Interviewing Is A Conversation and a Skill
You hear it all the time: “You just need to translate your military experience.”
I’ve always hated that phrase. It’s like being told you just need to do better, or a coach telling you that you just need to score more points next time to win the game. Cool, killer drop in.
Becoming a Veteran
One moment you’re a soldier, a Marine, an airman, a sailor. You’ve got orders, a rank, a unit, a team. Then some GS-12 at a desk slides you a form, checks a box, and tells you you’re now a “veteran.” You leave the building. You drive off post. You walk into your house. And that’s it. The world doesn’t stop. No fireworks. No finish line. Just… silence.
The Transition Industrial Complex
Welcome to the transition industrial complex: a vast, shapeshifting collection of headhunters, LinkedInfluencers, "veteran-focused" staffing firms, and well-meaning-but-out-of-touch programs. Their mission: to help you. Or sell to you. Or sell you. Depends on the day.
The Military Identity - Rituals and Language
We think we’re just switching jobs. We’re not. We’re stepping out of a culture that rewired our brains, it was a culture with its own dialect, value system, hierarchy, and mythology. A culture that, for better or worse, shaped how we saw the world and our place in it. That’s not something you shake off with a final formation and a PowerPoint briefing on how to write a resume.
Why Leaving the Military Feels Like a Death: A Veteran’s Story of Identity Loss and Rebuilding
Leaving the military didn’t break me because I failed. It broke me because I succeeded—and still felt lost. This isn’t another checklist for your resume. It’s a eulogy for the version of yourself that wore the uniform, and a hard look at what it takes to rebuild someone new
Leaving the Military Is Frightening - But Necessary
There’s a creeping fear most of us don’t say out loud: What if I don’t make it? What if I’m never more than I was in uniform? What if I took off the only identity I ever truly earned, and now I’m just another dude in jeans who doesn’t know how to answer “tell me about yourself” without listing deployments?
This fear? It’s normal. And it’s deeply human.
Identity Crisis - Who am I now?
You’re not just changing careers. You’re losing the version of you that made sense. In the military, your personal and professional self were fused. Your word wasn’t just a work thing—it was who you were. The uniform wasn’t clothes. It was structure. It was meaning. It was family.