Last drill this weekend with the Guard.
I will be sad to leave, i've met so many people through the organization, and it has offered experiences (helicopter rides, automatic weapons handling, explosive handling etc) and travels (all my foreign countries, and about a third of the states I've been to) that I wouldn't have got any other way. But it is a huge time sink. Since I've been in I've averaged about about four total days off a month in between school early in my career, and work full time the later half of it.
Due to the Army wanting the reserves and national guard to be more operational to lesser the burden on the AD force. The training iterations are much longer than they used to be. The one weekend a month two weeks a year thing hasn't been true in any year I've been in.
The combination working sixty hours a week and then having to work the weekends with no break until the next sunday for eight years has just worn my ass down mentally. Twice in the last three years I've schedule vacation only for drill to be moved onto the dates I was off. I used those vacation dates to do stuff at home I'd been putting off and then had to go in at the end of the week to do Army shit. My armory isn't anywhere close to where I live either. Used to be 2 hrs and 45 mins away. It is shorter now, but still 1 hr and 40 mins. That shit gets old when you have to wake up at 0300 in the morning to make it to the armory on time, and when you are released at 1800 to go home.
While I will miss the camaraderie that is hard to duplicate in anything else (the only thing that I've found similar is having those longtime best friends that you can see anywhere and start your bromance all over again without missing a beat) I'm interested to see what life will be like with actual free time.
I excited to be free.
