Caveat: 20 years ago

Twenty years ago, today, I signed the dotted line that enlisted me in the US Army.  It's a weird anniversary – a combination of nostalgia, accomplishment, and relief that I survived it.  I've sometimes described that decision as the "worst decision I ever HAD to take."  It was worst, because there were a lot of things that didn't go well for me, in the Army.  But I HAD to take it, because in retrospect, it was a crucial "growing up" for me – something I'd avoided up to that point.  That doesn't mean I came out well-adjusted – far from it.  My military service made things a lot worse for me, in the short run.

But over the long run, and looking back, I developed a lot of psychological "survival" tools that I've called upon many times since.  And it gave me the seeds of a certain confident self-sufficiency that I've always attempted to nurture and value.

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