@AWOP, I'm not going to go into any particular order, but I will go ahead and answer your questions here on the open board. I thought about going to a PM to do it, but I figured "What the hell. Let's put this shit in the open, in case someone actually communes with the search button later on down the road." I'm not going to get overly specific, but I'll give you the answers you seek as best I can. With beer in hand, here we go...
What's my job now? I'm a luxury travel consultant for an established brick-and-mortar agency based in Atlanta, GA. It's not the first job I've had since leaving the service, but it's been the most enjoyable. I won't lie, I seriously lucked into this job, but the folks I work with/for see that I'm really good with what I do, and they recognize my potential. I spent a lot of time as a tech traveling, and not just to the ME. I was blessed to see a great deal of the US and the world at large while on Mother Army's dime (the USSS picked up the tab more often than not, so I got SPOILED).
Next, you ask what made me want to join. It depends on what you're referring to. EOD was my second MOS. I was one of those weird kids that wanted to join the military when I was in grade school. No shit, I grew up wanting to be the first woman in the infantry, and eight-year-old RK kept a quarter by her bed with which to test her hospital corners. You could say that it was a given that I was going to enlist, but it was a wild guess as to what my MOS was going to be. My ASVAB was high enough that I had my choice of MOS, and I went with the signal corps because I landed a massive signing bonus (by pre-9/11 standards). That was when I learned my first lesson: NEVER choose your job just because of the money. I did quite well in my MOS, and cross-trained on all kinds of systems, old and new, terrestrial and extraterrestrial. I had O-3's and O-4's from all across the AO seeking out my expertise as an E-4, and I was holding an E-6 slot for a few months.
I wasn't satisfied, though. Disgusted was a more accurate term. I wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with anything concerning communications. In fact, I'd made several jokes about going to live in the woods like the Unabomber after I ETS'd (ironic, eh?). A friend of mine put me in touch with an Army EOD officer that she was friends with, and he put the bug in my ear. Small teams, relative autonomy, vast amounts of knowledge and the authority to use it as we saw fit, the ability to do my job both stateside AND overseas, and the chance to blow ginormous smoking holes in the ground without going to jail? Fuck yes!!! The rest, as they say, is history.
Don't get me wrong, demo is fun! I live for that punch to the sternum after you pull the igniter on a few hundred pounds of bang, but there's so much more to it than that. There's a reason that the EOD motto has always been "Initial success or total failure" (RADM Tillotson be damned). For every bomb that you defuse, for every IED that you defeat, that's one more infantryman that gets to go home to his wife at the end of the tour. That's one more combat engineer that drives his Husky in through the gates without earning a Purple Heart. The IED's sneak up and try to bite the poor bastard on foot, and they never know it's there. Once they find it, it's YOUR job to walk in the "stupid direction" of a pissed off pile of high explosives. You WILLINGLY put one foot in front of the other, fully cognizant of the fact that the next step could very well be your last on account of that doowhitchit about 50m in front of you (or its ugly twin that nobody found before you walked down on it). I made my peace early with my deity, because I'd already done more by age 30 than most would do in their entire lives. I was not the only one to do so. That's why the brotherhood is so small and so tight knit. We all know that our lives are on the line, and we're all okay with it.
Why did I get out? Family issues. I have one child, a daughter, and there came a time when I needed to focus more on raising her than saving the world. I had every intention of doing a full 30 years as a bomb jockey, but I had personal issues crop up. When I say "issues," I actually mean a perfect storm of events within seven months that most chains of command would never see in their entire military careers, much less almost all at once. These same issues kept me from going out as a contractor with the six-figure salaries that came with my expertise. The oldest members on the board remember that time, and they were there to support me in my darkest hours. I can't fully express my gratitude for their support. After my EOD family, the folks here at Shadowspear held me together the most (and I received a massive amount of EOD support).
That said, before that moment came, I had the support of both my family and my ex's family when it came to raising my daughter. Before I remarried, she spent a great deal of time with the paternal family (the ex and I were on opposing deployment schedules). If I wasn't overseas, I was off supporting the Secret Service for whatever reason. If I wasn't deployed, I was still gone over half the year.
Again, though, I was the outlier. There aren't a lot of techs with tits, and that's just the way it is. Motherhood is a different beast. That doesn't mean family time is impossible. I saw several successful marriages during my time as an EOD tech. An EOD spouse needs to be as hard as their spouse, male or female. The longest lasting marriages were to strong-ass spouses. For the sake of brevity, that's the best way to put it. Family time was hard as fuck to come by, but that made me cherish every moment that much more.
Do I regret anything? No. Absolutely not. I do wish that I had chosen EOD as a pre-9/11 MOS, but that's neither here nor there. Having my old MOS gave me an appreciation of "Big Boy Rules," and a drive to never go back to what I left behind. The satisfaction I derived from surviving another call was the kind I felt to the bone, regardless of what I had to do to survive it. You could say I developed a taste for it. It never goes away.
The best advice I could give is to never make your choice for the money or the prestige. That's how you get self-serving assholes in the ranks, the likes of which could give zero fucks about the welfare of his men on any given day, so long as it didn't result in a negative bullet on his evaluation report. Never forget where you started from, and always consider the troops that serve under you. It's not just your life that's in your hands.
Perhaps this is a little longer than some folks might want to read, but it's a fair summation of answers to the questions you posed. PM me if you have any more questions.
