Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 12

The speaker discusses their journey of finding their career path after college. They had multiple jobs and a struggling relationship with their second ex-wife. They decided to join the Air Force but faced difficulties when their recruiter left. They then considered joining the Army and eventually decided to enlist. They discuss their reasons for joining and the process they went through. However, they had to cancel their contract due to an injury and had to start over with a different job. Welcome back. Brandon Hill, Life is Crazy. This is episode 12. Thank you for joining me. So last time I kind of went through the four different jobs that I had within the first couple years of college. Really five, if you count the fact that when I graduated college I was a bartender at Applebee's still, which I had started before college. So anyway, you know, five different jobs in a couple years. And really just struggling to find my way with this horrible mass communications bachelor of arts degree from Wright State in Dayton, Ohio. And so at this time, you know, I quit the insurance sales job and the relationship between myself and my second wife was at the end, like I had discussed in a previous podcast. And I knew I needed to make a big change. I needed to make a big change to break away from my second ex-wife because there was no breaking away from her. We had been living apart for months and she still would come over to see me constantly. I never went to her. She always came to me. And I didn't have the power to just turn her away and say, stay away. If she came, I would, you know, give her her time and let her take my attention in time. So I just wasn't strong enough to stop her. And I really just didn't have anything else going on. But I knew I needed to make a big change. And so I had decided, well, the last time I had any kind of really good consistency in my life, even though it didn't go great, in the end it still was really good overall, was when I was in the military. And so I thought, well, now I have a bachelor's degree. I should try to join the Air Force and become an officer in the Air Force. And so, you know, just to see how it would go before I made any real decisions, I went to see an Air Force recruiter. We had a discussion about the process, what that would entail, you know, and how I would make that happen. And so I started the process because nothing is done until it's done. I didn't know for sure that I wanted to do it. But I thought I would try the process just to see if it was an option or an opportunity. And so for months, I would meet with this recruiter every couple weeks, and we would do things to put my officer candidate packet together. You know, he got me an interview with a colonel who signed off on, you know, he not promoted me. Promoted me is not the right word. But he endorsed me – that's the word I'm looking for – to become an Air Force officer. And everything was rolling along smoothly, but this was like an eight-month process. And then I didn't hear from him for like three weeks, which was atypical. I usually heard from him every week for two weeks. And so I went down to the recruiting office to see what had happened to my recruiter. And I walked in, and I asked for him, and the admin secretary said, oh, he left. And I said, what do you mean he left? And she said, oh, he got orders to Germany. And, like, I immediately started panicking. What – you know, I was working with him on a packet to become an officer. Did he leave something behind for the next recruiter? And she goes, I don't know. Let me go get him, and you can talk to him. So she gets the new recruiter, and he comes out, and I say – you know, I explain the situation. I'd been working with him. We were putting together a packet. You know, we had gotten thus far, and now he's just gone, and I didn't even know he was leaving. Did he leave anything with you? And the recruiter just straight looks at me and says, nope, he didn't leave anything for me, for anyone he was working with. We would have to start all over again. And I was just so angry and dejected and everything else at the same time. I just couldn't believe it, you know. I – through this process, I had kind of, you know, reworked my mind and brain up to the idea of being an officer in the Air Force and what that would look like and how my life would go and, you know, where that would take me. And I just wasn't ready to start over again because nothing was guaranteed at the end, right? It was just a packet I was putting together to see if I would be accepted, and who knew even after the packet was complete if I would get accepted. So I just immediately left our office, and I went to the Army recruiter's office. You know, I was 29 years old, strong, in great shape, athletic. I just thought, eh, you know, the idea of the Army doesn't scare me. It's my first choice, but it doesn't scare me. You know, I'm not physically afraid of being a soldier in the Army. So I went in and talked to the recruiter, and, you know, he was very honest with me. He said, you know, hey, look, we're not really taking – we're not looking for prior enlisted right now. The military is just – they're not taking them. They're looking for new enlistees. And I said, what was that? He said, I don't know. You know, I don't know if the government just feels like, you know, you tried, you went for it, you were in the