Millennials who joined the military, how are you doing? Two-year check-in
I made a post here back in 2024 asking how the millennials who joined the military were doing, and I figured I’d check in again.
I joined right out of high school and I’m coming up on 16 years now. At this point, I’m close enough to the 20-year mark that I know I’m going to finish it out, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting down the years.
The older I get, the more differently I look at military life. Things I tolerated pretty easily in my early 20s hit differently now. The lack of control over your own life, constant changes, moves, deployments, additional duties, leadership changes, and just the overall culture can get exhausting after enough years.
More than anything, I’m looking forward to eventually getting some of that control back and figuring out what normal civilian life looks like after spending basically my entire adult life in the military.
I like asking this question here instead of in the military-specific subs because I’m interested in hearing from people outside of the usual military echo chamber. I’m not really looking for “suck it up” or “this is what you signed up for.” I’m more interested in how other millennials genuinely feel about their service now that we’re older.
Are you still in? Did you get out? Do you regret joining? Are you glad you did it? If you stayed for the long haul, are you counting down too? And for those who already got out, how has civilian life been compared to what you expected?
Just curious how everybody is doing.