Entry 12: The First Try

Date: March 19th, 2021

What I did this week: This was a big reset week, as I needed to put a lot of time to family endeavors, to include my little brother visiting and meeting his new niece for the first time! It was awesome to surprise the kids with a visit from their uncle. I also had an incredible discussion about women in the military during a department meeting, as well as a chat with one of my former soldiers, Jonna. Brandon also facilitated my Friday classes, enabling my students to learn about leadership from a totally different lens. I’m so happy that he was able to make this happen, and I hope that my classes learned that the military approach is not always the best method.

Scott from USMA AOG also hit me up again and told me to start applying to positions…so I did! I made the first leap into throwing out my résumé, and I’m leveraging a series of contacts to see what I can dig up about the position. It is a very exciting role, and I’m curious how it will shake out! I also had my third coaching session with Kyle. One of the best pieces of reflection from that session was my “ideal day.” Part of my prep was to build a detailed breakdown of what my ideal day looks like in Adventure 2.0 (post-transition). I put in a lot of thought on what that day would look like (work out, make/have breakfast with the family, take kids to school, drive to work, etc). The first thing that Kyle noticed threw me quite a bit…he noted that I made my ideal day a workday. I still haven’t quite shaken that since we talked, as it made me realize that I’ve got a lot to unpack and unwind from my military service.

What I’m reading and learned: My department does a great job of using meetings to advance our culture (rather than just synchronizing information), and this week we did a Women’s History Month trivia contest. I learned a ton about the women who fought oppression and broke glass ceilings to help improve the world. There are still so many gaps in my historical and cultural knowledge, and I’m also so excited to hear more powerful stories of people blazing trail to fix issues.

Self-reflection(s) of the week: The COMMIT PYP modules and coaching prep really showed me that I desire some flexibility in my schedule to allow time for my family. I am realizing more and more how important this is to me, and it’s helping me hone my potential employment opportunities for the future. Kyle helped me realize I need to start drawing on these ideas to neck down my options to those things that allow me to achieve balance in my personal and professional life.

Did I succeed in my previous goal(s)?: Yes! Knocked them all out of the park, to include refining and continuing to tweak my resume. Granted, I didn’t stretch too far this week in my goal setting, but I needed to put energy elsewhere.

Goals for next week: Allow the girls to enjoy their weekend with Uncle Luke! We’re going to bust out the pizza oven tomorrow and maybe do s’mores outside. Should be a fun time for the kids to spend time with him before he heads back to Georgia. I also plan to contact VA claims to start the process, have an appointment for a will, SFL-TAP classes (need to finish all but one next week), and administer/grade a test. I have a lot of work to do on the transition classes that I’ve been pushing off, so I absolutely need to knock those out. I’ll also tack in that I want to contact travel and housing to alert them to the move, just to add in some more goals! On top of all that, I have a really exciting conversation with someone inside of Korn Ferry, and I cannot wait to chat with them to learn more about the culture of the organization.

Inspiration, passion, or excitement of the week: Getting to catch up with Jonna was amazing. Hearing her incredible life journey and where she’s off to next was so inspiring. She’s reflecting, writing, and doing incredible things in her industry, and I’m so proud of her!

Gratitude: Thanks to Tom Giboney and Nick Cahill for shopping my resume around. Tom, in particular, provided me some great detailed feedback after sending it around to some other folks to help me refine the product some more. He also caught a rookie spelling error! Thanks to Kyle Moses for continuing to push me through coaching. Thanks to Scott for always keeping an eye out for me. Huge thanks to Brandon Walker for giving an incredible lecture and Q&A to my students. As of writing this, he spoke to my first hour class, and he’s going to talk to two more after lunch! Lastly, thanks to Jonna Eckenrod for staying in touch and sharing some of her professional writing with me. She’s got some incredible things coming up, and I’m so excited and proud of her! She was a rockstar mechanic in my first unit, and she was hand-selected to join my platoon. She has since ventured out of the Army and has been doing amazing things, and it was awesome to catch up with her.

Zach