what missives lie within?
What will this be?
I don't know exactly what this will be, but I will start by telling my story. If you find it interesting, perhaps I'll continue for a while. 8^P
We begin with one simple promise to you, my dear reader: I will post something every Saturday. I will even endeavor to make it worth your time.
The fact is, I need consistency in my life; and I need accountability. Every reader helps me with both, so thank you for being here. Hopefully we’ll have a little fun and maybe learn a few things along our journey. 8^)
Quick Chapter Links:
Ok. Let’s go. :)
My Story
After I retired from the US Air Force in the summer of 2023, I began to realize how unusual my path through life had been compared to pretty much everyone else I knew outside my (former) job. My career impacted my family, my friends, and my ability to relate to them in ways I’m only now beginning to understand and appreciate. Since I retired, I joked many times that I should write a book about my difficult and ongoing attempt to assimilate into my own native culture. At a minimum, this “blog” is my first attempt to begin writing that book.
Of all the leaders the Air Force exposed me to over the years, General Welsh on a speaking tour when he was the Commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe was the most memorable. He spoke about leadership and focused on how important it is to know your people. He drove home the fact that we all face our own personal struggles, and my main take-away from his talk was: "Every Airman has a story” 1 Well, there are many like it, but this is one is mine. :)
I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. I grew up as an only child in a relatively stable middle-class family and my parents were married until after I graduated high school. Marching Band2 was my favorite extracurricular activity, with anything and everything computer science3 related as a close second. The only things I knew for certain about my future were that I would never work in a casino and would not join the military. After I graduated high school and squandered a semester at UNLV, I worked at the MGM Grand for a while then joined the Air Force. Shows what I knew. ;p
I enlisted in 1999 at the age of 20. Perhaps my most significant reason to enlist was that I needed discipline. Sure, I was patriotic, wanted a better job, thought the pension would be cool if I survived 20 years and the US government stayed solvent, (ask me later about how my thoughts on those two points evolved over the decades) but I really needed more structure imposed upon me. Looking back, it seems that worked out pretty well. :)
I spent 24 years and 24 days on active duty. Most of my career was spent as the rough equivalent of R2D2 — I flew around and fixed airplanes in the sky. That sounds fancier than it was and those stories will follow. Today I want to focus on broad strokes and outlines.
Pre - 9/11: As is common in the Air Force, I went to basic training, then tech school, then to my first permanent duty station. Shortly after I arrived, I began training for my specific job, met my future wife, and had my first three, short, combat support deployments. When the second tower fell, I was watching from home on my short recovery time off following deployment number three. Our wedding was already booked for Vegas in November, but that did not go as planned. I was deployed to an “undisclosed location” in October of 2001. My wife and I decided to get married before I left for that deployment and we went on our honeymoon after I returned. Looking back on it, that truly set the tone for the rest of my career and our lives together.
Wartime Service: Summing up 20 years of service in one paragraph will simply miss too many important things, but I’ll give it go. My wife and I raised two kids and moved across the planet four times. I spent a lot of time deployed, typically for 90ish days per trip. I flew a lot. I met and worked with some amazing people. I got to “see the world,” and so did my family. For the last few years I “flew a desk” and spent a lot of time watching a “radar scope.” While this kept me from deploying, the shift work presented an interesting set of challenges that still made it feel like I was gone most of the time.
“Post-War” - August 15th, 2021 - Summer 2023: The final segment of my time in uniform was punctuated by a handful of intense life events and experiences that I will almost certainly dig in to later. Bottom line, I think I did pretty well keeping my shit together and handling the stress of the “job” up until this period of my career. I can clearly remember the exact moment I noticed I was unable to perform what should have been a simple task; that got my attention - and that specific trigger doesn’t make the list below. Here’s a quick list of some of noteworthy events I believed shaped my rather chaotic exit from the service:
The fall of Kabul - Abbey Gate, 15 August, 2021 - Many things about the way the war ended gave me great pause to consider the value of my service.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine started in February of 2022, I monitored Europe’s skies, saw the buildup and response for months on either side of the initial push toward Kiev … and I heard way too many way too loud missile launch warnings and “crater” reports.
My mother passed away in August of 2022.
I was on shift and helped coordinate the airborne response for a rare “Ghost Flight” incident on September 4th, 20224.
