“Sometimes we can only find our true direction when we let the wind of change carry us.” —Mimi Novic
November 19, 2021 - June 22, 2022
I was discharged honorably from the Marine Corps on November 19th, 2021, after serving four years. In the Marines, I was stationed in Twenty-Nine Palms, California, as a line company machine gunner in First Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, 1/7; medium guns, rah?
Upon EAS, I had little to no idea what was going to be for me in civilian life. I had arrived back from deployment to Australia on October 22, 2021, and within that moment and the four weeks after, I completely changed my plan. I had a girlfriend I’d been with for over a year, and I was thinking of moving to Oregon with her and pursuing a degree in nursing. Unfortunately, once I got home from Australia, I knew that I couldn’t do that plan and broke up with her, kinda leaving her to pick up the pieces… Not my proudest moment.
Alternatively, I fell back on the choice to move to Florida, which is where my family had relocated to while I was in the Marines in 2018. So off I went with my friend Bill, driving my four door Sudan with everything I owned from CA to FL, with a pit stop at the Grand Canyon. Seeing the Grand Canyon only five and a half hours after being discharged was incredible; honestly, words can’t contain all the feelings I was having. After what felt like forever, I was finally on the outside of this organization that had been my whole purpose of being for the last four years.
StrengthsFinder really helped me because it gave me a lens through which to view the world and see what ‘strengths’ I naturally had, leading me to explore jobs that might call on those certain strengths. After taking the test, my top 5 traits were: strategic, relator, adaptability, command, and responsibility. By using this lens, I was able to sift through a lot and concluded that I’d enjoy being a photojournalist. I had already desensitized my nervous system to be able to handle stressful situations, so I thought that I might be able to capitalize on that and report on places that might be experiencing distress.
Arriving in FL, I had no idea what I was going to do and didn’t even have a glimpse of what my plan would be moving forward. I had, however, been pretty consistent in the gym since being in Australia and coming home from deployment, so I decided that could be one place I maintain a “non-negotiable” mindset. Once the holidays ended, I got a gym membership with my brother, who was a sophomore in high school at the time, and we started waking up before 5 am to hit the gym before he went to school, and I started doing side work.
I was fortunate enough to have a family member who was a contractor and was able to work with him periodically for the seven months I was in Florida. My main focus was to do a full mental detox to shed the ideologies or conditioning the Marines had given me. I hoped to return to myself and meet parts of myself I had never interacted with before.
I picked up reading for the first time since high school graduation and intuitively grabbed a book called “Strengths-Finder” at a thrift store. The book talks about focusing on the brain pathways you naturally have and trying to make them better rather than focusing on the areas you lack and trying to increase those.
