Real stories, told by real people.
Hope all is well with you on this fine Sunday afternoon. Today Jason joins us, and he's got a story tell.
A retired veteran who served 31 years in the military. Jason opens up, talking about his struggles early on. From osteomyelitis, failing the first grade, and dealing with learning disabilities, Teachers and school counselors told Jason "you're not going to college." Guess what? He proved em wrong. Jason didn't just go to college, he earned 3 degrees. How in the world did he manage to do that?
Jason takes us along, sharing how life was for him overseas, and in combat. Roadside bombs, live fire, and the emotional turmoil from his father passing, plus pending accusations, and investigations his chain of command. All while being deployed. Jason walks us through these dark times, and what became of the false allegations, as well as his work towards peace, balance, and mental health.
An author of two books : A Soldier Against All Odds, and Out Of The Uniform, Back Into Civilian Life, No Nonsense Benefits Guide. I'd like to welcome another GIANTS AMONGST US. Life in and out of uniform, and the inspiration behind both of Jason's books, plus a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy today's conversation. If you do, share it with a friend, it's FREE OF CHARGE, drop us a line, then give it a review. Appreciate you.
'Til next time
and very soon,
PEACE!!
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Jason Pike :
Website : https://www.jasonpike.org/
Jason's First Book, A Soldier Against All Odds: A Memoir : https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Against-All-Odds-Memoir/dp/B0BV1F28LK/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
Jason's Second Book, Out of the Uniform, Back into Civilian Life: No Nonsense Veterans Benefits Guide : https://www.amazon.com/Uniform-Back-into-Civilian-Life/dp/B0CK3XGCV1/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1696250650&sr=8-1
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/jasonpike.org
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/authorjasonpike/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-pike-7b6774137/
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Connect With Giants Amongst Us :
Website : https://giantsamongstus.org/
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Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/Giants_Amongst_Us/
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Background music by :
@bnoizemusic
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Here we go.
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Here we go.
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Baby, just hold on.
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Time becoming old.
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Back where I belong.
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Hold on.
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Now, here's a little story I got to tell.
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Welcome back to the show. We've got another one.
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This is Giants Amongst Us. Thank you for tuning in.
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This is a place where we share in the unique human experience
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and where you're going to hear real stories told by real people.
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People just like yourself.
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These stories are meant to give you a different perspective.
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These stories are meant to encourage you.
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Dare I even say inspire you if you're in a bad spot
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and you feel as if life is not worth the trouble.
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We all go through our struggles. We all come from different places.
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We all have our fair share of challenges, but change can be had
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just the way that life around us is constantly evolving, changing.
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It's never stagnant.
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So we look to apply that to our lives to grow, to develop, and to evolve
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into better human beings in general and also to be able to make sense of the world
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and to be able to navigate our ways through life, through its challenges,
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through its struggles, and just to become a more complete human being.
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How about that?
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So with that being said, today we're going to sit down and break bread
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with Jason Pike, who is a two-time author and also an ex-combat veteran
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who was deployed multiple times.
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He's going to talk about that with us.
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He's going to share his experiences overseas, what he's seen,
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his thought process while he was in the war zone.
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He had a couple of allegations going on that were looming over him,
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that were weighing down and just sucking the life out of him.
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People in the chain of command that were trying to assassinate his character
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and pin some very, very heavy charges on him while in combat.
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And during that time, he was also struggling with trying to cope
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and grieve the death of his father.
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These are things that were hanging over him.
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These are things that he was dealing with mentally, emotionally, spiritually
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as he was overseas being deployed in a combat zone.
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How was he able to stay balanced?
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How was he able to do his job and survive and come back in one piece?
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He's going to talk about that.
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He's also going to share how it was for him when he was a kid
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coming up with a learning disability.
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The odds stacked up against him being held back in the first grade, I think it was.
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There's a lot going on with this conversation.
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So rather than drag this on any further, I'm going to bring Jason on
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so he can share his story in his own words.
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This was raw. This was honest. This was sincere.
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And I think you all are going to enjoy it and take something from it.
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So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, this is Jason in his story.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show.
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This is Giants Amongst Us where we share in that unique human experience.
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And today I've got a very fine guest over here, Jason.
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He took time out of his day to spend with us, sit down and talk a little bit of story.
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So thank you so much for taking time out of your day.
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You could have been doing anything.
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Could have been anywhere, but here we are.
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So welcome aboard.
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Hey, it's good to be on your show.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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And yeah, let's get into some wild and crazy stories.
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Let's rock and roll.
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So for starters, just to kick this thing off,
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you mind sharing with us a little bit about where you come from
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and how it was for you coming up.
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Yes, I'm a career Army military soldier in the Army.
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I did 31 years in the Army, five different countries, nine years were overseas,
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and I was over there in Germany where you're at.
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And so I've been to many, many places around the world and I've seen a lot of things.
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I'm originally from a small town called Fingerville, South Carolina.
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That's a real small town.
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You could probably throw a rock over it.
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It's so small.