military and you decided to get out. I don't know what really the reason is, but we're just not taking prior enlisted right now. And he said, but, you know, I'll tell you what, you go take the ASVAB and come back and talk to me. And I said, okay, I'll do that. And so I left, and I went and signed up for the military ASVAB, the same test. I took twice to get in the Air Force and once again in the Air Force. And so I went and took it again, and I did no preparation for it. You know, I figured, what the heck, I'm college educated now. I'm a little older, a little wiser. I couldn't do worse than I did the last time I took it, like, I don't know, eight, nine years ago, however long ago it was prior to that. And then I went back to see the recruiter after my ASVAB was complete. And I had received a set of numbers, but I didn't know what those numbers were because the grading scale had changed. It used to be a 99 was the maximum in a category, but I was looking at, like, 129s. And I had no idea, you know, what any of that meant. I didn't know what it was out of. I didn't know anything. And so he opens up his computer and he says, hey, I got good news for you. You know, I think we can work with you. He didn't say anything about my ASVAB scores. He just said, I think we can work with you, and I think we can get you in. And I said, great. You know, I said, I want to be an officer, and how do I go about doing that? And he was like, well, you know, why do you want to join the Army? Do you want to make a career? And I said, well, I don't know. I don't know enough about the Army yet. You know, I was going to make the career out of the Air Force and be an Air Force officer, but I don't know, you know, if the Army is right for me. I'd have to try it and see how that goes before I decide if that's the career that I want. And he goes, well, what about school? And I thought, well, yeah, you know, I do want to go back to school and get a better education, a more advanced degree, because my Bachelor's of Arts in Mass Communications was not really opening the doors for me that I hoped it would open. So, yeah, I could go for a secondary degree. And he said, you know, the Army will pay for 100% of your school if you're enlisted, and you don't even have to pay them back any time in service. You just go in and, you know, you do your time in service, and, you know, they pay for your school, and once you do your contract, your time is up. That's the end. And, you know, you can leave with your degree or you can decide to apply for OCS. Officer came into school, and you can become an officer. And so, you know, I was like, okay, that sounds good. You know, that's really almost the perfect path for me. So I ended up, you know, saying, all right, I'll sign up. You know, I went through the whole issue that I spoke of previously about where to go and whether or not this was the right thing to do because, you know, I would be leaving Ethan behind at five, six years old, and, you know, but I just couldn't get my life on track in Dayton. I was in a toxic relationship that I wasn't even in, but I also wasn't breaking free of it. I couldn't get a good career going. You know, I had applied for all kinds of jobs and looked at all kinds of places, and nothing was working out. So I just felt like for me to advance in life, this was the right choice for me, and with my mom's, you know, input, I believed that Ethan and I would be strong forever, and, you know, he would understand if maybe not if right away someday he would understand. So I end up joining the Army, and so the steps to that process were I was going to – I took a job as a supply chain person because it was a three-year enlistment, and I thought, well, if I get a master's degree, it only takes two years, and so, you know, three years is plenty of time. So, you know, I took that supply chain job and three years enlistment, and so I was preparing to get ready to go to boot camp, so I was going to take all my stuff and put it in a storage locker, and I was literally moving my stuff in a storage locker when I sliced my right hand open on a broken mirror with a real deep gash, and, you know, I had to go to the hospital. I had to get stitches. I had to get my hand wrapped up, and I had torn into some muscles and tendons, and I thought, oh, crap, I'm supposed to leave for boot camp in like a week, and so I had to call the recruiter and let him know what happened, and he was like, oh, well, we have to cancel your entire contract. Your entire contract is canceled, right? I was supposed to go to South Carolina for boot camp, you know, and then wherever I would have went from there for supply chain, who knows, right? And that whole thing got canceled. He's like, we got to start all over, and so he ended up convincing me to take a food inspector job because he said, hey, that's a great job. It's a cushy job. You know, they don't really do quote-unquote army, right? They're in small units, spread out. You know, a lot of them just work 730 to 430 Monday through Friday, you know, and you have evenings and weekends off, and you can go to school, and it's not really a stressful army job at all, and I was like, all right, you know, that sounds good all the way around, so, you know, I can do that. So I signed up for it, which changed, you know, my boot camp to going to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then also my contract to four years instead of three. So