My wife underwent emergency surgery and spent two weeks in the hospital. That is an entire story of its own, but thankfully she was okay and came home the day before the movers arrived to pack everything up to move 4,000 miles away. Timing for that sort of thing is never good. ;p
Retiring from the military is generally a complicated process. We made it more fun being overseas and at a “remote” location. When I say I had 5 separate out-processing checklists to complete at 4 different bases (two of which were 3 and 4 hour drives away) my military readers should understand how much fun that wasn’t. For my non-military readers, yes, this checklist mess was bad enough it qualified as a noteworthy “intense life event.” :)
We moved our family from Germany to the US … to a place with no jobs waiting, and no family or other significant help to support our transition to the new area. One thing we did have: a palpable feeling of freedom, and the hope of starting a new life on our terms.
Retirement: Over the last year or so I’ve been adjusting to life on the outside. Everyone walks a different path, but I believe many of my challenges may be more common than I previously thought. While preparing to retire, I heard it was common for people to struggle in different ways after they leave the service. I heard individual stories of weeks or months lost to various forms of mental illness and thought they sounded like worst-case scenarios. I didn’t expect to encounter similar difficulties myself. I was wrong. While I don’t feel I “lost” any segments of time, I have certainly been very inward-focused and I have just recently started to wake up from a long slumber. Now it’s time to write. :)
This was not initially intended to be a mental health blog, but I believe we will swerve that direction frequently. We will explore mental health topics generally as they apply to my personal victories and lessons learned. With luck, those discussions may bring hope and encouragement to others with similar struggles.
Disclaimer:
I am not, nor have I ever been certified or credentialed in any way as a:
- health care provider, mental or otherwise
- lawyer or legal advisor
- financial advisor
Anything I say should be understood as based on anecdotal evidence and life experience.5
Life Experience for Future Topics
As I begin to “put pen to paper,” I feel I should highlight some key life experiences from my service that will likely drive my writing. This should help illustrate the perspective I bring to the table and give us a better idea of what topics we will likely explore in the future. Additionally, if you would like to hear more about something you see, just let me know. Leave a comment here:
or send me a message, here:
Career experience:
Front Line Supervisor / Mentoring Airmen: It has been said the best way to truly learn a subject is to teach it. I agree. I also think a similar concept is applicable for leading people. Book knowledge is important, but actually leading Airmen taught me more about leading Airmen than any book did.
Flight Examiner / Instructor: When I performed a flight evaluation (quality assurance inspection) as a flight examiner, it was a three day process which (typically) resulted in a human being certified to operate independently as part of a crew on a military aircraft. (Wait ‘til you hear the story about my job interview for a “QA” position at a manufacturing facility. ;p )
First Sergeant (“Shirt”): Generally responsible for the morale and welfare of a unit and its people, first sergeants also tend to be the focal point when individuals have discipline issues and personal challenges. An often forgotten role first sergeants play is as a valuable resource for advice and guidance. My limited experience in that role was rewarding and educational, and left me with a few stories to tell.
Command Chief’s Executive Assistant: For two years I was essentially a secretary. My boss was responsible for over 1,500 enlisted personnel and my biggest role was “herding cats” by organizing the senior enlisted squadron leaders under his purview. One of my frequent duties was to email those 60 leaders spread around three continents and five time zones, the vast majority of whom outranked me, and make sure they knew what to do and how to do it. I learned a lot in that job.
Flying and Shift Work: While it is true many employers don’t care about holidays, weekends, or your personal life, the Air Force generally did a pretty good job of respecting those — unless we were talking about shift work, flight schedules, or deployments. ;p
Core Values: The US Air Force has three core values. I did my best to live by them in my career and feel they are generally good values to embrace today. Here’s how I see myself applying them to my writing:
Integrity: I will not attempt to mislead or misinform you. Please call me out if you see false assumptions or bad information.
Service: I will keep my promise to post every Saturday. The Saturday articles should be the primary “meat” of content here at jofty’s Corner, the backbone of my writing, and the main symbol of my commitment to “service” here. I also look forward to engaging with readers at every opportunity, but I don’t know what that looks like just yet. ;p
Excellence: When life forces me to balance quality or quantity, I will aim to embrace the former. I will strive for excellence in my writing, however that is defined, and you should expect nothing less from me.