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And but yeah, it was just, I grew up in the country.
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I grew up fishing and hunting and running around in the woods,
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dogs and gardens.
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And I even grew some marijuana when I was a kid too.
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But yeah, I kind of grew up that way out there.
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And it was a good childhood for the most part.
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I did have some issues that came along, some problems,
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learning problems and some physical problems.
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That's kind of where I'm from.
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And what I did, I'm a, they call me a Lieutenant Colonel.
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I don't care about the title.
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I care about that paycheck that comes in every month.
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So, but yeah, so I did 31 years and that's kind of where I came from and who I am.
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I got, I got two books.
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I'm an author of two books out there.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, we're definitely going to talk about that.
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And when we were offline, you were speaking about now,
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what was it exactly that you were dealing with?
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Was it your leg, one leg, both legs?
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Yeah, one leg, one leg.
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Oh yeah.
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My left leg, I got a disease called osteomalitis when I was a kid.
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It's a bone disease and it infected.
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It was just, I bumped my knee like we all bumper in these when we're kids.
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And, but it triggered something that was already in the system.
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I'm not, I'm not a doctor, but the damn thing blew up.
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It became infected and it became the size of a cantaloupe.
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And I like, whoa, this is, and that, and that was in the 1970s and it was very, very painful.
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They had to put these shots into the left knee to, I guess it were antibiotics, but it had
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to go into the knee and it was painful.
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And eventually I kind of recovered my, my left knee is a little bit deformed, but I did
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recover through pain and.
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Oh, I was at so a hundred percent.
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Yeah.
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It was basically about a 90% recovery.
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It was still looking odd.
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It still clicked.
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It clicked and claimed and every once in a while it did that, but it was a, it was a
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pretty well good recovery, I would say.
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How long was that recovery?
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You know, about, it was about, it was a, so it was about a year.
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I was on crutches as a kid and once I got off the crutches, I had to build myself back
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up again.
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In other words, I had to, I had to physically, you know, just exercise and things of that
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nature and just get back into the groove.
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And then when I became a teenager, I had to work on my legs and things.
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I was not a big guy.
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I was small.
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I was kind of skinny and I had to like work, work on my legs and work running and things
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and, but it's right now it's doing pretty good.
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It's really as long, I like to, I can't run too much, but, but yeah, as long as I just
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do my leg lifts and do my squats and do my leg extensions and keep the muscles around
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that knee.
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Yeah.
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That's what helps out.
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Keeping active to this day.
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I keep active to this day.
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Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's physical.
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It's more than just mental.
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It's physical.
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It's mental.
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It's spiritual in many ways.
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And so I, I enjoy it to be physically active.
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Me as well.
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And you talked about, you spent a lot of time in the military.
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Now, just for starters, how did you find your way in listening into the military?
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Was it something you always wanted to do?
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I mean, the teachers and my casco counselors and even they knew that I could not go to
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college.
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They said that you've got these problems learning, which I did and I still do.
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I'm talking about doing very miserable on these college entrance exams.
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I'm talking about doing very miserable on these standardized testings.
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I just did very, very bad.
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I mean, and just, and so it was, it was a letter was given.
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I failed the first grade.
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I failed, I failed English writing and reading is what I failed.
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And I know that I'm an author right now, but you know, I, you know, I got helped.
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I got help on that.
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But, but no, really academics were one of the worst things of me.
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Really.
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I mean, I talked about the physical problem, but the academic problem was really tough.
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So I assumed that I'm probably going to have to do manual labor or go in to the military
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as a private, because as long as I don't have a, yeah, as long as I don't have a criminal
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record or maybe or as long as I've stayed off drugs, whatever, alcohol thing, I don't
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have to do that.
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I just said, that's probably where I'm going to start at would be in the military because
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college, they told me, even though I got caught three college degrees later on, but they said,
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Hey, there's no way you can do that.
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And I said, okay, well, I'll just join the military.
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That's kind of, that's kind of how I was working on it.
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Okay.
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So it was, you were just going off of what you're, they were saying, the elders were telling
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you like, okay, you know, I guess I'm not cut out for college.
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I'm going to take this route, but then you ended up swinging back around and going to
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college.
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Yes.
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And becoming an officer.
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Yeah.
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So I, I swung around.
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So I went into, uh, was it joined into the National Guard National Guard as a, as a reserve
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force.
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They used the nickname of the National Guard was nasty girls.
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That's what, yeah, they used to call nasty girls.
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That's right.
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We were a less, yeah, we can worry about your drinking beer on the weekend.
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You know, so, you know, we were sort of like, I don't know, we're a bunch of yay who's probably
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a bunch of rednecks just drinking beer on the weekends, but we were a less than best organization
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and I joined them weekend warrior.
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So my first initial experience with the military was going to basic training and that was active
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duty.
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All even National Guard people have to go to basic, the basic initial training that
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was in Fort Still, Oklahoma.
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And it was hell for me.
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I mean, it was personally the most hellacious experience that I've ever, one of the most
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I've ever had.
