Retardidment

I’ve obviously not been posting regularly, even on Long Awkward Pause where I collaborate and contribute.  I’m just about in hot water with them over that but I think I’m dog paddling very well.

This post is an announcement of sorts… I’m retiring.  I’m retiring from the military, the Army.  Not from blogging – no sir.  I was selected by my Army to retire early and basically… to go the fuck away.  Such is life, and such are the economics of HR considerations.  Fuck me.  Straight up the butt.  Hard.  Honestly, I’m not ready to put the uniform on a back hangar.  Not that I have a choice.

Anyway, I’ve been involved in getting out of our Army for the last five months.  This task has become a full-time job for which I’m paid no extra, and only up until a certain date.  That would be my retirement date, later this year.

The shitty thing about military retirement is this: nobody gives fuck-one about you.  Finding out information about post-service life is like searching our living world for real truth about the afterlife.  You can’t learn about it because the people you have to ask are pretty much dead.

So now that this concept is out there for you, I’ll break down the three major elements of what I’m currently going through, all at once by the way.  I have to deal with Army requirements, Army medical processing for retirement, and finding a goddamn job.  The last category there has occupied most of my time up until now, because a muhfuckah want his rent money and shit.

There are three significant lines of effort you must follow when retiring yourself from military service.  The first is the medical portion, where you establish and document your broken and weak-ass parts in the hope of getting money for it later.  That’s called disability, and it’s a crap-shoot done with the VA.  We all know how efficient those bubbas are.

The second groups the Army-mandated things you must do.  That means a lot of pointless briefings about how “You’re facing a significant life-change…”  Afterward, I was expecting scented candles and a handy-J, but no luck.  I also have to hand back a massive pile of equipment in three different types of camouflage pattern.

Last, the exiting Army person has to – on his or her own recognizance – seek and find a job that will A) Pay the rent; B) buy minor shit like food; C) make an awesome Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving time.  This task alone has occupied most of my waking hours lately.  Even near D.C., a job-rich environment, this is real work.

This is not the first and only post on this. This has given me plenty to rant about.  My strategy is to distribute my thoughts here across the three main areas that I’ve been dealing with.  Like I said, it’s a full-time job.  That, and on my offtime, alone, practice knotting a fucking tie.

Bafflement Illustrated

Goddamn ties, goddamn it.