Justice diploma finally arrived in the mail by August. Job searching/applying had finally begun, but to put it succinctly, my resume writing sucked, my job ambitions were WAY over (or outside) my experience and/or knowledge base, and I out-right refused to consider any “interim” part-time job, or any job that paid less than $15/hr. All those things together meant that I remained jobless from that point all the way through December 2013. I had never been so externally and internally frustrated my entire life.
I’m going to talk a little bit about state-level Unemployment Compensation (or Unemployment Insurance, or whatever you might call it) here: always, ALWAYS take it if you are eligible to take it. The UC/UI money you are paid with comes from your former employer! It is NOT a taxpayer-funded* hand-out, as I’d previously believed it is. As “fate” would have it, I only collected about $3,600 in UC/UI because when I initially applied in July 2012 I was told “you can’t collect any, because you’re using the GI Bill,” so I didn’t try to collect any until after July 2013. That GI Bill “exemption” was a complete lie; but since I believed it- and didn’t get a second opinion- I missed out on over $7,000 in UC money. All of the legal sources I’ve talked to about it said that since it was over a year ago it’s too late to try to “make that right” (ie, try to collect it after the fact). So, always get a second opinion when it comes to Unemployment money.
*Alright- technically since I was employed by the USAF it was taxpayer-funded…
During the month of December I applied to a “headhunter” staffing agency, in (desperate) hopes that they’d find something for me and get me employed ricky-tick as possible, seeing as how by this point I was quite desperate. I was so desperate that when the agency told me that they’d “ask around” to different employers around the city in the late half of the month, that I stayed home over Christmas (in case a job offer popped up during that time) while my wife and son went to Indiana for 10 days, to celebrate Christmas and also to visit her ever-worse-ailing mother. I received NO job offers, and every time I called the agency to check on them all I ever got was “oh, we’re still looking into it for you.” After December 29 I never heard from them again.
So, in January I reached out to my arfcom HTF (hometown forum) for help. I received a flurry of job ideas and a couple references, and I pursued almost all of them. My confidence in getting a job was finally maturing into something reasonable (not to mention positive) by this point. I am eternally grateful for the outpouring of support from my OK HTF friends, especially Ed and Bill (you know who you are).
Amazingly, at pretty much the same time, the Oklahoma Veteran’s Employment office (who had given me exactly zero helpful job leads since July till now) notified me of an oilfield company doing interviews in town as well. I did an initial interview with the company recruiter, and was assured I’d get a second interview. The exact same thing happened with one of the HTF-recommended jobs I’d applied to- a phone interview with a pending second interview in-person. Even more amazingly, the second interviews for both jobs occurred on the same day (oilfield in the morning, the other closer to the evening). The oilfield company called me in the middle of the other interview (my phone was on silent) and left me a message saying I was hired! The other job called me later the next week and said they’d hire me too, but I ultimately chose the oilfield job because it looked to be more challenging and paid better. This all occurred somewhere around mid-January, so the HTF job prospect(s) turned out to be fruitful to me after a very short time- imagine how it would have been had I asked for HTF help back in July!
Unfortunately the oilfield job wouldn’t be able to train (ie, pay) me till March, so to fill in the time I (finally) took a part-time job delivering pizzas- and ended up really enjoying it. Again, imagine how much better off I’d be if I’d made this discovery back in July…
Anyway, I’ve been doing safety/field training with the oilfield job for almost two weeks now, and I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy this job. I’ll be going to an actual field very soon, but even if I don’t end up sticking with this job I wanted to share the long train of events that made this possible. However, as Churchill might say- this is only the “end of the beginning,” and I’m genuinely excited to see what lies ahead for me, my friends, and our nation as a whole. For me, 2014 is a year of realized hopes- and I’d very much like it to stay that way.
One extremely important point to note is this: though I will continue to reflect fondly upon my service and peers during the time I was in, I am NOT “thankful” for being forced out of the USAF, even if it has ultimately resulted in this unprecedented opportunity. I am (still) furious that I was not able to leave the USAF on my own terms- so much so that I have unconditionally refused any and all subsequent offers of joining the Guard or Reserve (and there have been many). After being betrayed- in every practical sense of the word- I will never put my trust in that system (much less the scumbags in DC) ever again.
It was, practically, nothing short of divine intervention that I happened to receive the job opportunities, interviews, and offers at the times that I did. Even now, knowing what the outcome would have been for me either way, I acknowledge that I should have started looking for a job much earlier than I did- even if it only ended up being a part-time one.
I am not writing this as a means of conveying some pitiful sob-story: everything unpleasant thing that happened to me and my family was 100% preventable- and even then, the “unpleasantness” we endured was, admittedly, very soft. The wife and I both have some inflated credit card debt (that my new job should help me pay off quite quickly) due to our bank balance shortages, but I’d say that’s the worst that happened to us, really.
My overriding point I’m trying to make is this: keep looking, keep working (no matter how great or small the job!), keep hoping, and never give up! I was a proud fool, and was still granted success at almost the very moment I turned myself around- how much better could it end up for you!? Hopefully, a lot better!
For direct reference, here's the actual arfcom post itself.
There's more to add, but not at this time.
God is good, all the time.