Need guidance navigating your career or education path? The DOD has an app for that.

Earlier this year the Spouse Education and Career Opportunities program (SECO) launched a new website called My Individual Career Plan, MyICP for short.

The site provides targeted information and links so that spouses can find information about careers, education, training, licensing and even connect with local companies for job opportunities. Spouses will be connected to licensing requirements for the different states as they PCS and the site can recommend steps needed to reach a specific career or education goals.

The gem in the site may be the connection with local employers. SECO also created the Military Spouse Employment Partnership and currently works with 200 companies and organizations who are all committed to hiring military spouses.

Spouses who log on can see which of those partners have job openings near their current duty station.

To access the site spouses' sponsor must be in active duty status for the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps, though the site is open to National Guard and Reserve spouses as well.

Leaving the military? It is only open for 180 days to spouses once their service member separates from the military or retires. Surviving spouses of military members who died while on active duty are also eligible.

To use the site, register first at https://myseco.militaryonesource.mil

One week, during our last deployment, the dreaded “F” word reared its ugly head:  Finals. 

My (then) three-year-old son was bouncing off the walls. The weather was blizzard-like. I’d subsisted on coffee and string cheese for a week and I still had several papers due that, well … weren’t short. To decompress, I called a friend and fellow military wife and sobbed my story into the phone. 

And then the most beautiful thing happened. Inside an hour, she had picked up my son and taken him to her house and I was sitting at Starbucks, typing along with all of the other extremely studious looking, headphone-wearing kids. 

Over the course of that day, a few things happened. I wrote several papers, drank more coffee than I really should have and was able to recharge my batteries a bit. Not my student batteries, of course, because finals had drained them like a Leap Pad that has been left on under the back seat of the car. My personal batteries, however, now had a lot more energy. Because not only did I get my work done, I got to be alone for a few hours. 

Want to know a dirty little secret? During that deployment, that friend probably saved my GPA and a decent chunk of my sanity.

There are days when I wonder how we do it all. We are students. We are military spouses. We are mothers. We are friends, colleagues, housekeepers, personal chefs and chauffeurs. 

And then there are days that I can barely get my life together enough to brush my teeth and feed the dog. The constant balance of home, school, work and family is a sensitive one. But, there is a crucial key to success: having a support system. 

And if there is anyone who needs a good support system, it’s a military spouse. Build each other up. Reach out. Hold each other close. You will receive as much as you give and it will be good. I promise.  

My husband and I met young, while we were teenagers. Within two years, we were married, and shortly thereafter, pregnant with our first son. I did something I swore I would never do, because we didn’t have another financial option: I dropped out of college. I told myself that I’d go back, that this was only temporary. The kicker about momentum is that when you stop, it feels impossible to start up again.

It took me years to go back, to work up the nerve and try again. I promised myself I’d graduate college, if only to prove to my sons that I did, and I wanted to do it before I turned thirty. When I did, it was a class at a time, just enough to keep my toes in the water while I juggled my career, our two sons and our second deployment. 

The hardest part? Looking at the daunting list of classes I needed to graduate. All I could think was, “There’s no chance I can do this. I can’t take two classes at once. I’m never going to graduate.”

I felt like Sisyphus, eternally rolling this heavier-than-life boulder up the hill, and getting . . . nowhere.  Sure, I was making progress, but when you’re adding water drops to a pitcher, it doesn’t seem to add up quickly. But college was never about “quickly.” It’s about tearing off the chunks you can handle and keeping up the sheer momentum. Remember the whole, “an object in motion stays in motion?” The same philosophy applies when you’re in college.

I went back for multiple hours when we PCS’d to Germany, and I took the real plunge when we got to Fort Rucker. For two years, I took 21 hours a semester. I had our fourth little boy in the middle of the semester - and kept up. I took a little maternity leave, and hit the books harder than ever when I returned. I may have been up at 2 a.m. with a term paper due and a crying baby, but that was the price I was willing to pay. Or maybe I was insane. Either way, it worked out before I lost my mind.

