“Sometimes we can only find our true direction when we let the wind of change carry us.” —Mimi Novic
I was discharged honorably from the Marine Corps on November 19th, 2021, after serving four years in the Marines. A month before I was discharged, I was still on deployment in Australia. I was spending my off hours attempting to brush up on my math and other academic skills that had drastically dwindled since graduating high school in 2017.
Nov 2021 - June 2022
Machine gunning not being a very transferable skill in the ‘real world’ I was allowed a blank slate and a question.
What sphere or world was I willing to commit to?
Leading up to discharge I thought it would be to pursue nursing but as that day encroached, I decided contrary.
Alternatively, I fell back on the choice to move to Florida, A new home and state my family had been building in for the last three years. So off I went with Bill, a core friend, driving my four-door sedan with everything I owned from California to Florida, 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. A feeling of being allowed your freedom after not owning yourself for the last four years. After what felt like forever, I was finally on the outside of this organization that had been my whole purpose of being.
I got a gym membership with my brother, Derek, and committed to a strict schedule. Only being a sophomore in high school, he hadn’t ventured into the gym world yet, so I was able to show him the ropes and start him on his own fitness journey. We were up by 5:00/5:30 and at the gym by 6:00 am, in order to have time to get a workout and a shower in before work and school.
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, so I decided that could be one place I maintain a “non-negotiable” mindset.
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 that no longer served me. I hoped to return to myself and meet parts of myself I may have 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.
Strengths-Finder 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, relater, 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. I decided to jump into the unknown and find out.
