Emails in 2020 Vision

I got two unexpected emails from The Young Buck today. He had told me roughly a month ago that he wouldn’t be able to send me any more emails for the duration of his underway (but I could still email him), so it was a pleasant surprise. One he sent on April 5th and the other was sent on April 8th (my birthday!). The one he sent on April 8th actually hit my inbox this afternoon before the one he sent on the 5th lol.

He is up for re-enlistment, and he was pretty dead set on getting out because he was accepted into a university for a commercial airline pilot program. His command and family really want him to re-enlist due to the world going crazy right now and everything being shut down. I’ve been trying to keep him informed without shedding my “opinion” throughout this (basically I let him know when our Stay At Home order gets extended every time it gets extended). I’ve been hesitant to give him my opinion, because A) up until this point he’d never asked for it and B) it should be his decision and C) I don’t want him to re-enlist and hold a grudge against me if he ends up being miserable. It would be for 3 more years.

My opinion is this: Re-the fuck-enlist! Now is not the time to lose your health insurance and who knows when things are really going to open back up again. So I let him know the current unemployment facts and figures and that his university is currently holding classes online only and they have decided to do that for the summer semester as well. But like I said, I don’t think he’ll fully understand the “atmosphere” of this world until he returns and is forced to wear a face mask on base and stand 6 feet behind the person in front of him in line. So I let him know that “re-enlisting probably wouldn’t be the worst option ever”. He’d even get a hefty re-enlistment bonus, but he says that doesn’t hold any weight in his decision. He needs to decide by May 6th in order to get the re-enlistment bonus. I don’t even know if he’ll be back by then. I don’t even know what his separation date would be if does decide to get out. Sometime this summer obviously, but not sure when.

I just hope that whichever decision he makes is the one that makes him happy.