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And it was, I don't know if you've seen the movie full metal jacket and that's exactly
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that setup, the language, the barracks, the, it was just exactly the way it was.
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I was in the army, but see full metal jacket.
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That's the Marine Corps, but it was exactly that same.
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And so I go there and I'm one of the worst of the privates because I'm not able to drink
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that water coming out of that fire hose so fast.
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Do this, do that, do go, go here.
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And I'm just not picking things up.
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He, my, my sergeant, my drill sergeant identified me and another soldier as probably one of
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the weakest, two of the weakest privates out of the platoon of 40.
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So this story that I'm telling you does not happen, but it happened to me.
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We went to a criminal correctional facility at Fort City, Oklahoma, CCF is what they called
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it, senior asked CCF and we went there and made, and it was a different level of hell.
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We went, it was more of like a basic training on steroids.
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We didn't do anything criminal.
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It was sort of a drug deal with the sergeants to sort of make or break the worst privates.
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And I was one of the worst out of the platoon.
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Let's send them there as a drug deal and y'all deal with them and y'all make this level,
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increase the level of hell, big rocks and the smaller rocks, obstacle courses, screaming,
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yelling at a much, much higher standard or higher degree.
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And that's what we did for about only four hours.
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And when we came back, I thought I was a criminal.
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I thought I was going to be processed.
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It was like a good old smoke session.
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It was a huge smoke session at a different, yeah, it was a big, but it was a, yeah.
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And I thought, and also you think you're with these criminals and they're all getting smoke,
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they're living there and you're just like, you're in and it's kind of a scared straight
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program.
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And we came out of there all blooded up and broken and, oh my gosh, it was, it was hell.
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And then that is what sort of tweaked me, that kind of changed me.
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That I don't know, going through hell sometimes sort of, it stimulates parts of the body or
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the brain.
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And I thought at that point I could do a whole lot more in my life than people, because some
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things you just can't explain.
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I can try to explain this thing to someone who's not in the military or maybe it's hard.
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So I come back and something that everybody detected a change in me.
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And I did eventually graduate basic training.
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Of course I got out of that facility, but I said, you know what?
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They say I can't go to college.
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Fuck that.
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I'm going to go to college.
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They say I can't do this.
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I'm going to, you know what?
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They don't understand what the hell I went through.
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And so I wanted to sort of like challenge that because yes, I understand on paper and
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I'm by behavior that I can't do this.
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You can't do that.
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And I understand that.
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But now I'm thinking, no, I don't believe that anymore.
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And so I started to believe in myself.
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And first time I got a girlfriend too.
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But no, it's like, so a lot of things worked out really well.
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Because I developed my self-confidence.
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And so I got laid up to age of 18.
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And that was pretty cool.
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So a lot of things changed just because of the army going through some little extra hill
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and coming out of there and surviving and feeling confident that I could probably do
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a whole lot more.
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Yeah.
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That was like a chain reaction because you challenged the authority that were telling
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you, you can't do this or you can't do that.
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You're only going to amount up to this.
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And at the same time, because of that, you ended up challenging yourself.
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You became a whole new person on the counter.
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Or that was your push towards a different direction.
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Sure was.
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It was a debt.
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Was there everything?
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My everything.
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The catapult.
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The house.
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I was still in high school as a soldier.
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I came because I had failed the first grade.
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So I was older.
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I come back.
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So yeah, I was in 11th grade high school when I joined.
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And when I graduated basic training, see, I did it between my junior.
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So you were in a ROT program or honey?
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But what we're talking about the basic training, joining at the age of 17, I was still in high
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school.
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And I came back to high school to finish my 12th grade year.
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So see, you know, I'm a reserve soldier.
00:15:10
So I did those three months of basic training and advanced individual training at Fort
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Sill, Oklahoma, June, July and August.
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So I was like, so my summer was gone.
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I was, I was, you know, I was, I was active duty during my junior and senior year of
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high school because I was an older.
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Yes.
00:15:26
Because I, so yeah, so I come back to everybody.
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Like, ooh, this guy's changed.
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He's changed a lot.
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So I became more focused, more steely eyed, more determined.
00:15:39
I had, I had sort of flipped a switch, I guess.
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Sometimes that happens when you hit really hard bottoms and I couldn't even express what
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the hell I went through.
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I didn't, because it was so raw in my brain.
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I know something happened, but I, there's no way I could explain it.
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And I, I just said something's going on.
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I was, I was only 18.
00:16:00
I just turned 18.
00:16:01
And so I said, well, I think I'm going to go to college and I'm going to do this and
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that and this and that.
00:16:06
And so that's kind of how my thought was processing there.
00:16:11
When you get put in that environment, it does challenge and bring out some things in you
00:16:15
that you, you before that had no idea were there.
00:16:19
I don't know for you guys, did you have like certain things that you have to complete in
00:16:25
order to graduate, like say for instance, maybe a 20 plus hour, 20 plus mile road march or
00:16:32
a 10 mile run and those kinds of things.