I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in history (minor in English) during Jason’s third deployment, just after we PCS’d to New York. I smiled, and washed out sippy cups, while my class walked the stage in Alabama. I was 29-years-old. I did it.

The point here is, if you’re looking at going back for your degree, or you’re in the middle of the program, stop looking at the whole. The whole is intimidating. Instead, bite off what you can chew. Take on the classes you can handle and set yourself up for success. Don’t get scared by a time commitment, because a year from now, you’re going to wish you’d started today. Build your confidence until the fear is gone, and there’s nothing left but the certainty that you’ll meet your goal. 

You can graduate. I promise, it’s doable.

Will it be hard? Yes. Everything that’s worth it is. But the measure of what we sacrifice is equal to the reward, the accomplishment we feel when we look back and know that we kicked some serious butt. And being the type-A person that I am, I loved coloring in my little boxes when each class was complete, and I could see my degree plan being eaten away, bite by bite.

Oh, and what do I use my history degree for?  I write books. Seriously. But it’s never been about the career, or what followed. It was about setting the goal for myself and seeing it hang on the wall. It’s about looking at our children and saying, “Look, if I did it in between four duty stations, three deployments and four little boys, you can do it too. We’re going to make it easier on you.” 

And they get a kick out of seeing my name on the wall.

I do too.

I am a graduate school dropout. Not a title I am exactly proud of, but it’s my reality. I withdrew from my classes the week they started. I was so excited to start this chapter in my life but when it came down to it, I’m just not ready.

To some, I am a quitter. I own that. I am okay with that. I only had a few days to make my decision before it became a financial commitment I couldn’t back out of and I just could not justify more student loan debt when I had so many reservations.

I actually completed my first few assignments the weekend before classes started. I could physically do the work. It would be hard, and, a big change. But I knew I could do it. However, it came with a sacrifice - time with my family.

And my sanity.

Work would have to be done during naptime or after bedtime, maybe even somewhere between. I envisioned my stress levels increasing and my patience lost as I tried to get the boys to bed on time so I could finish my assignments. I could already feel anxiety taking over my body. I know myself and how I handle stress. I did not want my family to feel the effects of that.

The night I decided to drop out of my classes, my son woke up sick. I never thought about those nights when I was planning my classes. My kids need me 24/7. Usually, by the time my Marine is on his way home from work, I am already cleaning up dinner and starting the boys’ nighttime routine.

Although I know my husband will support me 100 percent, and try his best to help when he can, the truth is, his career is demanding. Was I ready to sacrifice our weekend family time for school work? During the week, much of the work already falls on me: the house, the kids and school. I didn’t want to miss spending time with my kids on the weekends to do homework.

I know lots of military spouses work fulltime, have families and go to school. I am friends with many of these women (or men in some cases) who are able to take it all on and I admire them so much. But if I have learned anything in being a military spouse and a mother, it has been to know when to say no.

My plate is full. I cannot do it all and I am okay with that. Right now I have a husband who supports my decision to stay home to raise our children and that is where I want to put my focus.

Life isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. My children will not always be home with me all day, every day. And while they are, I want to be present in my parenting. I know when the time comes to focus on me, I will be ready. It will never be easy or the perfect time but whenever that day comes, I will be ready.

My husband received an award during his last deployment.

I was, apparently, not nearly as excited about it as I should have been because upon his return, I overhead a voicemail from his chief explaining that he hoped that my children and I would be at the presentation of the award, as it was “such a big deal.”

Granted, this voicemail was left the evening before the award ceremony.

The evening before, in which I was running around trying to scrounge together dinner, sweep up dirt tracked in by little-girl sneakers, nurse a baby, pay the water bill and answer a work phone call; totally unaware that I was expected to be at a ceremony – or that there even was such a ceremony – the next morning.

I’m pretty sure I looked at my husband when he played the voicemail and uttered a quick but emphatic, “No way, Jose.”

But the look on his face told me that wasn’t an option. He doesn’t understand “I don’t have anything to wear.” He doesn’t understand what it’s like to sit in a room full of uniforms trying to control a 2-year-old and an 11-month-old. He doesn’t understand that, in that arena, I am nothing more than a reflection of him.