now I had to do four years in the army instead of three. And so it really changed everything. I had to wait a couple months for my hand to heal, and, you know, by the time it was time to go, instead of leaving in March like I was going to, I ended up leaving in May to a new destination, new contract, new everything, and it was tough. It was really tough to leave Ethan and say goodbye to Ethan because from that first five, six years of his life, I spent, you know, 50% of his time with me, you know. Whatever was going on, whatever job I was working, whatever I was doing, I made sure to get him as much as possible, and, you know, that was half the week. And I loved having him. He loved being with me. You know, he would be running around playing, and, like, in the middle of playing, he would stop, and he'd run into my arms, and he'd hug me, and he'd kiss me, and he'd say, I love you, Daddy. And I would say, I love you, too. And he did that a lot. Ten minutes later, he would come back and do it again. You know, he just was so loving, and, you know, our connection was just so incredible. And, yeah, I had that guilt looming over me when I joined the Army, but I thought because we had what we had that that would never go away. And I was wrong, and I was wrong not just because I was wrong, but I was wrong because I didn't know he was going to be poisoned for the rest of his life. So I end up joining the Army, and I go off to boot camp in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And as hard as that is already to leave your little boy and to know you're ending this toxic relationship and moving on and trying to give yourself a fresh start in life, here, Ethan's mom was back in Ohio telling him that I didn't love him, that I left him. You know, just all these horrible, toxic things that you could tell a little kid. Now, you know, I don't know 100% that that's true. I can't sit here and say that I know she said that stuff, but Ethan told me she said that stuff. And I don't know why he would say that or make that up as a little kid. It doesn't make any sense that he would do that. But he definitely told me as a little kid that she was saying these things to him, and it was heartbreaking because she was poisoning his mind. And so I had to try to have the antidote to remove this poison. And that's really hard to do when you're in Army boot camp, right, and you're in Army tech school, and then you go off and get shipped to your final duty station, which for me ended up being in Arizona. So it was just really difficult to try to overcome that obstacle of, A, leaving him, because there's already pain associated with that for me and him. Well, you'll have to excuse me. I'm trying not to cry here. And as hard as that is already, his mother's making it worse by saying horrible things about me, that I left. And I left him, and I didn't love him, and I didn't care about him. And then he's saying to me, I'm telling him that's not true. I love you more than anything. And he's saying, well, then why did you leave me? And you can't explain to a little child all the difficulties of life. And you just try to be there for him and be the best dad you can be in that situation. And you hope that someday he understands. But here in 2025, and I'm 51, and he's 26, soon to be 27 next month, he doesn't talk to me. He cut me off a couple years ago when the last time I saw him, everything was good. And I thought everything was good. And then he just stopped talking to me. And I don't know why. I still don't know why. He talks to some of my other family members. I've had my brother talk to him. And nobody can make sense of what he's done. And I haven't tried to reach out to him and beg him to talk to me because, you know, what's the point? You know, if he wanted to talk to me, he would talk to me. So I'm trying to give him his space, and I'm trying to let him work through whatever he's working through. And, you know, hopefully we can reconnect and maybe make up for lost time. But, anyway, that's a complete sidebar of me joining the Army. So I joined the Army. I end up choosing the career of food inspector, so I'm off to Fort Sill to go to boot camp. And right away I get to boot camp, and, you know, the drill sergeants, you know, it's the same situation as the Air Force. You get off the bus. They're yelling. They're screaming. You know, they're physically torturing you. But this time I knew what I was getting into, right? I knew what it was. I knew it was the Army. So I expected it to be physically more demanding than the Air Force, and it was. It was much more physically demanding than the Air Force, but it wasn't as mentally demanding as the Air Force. And I found that to be easier for me because I was fit, and I was physical, and I was in great shape. But when they, you know, exhaust you and make you lose sleep and not be well rested, that lack of mental demand, you know, is easier, frankly, because it's easier to do push-ups and sit-ups and run and this, you know, whatever the requirements of the Army were for me to do physically than it is the emotional stress to have to use your brain and think while being sleep-deprived, and that's what the Air Force did to me. And I thought it was a lot tougher, and I'm sure part of that was because I was 17 and I wasn't ready for what I was getting. But I know that that helped me prepare for life, and it certainly made what I was going through in the Army much easier