00:16:35
When you think about it, you're like, no way I can do this.
00:16:39
But when, once you actually get put in that position and put yourself to that test and
00:16:43
realize the human body and the mind is capable of so much.
00:16:47
Once it's under that stress and it's tried by that.
00:16:50
And I'm sure that probably brought out some, like you said, the confidence in you.
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Like, wow, I did this.
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Yeah, I did it.
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I completed it.
00:16:59
But yes, it's the physical, it's the mental, it's the emotional.
00:17:05
It's overcoming a series of stressful events that brought you in.
00:17:11
And you know, maybe somebody who, I was pretty good at running and ruck marching.
00:17:17
But to me, all the mental games sort of screwed with me, the testing, the breaking down of
00:17:22
different machines like M16 and guns, the weapons.
00:17:26
So this mental thing and all the playing of the game sort of screwed with me.
00:17:31
I could push out, I could be pushups and sit ups all day long and I'm okay with that.
00:17:35
But yeah, so everybody has their, like, but when it came out of there, I was like, dude,
00:17:41
I think I can do more than people.
00:17:43
I mean, I just came back to high school to complete my 12th grade year and I was quiet
00:17:50
and, but I was focused and I says, you know what, I'm going to do as much as I can on
00:17:53
this 12th grade year.
00:17:55
That's the, you know, and I'll have to go to a junior college, a less than best type
00:18:01
of a school just to get my basics because I knew that my basics were pretty bad.
00:18:06
And, but no, that's kind of what my, that was raw in my mind and I couldn't even explain
00:18:12
what the hell happened.
00:18:13
That's how raw it was.
00:18:16
Coming out of basic training and then going into college.
00:18:19
How was that?
00:18:20
How did that work out for you?
00:18:21
Did you struggle at first?
00:18:22
Well, you know, I, I went to junior, a junior community college.
00:18:27
I was kind of, I was kind of, I was a JC, a junior college.
00:18:30
I was kind of ashamed personally to go because that's where the less than the best and I
00:18:36
will, you know, I got to start somewhere in life.
00:18:41
And so I thought, well, you know what, I'll just go to the junior college and they take
00:18:44
anybody who was lame, lazy or crazy and they didn't care about your test scores or anything
00:18:50
like that in the past.
00:18:52
And I said, well, come as you are.
00:18:55
And so I went in there and I applied myself.
00:18:59
There were smaller class sizes and I got tutoring help and I just worked and worked and worked
00:19:05
and I found jobs where you could study and work at the same time so you could get paid
00:19:10
like a security job and things of that nature.
00:19:13
And I, I just, I applied myself and I built up my confidence.
00:19:17
I started from the like general math and general biology and just the very basics that we
00:19:22
should have probably known in high school, but, and then I just built it up.
00:19:26
And then once I did two years, I trained, I was able to transfer.
00:19:30
Now you had asked about the ROTC and you know, even during that time, I was thinking I can
00:19:36
become an officer in the military, meaning a manager.
00:19:40
I thought that I could probably do that.
00:19:42
So it's not only in my mind thinking about going to college, but I'm thinking I could
00:19:47
probably be an officer in the military.
00:19:49
So those things were forming, storming and norming in my mind.
00:19:53
And that's kind of what I did.
00:19:54
So I went to junior ROTC program and I went to like a little Ranger cadet program and
00:20:00
I did as much military training as I could.
00:20:02
So I was in the National Guard and I was in college and I was an ROTC.
00:20:07
So I did all that at the same time and I was working.
00:20:10
So I had a lot of little feats in the fire, fire in the feet, whatever.
00:20:14
So I was going through a lot of different things at that stage from the age of about
00:20:17
18 up to 2022 and started at junior ROTC.
00:20:23
I finished that junior college and the ROTC and I went into a better university, Clemson
00:20:30
University in South Carolina and I went there and I got a contract as a ROTC scholarship
00:20:37
cadet.
00:20:38
And so my confidence and I was moving up that ladder, that little engine that could.
00:20:44
I kept on just doing these micro steps and I went through ROTC and I did, eventually
00:20:51
I got commissioned, I got my college degree and I came out as a second lieutenant commissioned
00:20:57
officer, bachelor's and I even went to my master's.
00:21:01
I just said, fuck it, I'm going to go.
00:21:04
I'm going to get my master's.
00:21:07
I remember talking to my mother and father and he said, what are you doing now?
00:21:11
I'm going to go get my master's.
00:21:12
Nobody had a master's degree.
00:21:13
He's like, I'm going to get my master's degree.
00:21:15
I was like, oh shit.
00:21:17
So I was like, but no, I felt my confidence was very, very high.
00:21:23
I felt that I could do a lot of things and I jumped on that and that was pretty cool.
00:21:30
But I'm not going to say that I had issues along the way as well.
00:21:33
I mean, nothing is perfect in life.
00:21:36
You always have ups and downs, there's valleys and there's mountains and you have to go up
00:21:40
and down.