My husband is the last person to play down what I do: take care of our kids, work from home, volunteer at non-profits. 

He talks it up. He knows it’s important and ranks it right up there with his job. If I showed up at the Submarine Ball in sweat pants the man would proudly take my hand and introduce me as his beloved wife, talk about the lactation counseling I do and mention that I make a mean chili.

But that’s not how the world, especially the Navy world, works.

And even though he doesn’t care, I do. Which is why I immediately dropped what I was doing, threw the baby at him, and proclaimed, “Feed them dinner!  I at least need to go shave my legs!”

I then made him sit through 47 different outfit changes that evening, followed by several panicked phone calls to friends in search of a super-thin brown belt. I then had to fish out appropriate dresses and hair-bows for my girls. On the (somewhat good) chance that they acted out, I was hoping their cute factor would help sell them.

Of course, it froze outside overnight and I had to re-plan it all on the fly the next morning, as I cursed the unpredictable late-winter and early-spring here in Georgia.

I showed up barely on time and stood looking at an auditorium full of my husband’s look-alikes, sweating despite the cold and trying to pry the all-of-a-sudden-shy toddler off my leg while holding the “Let me down, Mom!” baby ever the more tightly.

Luckily, the award presentation went off smoothly. My toddler enjoyed clapping for everyone immensely and the baby was memorized by the room full of people dressed like her father, some of whom would play peekaboo with her behind my back.  The only small snafu was the “Dada!” my second born let out while his chief was singing my husband’s praises during his award presentation.

I only had to resort to “Be quiet!” snacks and an out-and-out bribe once. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t too bad.

Though my shaken, gray appearance by the end of it did make it seem as if the two-hour ceremony had taken years off my life.

This was definitely not the calm, cool, collected reflection of my husband I had hoped to be.

But, at least, I’d shaved my legs.

 

Oh, technology, how you play with my heart.

You make speaking with our husbands while they are deployed to a combat zone in the middle of nowhere, an easy peasy process.

But last week when I had to rename a file, and failed to notice I used the same name of an existing file, kaboom. All was lost. File gone. The words filtered into the air like they never existed.

And of course, it was the story that is supposed to go live tomorrow. And of course, email is down so my co-worker and I are discussing the logistics of this mini-crisis over Facebook messaging. And of course, it is happening at the end of a very long day which makes it all the more fun.

But it seems that I'm not the only person having a bad day due to computer glitches.

In August, 2013, a series of botched trades were made by Goldman Sachs' internal computer, costing the company upwards of $100 million.

Then, in November, 2013, a glitch in Walmart computers listed pricey electronics worth hundreds of dollars for just $8.85.

And, weeks later, on the day after Christmas, a computer glitch on the Delta Airline website sold flights normally priced at $400 or higher for much less, some as low as just $25.05.

Workers seem to have a love/hate relationship with their technology.

A 2012 study by TrackVia claims computer glitches are the second biggest time-waster at the office and estimates employees spend 11 percent of their day fruitlessly arguing with their computers. This is second only to talking with co-workers, which is estimated to waste 14 percent of an employee's day.

So, my friends, you are reading the blog I furiously wrote after realizing that my own computer glitch has erased the blog that was slated to appear today.

I'm not happy about it. And I'm pretty aggravated at the computer that I adore when it makes my days easy. But hey, it could have been worse as other employees at Goldman, Walmart and Delta have learned.

Technology, you can't live without it, but you can unplug it. Have a great, glitch-free weekend!  

I love words. 

You might remember that about me. We talked about it last week. 

You might also remember my ridiculous indecision regarding which degree plan to choose.  Follow my heart and pursue writing or follow my head and pick something more practical than a liberal arts degree? 

After a lot of thought, and then some more thought, and a little thought to cap it off, I’ve made a decision … a liberal arts degree it is! 

After serving in the Army and working a series of jobs that centered on customer service, I’ve learned that it is important to listen to that little voice. You know, that nagging little bugger that rings through your brain every time something miserable happens? The one that tells you that your current state of disdain is your own fault? The one that reminds us we are the conductors on the one-way train to happy town? 