Exceedingly High / Unrealistic Expectations of many aspects of life: It just recently occurred to me that I was living my life in a bubble for a long time. When we discuss mental health, these topics are likely to come up because these tasks have become oddly challenging for me:
Relating to or even conversing with pretty much anyone
Functioning in the civilian job market
Simply leading a “normal” retired life
My family survived 24 years, 19 deployments, and 5 different homes: We certainly have our fair share of difficulties today, but when we address family dynamics and challenges presented by the military lifestyle these are some areas I imagine we’ll touch:
Tips for handling separation (and reintegration)
Lessons learned while moving
Experiences consolidating three houses worth of “stuff”
“All Afterburner / No Rudder”: This is a phrase I will reference from time to time. I may discuss some lessons learned from the fact that my military service gave me the guardrails I needed to succeed in life, but if by design, inevitability, or choice, they became crutches I now need to outgrow. This “blog” - jofty’s Corner - is my first step to hopefully craft a rudder and help me focus my energy in a productive direction.
What else is in store?
As I said at the beginning, I don’t know exactly what this will be. I can’t wait to find out!
Why now?
jofty’s Corner opens now because:
I’m starting to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
I have the time now, if I choose to make the time, so I will.
I recently realized I have experiences and perspectives that are worth sharing and preserving.
I have healed enough to take my first peek back in to the real world. After exploring many different options, doing it this way simply feels right.
My privacy (free speech) rights have been restored, so it is time for my (mostly) unfiltered thoughts to leave this “facility.”
from a different scene in Ender’s Game. (2013) || Referenced quote: Col. Graff: “Your right to think privately has been restored, but your unfiltered thoughts will not be allowed to leave this facility.” Consistency and Accountability - It’s time. I am capable. I can keep a promise to publish something once a week. That wasn’t necessarily the case until recently.
My family deserves this. The fact they have stuck by me through my deep valleys over the last 15 months… and so, so much for so long, is not lost on me. They deserve to know the “why” behind what I’ve put them through. Maybe not now, but some day, I hope this blog/book/Substack may be the best gift I ever gave them.
When I discovered that, for me, at this point in my life, writing is effective therapy, I also realized that, with a little polish, what I write may be enjoyable, useful, or even helpful to others. Here’s to hoping I got that right.
That was the bulk of what I felt necessary to say today. Stop here if you’re short on time, and thanks for reading. 8^)
If you continue on before we call it a day, most of what follows are “housekeeping” notes as a way to “manage expectations” going forward. These are general guidelines for jofty’s Corner regarding paid subscriptions, politics, and the tone of my writing.
“Housekeeping” Notes
A note about paid subscriptions: (current as of: 23Nov24)
At this time, all content at jofty’s Corner is free. I appreciate paid subscriptions (currently “Pledges”) as they provide me valuable moral support and encourage more and higher quality writing … but Pledges currently provide no additional tangible benefit to you.
It seems there are a number of ways to provide premium content for paid subscribers here on Substack. Some of them look pretty cool and might be worth trying at some point; however, before I change anything or enable any “premium content” I will post here and discuss what that may look like.
For what it’s worth, I don’t intend to enable any paid options until at least next year. Let’s take this Substack platform for a solid test drive first, shall we? :)
A note about politics:
There are plenty of places online to find political discussion. This space is not intended to be one of them. 8^)
I will endeavor to keep political topics and politically charged language out of my work at jofty’s Corner. The space we are building should be comfortable and respectful to everyone who wants to be here. I respect that you are not here for politics, particularly in the main Saturday content.
That being said, it is likely I may occasionally write something that sparks strong feelings of a political nature - that is just the world we live in. Feel free to let me know if you feel I deviate too far from the standard you come to expect here. We are all adults, so if/when political discussions happen, I simply ask they remain calm and respectful. I won’t try to stir any pots… at least, not with my Saturday posts. That’s simply not what they are for. ;^)
On the other hand, keeping up with politics and current events has been a hobby of mine for many years - and you know what’s been said about opinions6 - I certainly have one. :) If you want my thoughts on a political matter, feel free to reach out in an email — I enjoy those discussions and may be happy to discuss or share in a more appropriate forum. I simply want our shared conversations here at jofty’s Corner to drive more discussion, learning, and healing … not to create division or make anyone feel unwelcome.