00:21:41
So that's a life.
00:21:42
Yeah.
00:21:43
In my first book, a soldier against all odds.
00:21:47
That's what we're talking about for the most part.
00:21:49
Yeah.
00:21:50
Man, that's shooting for the stars right there.
00:21:52
You said, well, I guess it was coming down to the momentum you built to where you felt
00:21:58
like, all right, I got my bachelor's.
00:22:01
I'm almost there.
00:22:02
Might as well.
00:22:03
I did well as a, I was in a, so I did an area of concentrate.
00:22:08
Three years, four years.
00:22:10
I took a little bit longer.
00:22:12
I was on the five and a half year plan and probably, but see my bachelor's degree.
00:22:17
See, I had to do a whole lot of back work, back end work just to get my basics.
00:22:21
Then once I got my basics down, then I was able to transcend, transfer in.
00:22:25
I probably did my bachelor's degree in about five years and my master's in about five and
00:22:30
a half, another six months.
00:22:32
So while I was doing my bachelor's degree, I was also working on things to get my master's
00:22:37
degree.
00:22:38
I was kind of, and so, but I was, I fast tracked on the master's program because it was, I
00:22:44
was in an area of interest that I enjoy.
00:22:47
At the time I was from a farming background.
00:22:49
I did agriculture, but whatever you're interested in, whatever it takes to get the damn college
00:22:53
degree, you just get it and you want to get college educated, whether you're interested
00:22:58
in getting whatever.
00:22:59
So it doesn't mean that you're going to be in that field.
00:23:02
It doesn't just, just getting that certificate, educational degree of what you might want
00:23:08
to go for.
00:23:09
But I fast tracked up, especially in the master's program and I, but I was in an area of things
00:23:14
that I was interested in, but I took it slower.
00:23:19
Educational problems too.
00:23:20
I have an entire chapter in my book.
00:23:22
It's called where there's a wheel, there's an A as in the letter grade A.
00:23:28
And I focus in on one chapter.
00:23:30
I know this is a military memoir, but I focus in on how the hell I've got my college degree
00:23:36
and how I was able to get basic college education from someone who's a disabled on paper, three
00:23:42
different times, been verified professionally that I have problems learning and processing.
00:23:47
So I just wanted to focus in on that.
00:23:50
And so where there's a wheel, there's an A. It's basically just a way to how I studied,
00:23:55
which was I would sit at the front of the class or I would take recording devices, tape recording
00:24:01
devices to record the teacher, record myself.
00:24:05
I developed these animalistic ways of learning that were like a feeling oriented food.
00:24:14
Sometimes I would read and study and put food in my mouth or sweet tea or coffee.
00:24:19
Sometimes I would just change my location where there's a different site or in a different
00:24:23
smell and I would use these animalistic things of taste, touch.
00:24:28
Sometimes I would touch the paper and read out loud, read into a recording, listen back
00:24:32
to myself.
00:24:34
So I use my senses of like an animal does in various different ways to scratch and claw
00:24:41
to learn and to get the material inside my brain.
00:24:46
But I have an entire chapter.
00:24:47
That book that takes us or the reader through the whole journey.
00:24:51
Oh yeah.
00:24:52
A Soldier Against All Law is going to take you through the 31 years of my life of many failures,
00:24:58
fiascos, successes.
00:25:00
But you know, we love dirty laundry.
00:25:02
We love failure because that's where you learn your stories of failure and fiascos and events.
00:25:08
I come clean with that.
00:25:12
And that was the hardest thing to do is to come clean with your issues.
00:25:16
I am a Lieutenant Colonel.
00:25:17
I'm a senior person in the military.
00:25:19
I'm perfect, right?
00:25:20
No, nobody's perfect, but to really get down to the heart and to communicate with people,
00:25:27
you've got to show them your screw ups and your failures and your vulnerabilities.
00:25:31
And that's kind of what I did.
00:25:33
I did that pretty well in the book.
00:25:35
So yeah, A Soldier Against All Law will give you the good, the bad and the ugly.
00:25:41
Going back to when you were talking about all these different animalistic ways that
00:25:46
you figured out how to learn.
00:25:48
Was it through trial and error?
00:25:51
How did you get to that point where you understood yourself in a way like, okay, this is going
00:25:57
to work for me?
00:25:59
So yeah, I was watching television in the senior high school.
00:26:04
I was 18 years old.
00:26:06
I was about to go to college and some guy on a commercial named John Ritter, John Ritter
00:26:13
is a dude that was in three, a television show.
00:26:17
Three company.
00:26:18
Three company.
00:26:19
Yeah, he's there.
00:26:20
And he was on television saying, hey, if you don't know how to study, you need to get
00:26:26
this tape.
00:26:27
And it's a tape to teach you how to learn and study.
00:26:29
I was like, well, that's me.
00:26:32
And so it was like, it was called Where There's a Wheel There's an A. I just, I named the
00:26:37
chapter after his tape.