Well, choo choo, baby. 

I love writing. I love making people laugh, and I love making people cry. I love thinking, and I love making people think. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather work hard at all of those things than spend my time wishing I’d followed my dreams. 

Why not just follow my dream to start with? 

So Jason has been home over a month. The honeymoon period is mostly over, and we’re neck-deep in reintegration. 

This part sucks.

Don’t get me wrong. I would rather go through the toughest day of reintegration than I would ever another day of deployment. Four deployments are definitely enough. But there’s a special kind of hell associated with reintegration. That moment when you look at your husband and think, “what has changed us in this year apart?”

For the most part, our relationship is the same. He’s amazing, considerate and has let me sleep in just about every single day since he got home. For that alone, I will sing his praises. He’s still the same doting father, just with another child to dote on. He’s fit right into the hockey schedule, and even lets me stay home while he ferries the kids to practice. Sure, his temper is a little post-deployment short, but he knows when to step outside and cool down before something comes flying out of his mouth.

But still, something is … different. Not in a bad way, just a different way. I didn’t have this crazy career when he left, but one month after he came home, my book released and hit number 16 on the Amazon best seller lists in the first three days. Now, his “I have time for whatever you want,” wife is … well … busy, and that’s a huge adjustment for him. 

Now, my career is stepping up to the same level as his, which is something we haven’t dealt with in the seven years I’ve stayed home with the kids. The biggest difference there? When he goes to work, he … you know … goes to work. 

When I’m at work, it’s between choruses of, “Mom!  There’s a 2-hour snow delay!” and “Mom!  He won’t share the black crayon!” I may have very ungracefully pointed that out to him during a slight, stressful breakdown yesterday. Hey, I never said I was perfect.

He’s home on leave, he’s taking over some household duties, which kind of makes me feel like I’m failing in that department, and he’s everywhere.  Remember, spouses are allowed to have a hard time with reintegration too.

The point here, is that reintegration sucks. It’s shoving two puzzle pieces back together again when you’ve already roughed up the edges so much you’re not sure if they fit. Well, people, they can fit. You can fill in the gaps with a little time, consideration and effort.

1. Communicate. Ask your spouse how they’re feeling about reintegration. Has any particular thing changed that they’re having trouble with?
2. Pay attention to his sleep pattern. Is he sleeping? If not, how long has it been? How long is he awake? When Jason struggled with PTSD after he was wounded during his first deployment, this was one of my first signs.
3. Give him space. Deployment has a much faster tempo than home life. So when Jason’s foot starts tapping (I know his tell after all these years), I invent an errand for him to go on, or purposely forget something at the store. He needs the time out, a purpose, and sometimes just the quiet of the car. There are five kids in this house from age 10 to 10 months. He’s used to having a solitary room where he can shut the door and be alone, and at home there’s no guarantee of solo bathroom time. So, I make sure he’s got that space.
4. Stop expecting the fairy tale. Yes, homecoming is gorgeous, and emotional, but this is the meat and potatoes of life here. That whole “I’m so thankful you’re home” is always in the back of your mind, but is soon overcome by, “could you please stop hanging your bath towels off the bed’s canopy,” in no time. The beautiful thing about having them home is that real life comes back, so let it. There are bills to pay, kids to feed and battles to pick.
5. Speaking of battles, pick them wisely. Remember that just a month ago, you were begging to get your arms around him, aching in loneliness. So does it really matter that his towel is on the canopy in the scheme of things? No. If there’s a battle you have to fight, then pick it, by all means, communication is key, but if it’s not that big of a deal, ask yourself if it’s really worth it, or if it’s too small to care about in the long haul, stop pitching the fit.
6. Enjoy him. Love him. Tell him how happy you are to have him home, and make sure he feels it too, because that’s what this is all about, right?  This is all about welcoming our spouse home and making sure they still fit, that we all fit. And if we don’t fit? We make room. Make it work.

