So you are thinking about joining the military Huh?

It's a hard job to figure out what you want sometimes......

So if you are visiting my page then you or someone you care about is contemplating enlisting into one of the branches of the United States Armed Forces. Thinking about enlisting into the military is by far one of the biggest decisions anyone can make in their lifetime. This process is often compared to buying a house, getting married, and having children. There are good reasons for the comparisons.  These three things that are compared to joining the military have major correlation with one another. Buying a home, getting married, having children, and joining the military are all suppose to be rewarding, joyful, and bring a certain level of positive stress to your life. The intention of doing these things is to make a large move forward in life and creating a certain level of happiness or fulfilling a certain need in a most positive way.  All of the examples can go south on you real quick and create a whole world of havoc regardless of if you do the right thing or  not.  You can't pay your mortgage that means you will probably lose your home, leaving you homeless and with a huge debt pushing most people into bankruptcy. Getting married can be the most wonderful experience of your life, but usually when it goes south it can have very bad consequences on you, your friends, family, children, and of course the other spouse. Also having a child can turn out to not be the happiest thing in your life. You child could be a bad seed creating misery in your life, could turn out to have a long life illness that you will have to tend to for the rest of your life, or your child could just be a total failure in life regardless of what you did to raise him or her. The same goes with joining the military, you may have an absolute great experience and you get everything out of the military that you wanted. Also, you could have a bad experience in the military and depending on the situation you could have to deal with these for the rest of your life. And all of these examples that I give are in one way or another contractual. Being in a binding contract is great when everything is going well, but if doesn't go as planned then being bound to a contract can prove to be difficult to say the least. You do not have the luxury of just walking away from it when the going gets tough and if you do then it will just create a whole other list of issues.These are not the only reasons thinking of joining the military are tough. You know that when you enlist into the military you are walking into a world that you only think you know something about but you have no true idea of what it's all about. Also, you are being asked to make a long term commitment into this new world you have not had a chance to explore except through movies or other peoples experiences. You also have to decide if all the horror stories that you always heard about the military are true and if what you are getting from the military is worth the risk of taking that chance.  And yes, there is always that looming question of will I get deployed, will I get hurt, and what are the chances of dieing while serving my country.  So I say again, it's a hard choice to make and you should not make this choice by yourself or uniformed.  As I write my blog, I will hit all the subjects and many, many more as I hope that this will be just one tool that you use to help you decide whether the military is for you or not.