00:26:39
So where there's a wheel, there's an A. And so that was, and I said, okay, I'm going to
00:26:43
write in and get this little VHS tape and look through it.
00:26:47
And I did.
00:26:48
And I looked through it and there's a lot of things in there that didn't apply for me.
00:26:52
But there's, it's like a toolbox and you'll, you'll take the toolbox, you'll pick tools
00:26:56
that work for you.
00:26:58
They may not work for him or me or you or this.
00:27:00
And so you, and he gave me all these little techniques that I could use.
00:27:05
And then, but you could pick and choose what might, and I, and then I experimented.
00:27:10
I actually experimented with what index cards, recordings, and it worked.
00:27:16
I picked a few things that worked and I exploited that on the chapter, but really, it could
00:27:22
be like what works for me may not work for you.
00:27:25
What works for you and it may not work for me.
00:27:27
So that's kind of how I did it from John Ritter.
00:27:30
Yeah, I think he's passed away now.
00:27:32
Yeah.
00:27:33
That's what it's about.
00:27:35
And that is a big part of why I like sharing different stories from different people.
00:27:40
Because it's like a buffet.
00:27:42
You take what is going to be tasty and delicious for your palate and then you leave the rest.
00:27:48
And the same with the stories that you hear and the different tools and resources that
00:27:52
people are using.
00:27:54
Now one might, may not be, it isn't fitting for you, but then there's something else like,
00:27:58
you know what, this resonates and clicks with me.
00:28:00
I'm going to go ahead and add this to my, you know, to my toolbox.
00:28:04
And then you work from there.
00:28:05
Like it seems like you were open to everything.
00:28:07
Okay.
00:28:08
Well, this, this fits.
00:28:09
This doesn't.
00:28:10
And you, you, you kind of hybrid your machine to get it going exactly to where you, you
00:28:16
want to get going in life.
00:28:17
And so after, after you got your masters, was that when you enlisted full time into the
00:28:22
military, how did you transition from, from going to college to getting in uniform full
00:28:27
acting?
00:28:28
Yeah.
00:28:29
So I, what I was, so once I got my college degree and I got my master's degree, I was
00:28:33
in the National Guard for about two.
00:28:36
Okay.
00:28:37
You were still, I was still reserved for a little while.
00:28:39
Before I went active, I stayed on.
00:28:42
I had a ROTC, yes.
00:28:44
So yes.
00:28:45
Eventually I got picked up to go to active duty.
00:28:48
I went on to active duty probably two and a half years after I graduated and they picked
00:28:53
me up to go into the special forces.
00:28:55
I went in with a green berth, the, the, the, the snake eaters.
00:28:58
And so I had had some series of failures as a civilian person with jobs.
00:29:06
I was still a reserve commissioned, you know, National Guard, I was still a reserve weekend
00:29:10
warrior.
00:29:11
I had some jobs that just did not work out.
00:29:13
I have been fired, of course.
00:29:15
And they called me up ironically just saying, Hey, we think we, we forgot about your obligation
00:29:22
to go active duty.
00:29:24
And they said, you need to go active duty to fulfill the obligation of the ROTC scholarship.
00:29:29
Yeah.
00:29:30
This is a, this is a great time.
00:29:31
I didn't tell them I was unemployed and been fired from two jobs.
00:29:34
I said, Oh, that's cool.
00:29:35
Let's go for it.
00:29:36
And so once I went on active duty in 19, that was it.
00:29:40
I was like, I'm going to stay here.
00:29:41
This is where I'm going to stay at.
00:29:42
And that's kind of the special force.
00:29:45
So I went into the 10th special force.
00:29:47
Yeah.
00:29:48
The green berets, the snake eaters, but I was a red beret.
00:29:50
I was airborne, but I was, I was, I was not the, I was a support person for the special
00:29:57
forces.
00:29:58
Yeah.
00:29:59
Okay.
00:30:00
But you still had to go through like they have their own separate, like kind of like
00:30:04
a basic training or volunteer.
00:30:06
I mean, you've got cooks, you've got supply sergeants, you've got, so I was just a rather
00:30:11
officer that was at a support level.
00:30:13
That was a, I was a chemical officer on the battalion staff.
00:30:17
So, so I was a, I had already been through airborne school, which is jumping out of airplanes.
00:30:23
So I had already, I'd done that in, when I was an ROTC winner.
00:30:28
And so, so I had been certified as an airborne trooper.
00:30:30
They called me up and they said, all you have to do to get here is to say, yes, volunteer
00:30:35
and set, use the verbally say, I will go, I will volunteer.
00:30:40
That's it really.
00:30:41
That was the only thing I had to do.
00:30:42
And that was a very good place to start as in the special force.
00:30:49
Would you sign up for, how many years did you sign up for?
00:30:51
I had to do a three year obligation.
00:30:54
So, so yeah, it was only a three year obligation.
00:30:57
And I went ahead and I, once I got in, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just
00:31:00
decided, this is, I, I made a decision.
00:31:04
This is it.