So yeah, reintegration sucks. It’s hard, it’s great, it’s frustrating and it’s peaceful. It’s a hodge-podge of emotions that we’re willing to go through because it means one thing:  they’re home. There’s nothing better than having Jason home, and when we’re having a hard time adjusting, we just wrap our arms around each other and acknowledge that this isn’t always easy. 

For us, it’s more than enough. It’s home.

Navy spouse, Nicole Lockwood said she is not sure what possessed her to sign up for a full load of classes at seven months pregnant, while working a full-time job. Three months later, her husband deployed for 14 months leaving her with a newborn and two older children.

What she does know is that she picked the right school to help her through the challenges.

“Everybody worked with me and my schedule. My teachers were amazing. I loved the flexibility,” she said.

Nicole, who recently earned her associate’s degree in criminal justice, said working with Bryant & Stratton has been easy since day one.

“I signed up for classes the same day I went to find out more about the school,” she said.  

Returning to the classroom after initially leaving college several years ago has been easy in many ways, she said.

“Honestly, when I went to school after high school I struggled with it and left after a year and a half,” she said. “I went back to school [at Bryant & Stratton] three years later and went from being a C-student to a straight A-student.

“I had more focus. I had gotten all the stupid stuff out of my system and was able to focus more on what I really wanted to do,” she said.

Though Nicole expects her family to receive a new military assignment and move across country in the coming year, she is forging ahead with her academic plans. Next semester she will return to class to begin work on her bachelor’s degree and begin the steady march toward her dream job: working the social services side of the criminal justice system.

Her advice for students struggling to balance school work with the challenges of everyday life: “If you want it bad enough, you’ll make the best of what you can,” she said.

While her husband was away, Nicole said she had to do homework in her driveway because her internet connection didn’t work inside her home. So, she worked at night while her children slept and kept tabs on them via a baby monitor.

She has also completed her homework while on the road during one of her family’s military moves to a new duty station.

“If you want it, you’ll make sure you’re doing it,” she said. “It may stink while you’re doing it but the rewards are so worth it.”

The entire nation sniffed back tears during the Budweiser Super Bowl commercial that welcomed home a young military officer, complete with a ticker tape parade in his hometown.

My Facebook feed is peppered with surprise homecoming videos: dads and moms appearing in uniform at their kids' schools, at their spouse's offices and of one service member who dressed as a pizza delivery man to shock his unsuspecting mom.

Obviously, these are great videos. We love to have our guys and gals in uniform home and safe. Day one, stateside, is always a perfect day.

After the video is posted and everyone heads home, the public moves on with their lives. They leave the scene with a warm heart and the joy of knowing that their friend or neighbor is safe.

What they rarely see is the difficulties that ensue afterwards. Homecoming, and reintegration, can be hell.

The scars of war, whether physical or mental, can strain a family and destroy relationships. Soldiers return haunted, withdrawn and in anguish.

And while they were gone, the world marched on, as did the people they were closest too. Even the strongest marriages can be tested after a deployment ends. For spouses who have been keeping the home front fires burning, it is hard to relinquish control, or sometimes trust that their partner can in fact handle what needs to be done.

Relationships have to be rebuilt. Injuries have to be nursed. Families fall apart and crumble.

While I love the homecoming videos I despise the message they send: we're home now. Everything is ok.

Because often times, it's not.

I want the public to celebrate our homecomings and our victories. But I also want them to stand beside us in the hard times and reach out to lend a hand and understand that the war doesn't end at the front door. These videos, while wonderful, help mask the truth and paint a very wrong picture of life after deployment.

In my perfect world, for every homecoming video there would also be a commercial about the struggles of reintegration. I wish people would show up a week, a month, a year after the ticker tape parade and offer their help. I wish us as military folk would reach out and accept the idea that it is ok to ask for help.

When they come home, my friends, celebrate. Indeed, it is a joyous moment. But when you head home that night, know that your job is not done. As a community our military families need more support than a glorious welcome home party. They need compassion, patience and guidance as they navigate the difficult task of reintegrating as a family and returning to civilian life after a year on the battlefield.

Our service members want us there for the parade. They need us there for the dark, difficult struggles afterwards. Will you be there?