A note about tone:
As a new writer, I am not yet aware of how my thoughts will be perceived through keyboards and screens. When I open this new window in to my soul, what shines through will be a little more raw and potentially a little more rough around the edges than I intend. Hopefully my “filter” isn’t completely broken and my “outside voice” is palatable. Here are my thoughts to help address this as I learn how to write more effectively:
Sarcasm: I will apologize for my somewhat excessive use of smiley faces - once, now. ;p My smiley face issue started when I began calling BBSes7 on my (dad’s) 2400 baud modem around 1993. It’s just part of who I am and how I type, and often a good signal of sarcasm. I am frequently sarcastic, so if you read something and think sarcasm is the most appropriate way to interpret it, just go with that; you’re probably right, especially if you see a smiley nearby. :)
Self-Deprecation: A friend of mine gave me an amazing bit of feedback recently. I made a positive comment as we wrapped up our visit and he noted it was the first positive thing I’d said about myself. He helped me realized I overuse self-deprecation - primarily as humor or sarcasm, but perhaps as a defense mechanism as well. I’m still figuring out how this works in my own head, so I have no idea how this will present in my writing. For now, if that piques your interest, here’s a fun read to address the topic:
https://wittycompanion.com/self-deprecating-humor/Complaining: I’ve been told I complain a lot. For the record, that is not my intent here, and never will be. I mean, if I’m bitching, you’ll probably know that. (aircrew are good at a few things, bitching may be among their most robust and well exercised core skills) So, if it ever sounds like I’m complaining, I either earned an email telling me to check my tone, or perhaps I wasn’t clear expressing the lesson learned from the situation or the reason I was actually just bitching. ;^p
One final thing: I value your feedback. While I will take care of the writing and steer this ship, the simple fact is, I don’t know what matters to you. Your input will help determine which topics we discuss and how deep we dive. Please feel free to connect in any way you see available here on Substack - comments, polls, email, etc…
At the end of the day, I hope reader engagement will drive the topics we explore. If you find something interesting and want to know more, please leave a comment, or email me at jofty@jofty.net. Oh, and share this with a friend if you know someone who may want to come along for the ride.
Thank you for stopping by. 8^)
Let's see where this goes from here. :)
jofty
The commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Gen. Mark Welsh III, spoke to Air Force Academy cadets during a visit to Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 1, 2011.
Gen Welsh gave a shorter version of this speech to my NCO Academy class. It hit me pretty hard based on where I was in my career then, so if you are currently an E-5 or E-6, or O-1/2/3 (or 25-35 years old and a small-mid sized team leader/supervisor) and you’re looking for fresh leadership perspective, this lecture might be worth your time to check out.
This performance is from 1988, but is still a great example of what I loved about Marching Band.
For a (very) geeky deep dive, my formative “online” networking experience was using FIDONet in 1994-1995. WinSock for TCP/IP connections came next. These were the very early days of serious LAN parties.
My primary responsibility during this incident was to ensure all the relevant authorities were communicating effectively to scramble aircraft, keep track of what actually happened, and write the report to pass up the chain to NATO leadership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Baltic_Sea_Cessna_Citation_crash
This scene is a classic, and a good depiction of my credibility as a mental health professional (ie: none)
In case there is any lingering confusion about political opinions:
BBS - Bulletin Board System/Service — This video is a good example of cutting edge technology in the early/mid 90s. Think: dial-up internet shortly before the web. I spent a lot of time on these systems and even ran one for a while. (You could say “SysOp” or System Operator was my first leadership title. ;p )
There is something that felt very safe about being in uniform surrounded by others in uniform. It’s that promise that we made to each other, that we’ll take care of each other and look out for one another, that made me feel secure.
Military traditions also help us remember why we’re “in this together,” and they strengthen our bond with each other.
Outside the traditions and promises of the military lies the real world, our “native culture” (a superb phrase), where only some look out for others, where there are some great managers, some great teams, some great neighbors. But not all.
Out here, that sense of one-ness, or at least, that sense that other people are with me, and I am with them, is missing. These cultural norms and ceremonies and routines are reasons why I miss the military, even though I too bitched my way through 20 years (to underscore your thought, yes, this too is tradition). ;)
As you continue to write about your unique experiences, I’m positive that you will always find someone who can relate. We as Vets are still sharing and looking out for one another, even if we aren’t in uniform any longer.
I'm so glad you're here! Check my first post out? I'll never forget meeting you at the waterpark stairwell 😂 how far we've come...Sustack is great for feeding the brain. I enjoyed your footnotes, too.