00:31:05
I mean, it wasn't, it was more like the benefits, the retirement, the money, the pay was pretty
00:31:12
good.
00:31:13
I thought it was, and it was more secure and you got to travel.
00:31:17
You got to go temporary duty.
00:31:19
You moved up these rank structures more.
00:31:21
I thought, you know, I thought, you know, from lieutenant to captain to major to this
00:31:25
and then the schooling and the travel opportunities.
00:31:29
I said, you know, and eat all I got to do is 20 damn years and I'll have a paycheck for
00:31:34
the rest of my life.
00:31:36
And as long as I keep myself out of trouble, which might have been tough, tougher to do.
00:31:40
And I says, yeah, I said, this is it.
00:31:42
I'm going to stay here.
00:31:44
And so I basically stayed.
00:31:48
I don't want to get too detailed, confusing on this, but I, I transferred my specialty
00:31:53
from the chemical core into the medical service core and I stayed on board.
00:31:59
I didn't go, I didn't go permanently into special forces.
00:32:02
I really, really enjoyed special forces very much the culture, the, the adventure, but
00:32:09
they were broken and bruised up really bad.
00:32:13
Once they get into their thirties and forties and again, I was thinking 20 years.
00:32:18
I'm thinking, I don't, I want to get out, but I also want to be relatively healthy.
00:32:23
So I had a vision of this is where I want to be and go and whatever it takes me, I want
00:32:28
to get into an area of interest and not getting all, yes, I love special forces, but that's
00:32:32
a young man's game.
00:32:34
I want to stay in this thing.
00:32:35
The long, I want to be in the long game, not the, not just a short game.
00:32:40
So I want to get my 20 years and I got, I went into a medical service core and something
00:32:44
area of interest in public health prevention of diseases.
00:32:47
And then I stayed on board with that for the 20 years for it.
00:32:50
So special forces, green berets, just in the very beginning and then transferred off into
00:32:56
more of a medical service core, public health type of background.
00:33:01
And when you were in the medical service, medical service core, that took you to a lot
00:33:05
of places, right?
00:33:06
A lot of deployments and you, you went probably all the way to Korea, El Salvador, you've been
00:33:12
to Afghanistan and Germany.
00:33:15
So yes.
00:33:16
And then just many places I can't even talk about.
00:33:19
So, but that learning of different cultures and different foods and, and different women
00:33:26
and it was just such an eye-opening experience that I thought, whoa, you know, I'm doing
00:33:32
things, I'm going places that none of my family members or people that I graduated with high
00:33:37
school have ever done.
00:33:39
And, and I, and again, I'm thinking I have gone above the zone.
00:33:43
I have gone above things that I just can't explain.
00:33:47
And I said, well, you know what?
00:33:49
Yeah, this is, this is cool.
00:33:50
I mean, you know, and I think I'm having, I'm learning, I'm growing and, and getting
00:33:56
promoted and going to schools and so having a good time.
00:33:58
And I thought, I'll just continue this path.
00:34:00
You know, the, the book that you, you mentioned, and I'd like you to talk a little bit about
00:34:06
that because you have two books.
00:34:08
Now, one of them.
00:34:09
Yeah.
00:34:10
Now, which one did you write first?
00:34:11
Is it against all odds?
00:34:12
Oh yeah.
00:34:13
The memoir, a soldier against all odds is my first, but I had to hire a ghostwriter.
00:34:19
Like I had to hire a trainer.
00:34:21
It's like having a personal trainer that knows how to be objective, like do this, do this,
00:34:28
do this.
00:34:29
And he would type and he would, he would type things, stories out for me.
00:34:33
He would video, videotape me and my stories and just like we're doing right now.
00:34:38
We went through a thousand of these sessions that I'm doing now over a period of about
00:34:43
four years.
00:34:44
Wow.
00:34:45
And he got all this information up and he just threw it out and he came up with the
00:34:49
story.
00:34:50
And I was, even if I knew how to write, I wouldn't recommend you writing it because if it's
00:34:55
emotional storied life, it's really difficult to process it objectively because it's your
00:35:02
life.
00:35:03
You want to get someone to help you out to form the story.
00:35:06
That's what I did.
00:35:07
So I had a ghostwriter and I started doing that after retirement and it was like just
00:35:13
a side project.
00:35:14
And what sometimes we don't know, like when you push, like if you're pushing pushups or
00:35:20
you're pushing weights or if you're out there exercising, you're stretching your, you can
00:35:25
push the memory cells.
00:35:27
And a lot of these things I have forgotten, but I have someone working with me asking
00:35:32
me these questions over and over, just like you're pushing up one, two, three, four, five.
00:35:37
And then after a while you break through and you remember things that you forgot about.
00:35:42
I don't know.
00:35:43
There's a memory muscle somewhere, I guess.
00:35:46
And that's what happened.
00:35:47
And I didn't journal.
00:35:48
You asked about journaling.
00:35:49
I didn't journal.
00:35:50
I just had somebody work with me over and over and over.
00:35:54
Bam, bam, bam.