because I felt the mental demand was easier. The physical demand was much tougher, but I could do that. And so right away, I was, because I was prior service, you know, for the first few weeks of boot camp, I was allowed privileges that no one else was allowed. I was allowed to go in the drill sergeant's office after hours if something was needed out of there. I, you know, you can't wear contacts in boot camp, so I had to wear glasses, and I wore my civilian glasses from the beginning. I never put military-issue glasses on, which are, they're called BCGs, which stands for birth control goggles because they're just so hideous looking. And, you know, if you've seen any military boot camp movies or you've been in the military, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And so, yeah, I was kind of an unspoken leader of our platoon of about 40 soldiers or more, maybe 45, I'm not exactly sure, right off the bat because I was prior service. And so, you know, we were just going through boot camp, you know, going through the getting beat down part before we get lifted back up again, and I had expected to be chosen as platoon guide, which is the leader, basically, of the platoon. But I wasn't. I was just chosen as a squad leader, you know, which is one squad of four, and another guy was chosen as platoon guide, and another guy was chosen as assistant platoon guide. You know, and I was in such a way with the drill sergeants that I talked to the head drill sergeant, and, you know, one night when I was on watch duty, I asked him straight up, you know, like, hey, I really thought you were going to make me platoon guide, and I was surprised you didn't. And, you know, I thought I was going to be, and I wanted to be. And he said, well, you know, you're prior service. We know you have leadership skills and abilities, you know, and we didn't want to leave you out of the leadership role, so we gave you the squad leader role, but we really need to see what these other guys can do. You know, and these other guys, they're not going to keep their jobs, right? They're going to get fired. It's just going to happen. They're going to make a mistake, and we're going to fire them because we're going to give other people a chance to step up and do, you know, see how they can lead. You know, but we're not going to fire you. You'll stay a squad leader the whole, you know, boot camp. And so I found that to be acceptable, and that sat with me peacefully, and that's exactly what happened, right? The rest of boot camp, squad leaders would come and go and get fired. The platoon guy got fired once. The assistant platoon guy got fired once. You know, and there was just rotations of leadership, but I was the only one that maintained my leadership role. And to be honest, I really enjoyed Army boot camp. I did. It was demanding. It was tough. It was hard. But the same thing as finishing Air Force boot camp, that satisfaction of knowing you can finish it and you can complete it, and not only do it but do it well, which I did. I did really well. I was so much more proud of what I accomplished in Army boot camp than I was in Air Force boot camp, because Air Force boot camp, I was just trying to survive. I was a scared 17-year-old kid trying to make it through. But now I was 29, and I was in Army boot camp, and I was leading the way. You know, I was pushing myself physically, pushing myself as a leader, lifting my other squad mates and boot camp mates up and helping other people do well. And I had a drill sergeant's ear. You know, if I had anything to say or discuss, the head drill sergeant gave me the respect to talk to me, and I really appreciated that. And so I got through Army boot camp, and I went off to food inspector school at Fort Sam Houston and back to San Antonio, Texas. And I went through food inspector school, giving it my all. Had, again, prior enlisted, you had privileges that people that were enlisted for the first time didn't have. You know, they had to live in a barracks. They had to march in formation. I got to be able to drive my car. I got to live in, like, a different, like, hotel room type situation. I had my own room. And it was great. It was nice. And so I worked really, really hard in food inspector school to become, you know, the person that graduated with the highest honors in my food inspector class. And so I finished with the highest grade point average. And so I don't know if I was rewarded for that. But, again, I had put all warm bases down. But this time I put Arizona on my list. And sure enough, I was picked to go to Fort Huachuca in Arizona. I don't think I picked Fort Huachuca. I think I picked Luke in Phoenix. But, you know, it's fine. You know, it is what it is. I got an Arizona base, and I was happy with that because the Army wasn't going to stick me in a cold place like the Air Force did. So during Army boot camp, I got served divorce papers. So my ex and I had gotten officially divorced. Then I went on to San Antonio, to Fort Sam Houston, and I did my food inspection school. And then I left there and went to Fort Huachuca. And I was excited. I was happy. I was going to a warm place. You know, I was an E4 because I was prior service and a college degree, so I was already a specialist. And I was really looking forward to my time in Arizona. And I will pick up from there in the next episode and let you hear about my time in Arizona in the Army. Until then, talk to you next time.