Lying In Wait

Well, B is officially on terminal leave from the Navy now.  He's getting a whopping two weeks before his active duty ends.  Yes, that is on the low side, due to a trifecta of factors beyond his control that worked against him.  (He'll be selling back the rest of his leave.)  Oh well.  He is still waffling on his decision to join the Active Reserve and will make that decision once we know where we're going.

As for that, no, you haven't missed any big announcements around these parts.  He does not have a job lined up yet.  Since so many people ask me, even though it's more of his business than mine, I'm going to explain how separating from the Navy looks like for an LT submarine officer with a B.S. in Engineering.  He's not going back to school.  He wants an actual engineering job, but is also open to a shipyard job or a contracting job.  And  I just want him to be happy and not deal with rotating shift work.  We're not staying here in Pensacola, as we don't really love it here and there are no jobs in his field anyway.  Our location is rather flexible, but we want to stay between Maryland and Texas (and stretching west to include B's home state of Indiana).  That's a good 20% of the U.S., so I'm hoping it's doable.

He signed up with two different headhunting agencies.  These agencies can connect him to a lot of companies he's never heard of who are looking for people with his type of experience.  These agencies also sponsor some of those job conferences, like the one he went to in Houston.  At those, he does a handful of preliminary interviews and then the company will hopefully ask for a follow-up interview.  The follow-up interviews are interesting, as the company will pay for him to fly out to wherever they are and interview.  Hopefully he will get more of these soon, as his Navy job was busier in the summer and made it hard for him to take the necessary leave to go to these.  Yes, he is also applying to jobs on his own, so don't ask about that.

He will be attending a few more job conferences and hopefully flying out to lots more interviews.  We'll be staying here in Pensacola until he lands a good position.  We planned and saved for this, but it still doesn't make it ideal.  We have to pay for our own health insurance soon, and I'm already annoyed at the thought of that (the military version of COBRA is super-expensive, by the way).  I actually quit my volunteer gig this past week, as I need to be ready to leave at the drop of a hat.

B is hitting the ground running on his job search now, but here I am, just waiting.  Taking care of the baby, supporting my husband, and praying that the wait is short.


(If you previously missed my thoughts about him leaving the military, check out this guest post I did at Many Waters.)

Please do not leave job-hunting advice for my husband in the comments, unless you personally know someone at the most perfect company in the world for him.  Thank you.