00:35:55
And then I remember, now I'm remembering this.
00:35:59
And so that's kind of how that worked.
00:36:02
And you said, so this was after you already retired, was there something in particular
00:36:06
that kind of triggered it?
00:36:07
Like, you know what, this will make something worth speaking about and sharing with other
00:36:12
people to help them a little bit.
00:36:14
My father died.
00:36:16
That took a boom.
00:36:17
My father died, I was in hell.
00:36:20
And he always talked about having a legacy for himself.
00:36:24
And I thought, well, he had a lot of stories.
00:36:28
And then when my mother died, not long after him dying, I said, I am going to write a book.
00:36:36
And I know I wouldn't want to do it while they're alive, but I wanted to do it after
00:36:43
they passed away.
00:36:44
So that's what the death of my mother and my father, that's kind of what triggered me
00:36:49
to do it.
00:36:50
It's like, I'm going to do it.
00:36:52
I'm going to do this.
00:36:53
I don't even, I don't know how to write a book.
00:36:55
I've never written a damn book.
00:36:57
I don't know how to market a book.
00:36:58
I don't know all this.
00:36:59
There's so many things I just didn't know.
00:37:02
But I said, well, I can figure this thing out and get some help.
00:37:06
And that's exactly what I did.
00:37:09
And I just went ahead and I says, let's do it.
00:37:11
Let's make this happen.
00:37:12
And the book, the damn book was probably the most proudest moment after retirement, retiring
00:37:20
from the military is a proud moment.
00:37:22
But just getting this book done is like one of my cherished, like it was like, it's got
00:37:26
like a bucket list, which I'm not going to die, but I say it was a bucket list item.
00:37:30
It's like, and it was a big one.
00:37:32
And I can look back and always, I didn't know it was going to do as well as it did.
00:37:37
I had no idea I just did the best I could with the book and it definitely hit number
00:37:44
one many times.
00:37:47
And this short meeting with you right now, I mean, it seems like that's what you're about.
00:37:52
If I don't know how to do it, I'm going to figure this damn thing out.
00:37:55
One way or the other, like if it came from the, we're talking about writing a book and
00:37:59
or just the whole process of putting a book out there and publishing it and getting it
00:38:04
out to the public, racking your brain and going through everything that you went through,
00:38:09
your experience, your experiences, and then finally putting it on paper.
00:38:13
But then, and then going back to school and try to figure that thing out, you know, how
00:38:17
can I learn better?
00:38:18
How can I grow?
00:38:19
How can I make this, you know, use whatever my weaknesses are, figure out how to either
00:38:24
strengthen them or just navigate around it to where I can use something that's going
00:38:28
to benefit me.
00:38:29
So it's really, it sounds like, you know, you're about,
00:38:31
it's a troubleshooting, yeah, yeah, you'd like, okay, what do you want to do?
00:38:36
Write it out or think it out or put it there on like black and white.
00:38:40
This is what I want to do.
00:38:41
And then, you know, run, go for a walk, walk your dog, look at it.
00:38:47
You know, I mean, grandmother a long time ago said, put that goal or put that task on
00:38:52
your refrigerator, because we're always going to have to go to the refrigerator, get something
00:38:56
to eat or drink.
00:38:57
And so you would have it there and you have something there that you're okay and you're
00:39:00
triggering it and you're like, bam, bam, oh, okay.
00:39:03
But it's like, okay, well, I want to do this, but how do I get there?
00:39:07
And if you just keep like every once in a while button up against it, eventually you're
00:39:12
going to get through the gate, but it might take a little while.
00:39:16
Yeah, we'll get through the gate.
00:39:17
Yeah.
00:39:18
I know since you've already fleshed it out and put it on pages and now the book is available,
00:39:23
it's published and everything.
00:39:24
Was there one, I know you've been through a lot, you know, you're like a cat with nine
00:39:29
lives, but was there something in particular that you like going through it and then just
00:39:35
rethinking it and recommunicating it something that sticks out was like, oh man, this was
00:39:42
really tough to, it was kind of taxing emotionally, spiritually and you know, mentally to think
00:39:48
about and to put out on the pages.
00:39:50
I'd like you to also speak about, you know, we can get in that maybe towards the end,
00:39:55
like where we can find probably available everywhere, right?
00:39:58
You said it's audible.
00:40:00
It's audible on Amazon, Jasonpike.org, Jasonpike.org, but you're going to find it on Amazon.
00:40:07
That's where it's going to be with all the reviews.
00:40:10
Just look at the reviews.
00:40:12
You make your mind up on the reviews.
00:40:13
And yeah, and so the audible is in my voice.
00:40:16
I am the narrator.
00:40:17
I am the author.
00:40:19
You're going to feel the authenticity of the book.
00:40:23
And that's what's going to, I think.
00:40:25
And so, but yeah, narrator author, Jasonpike.org, that's my social, all my social media is on
00:40:31
the website.
00:40:32
So, but yeah, if you want me to, and you were exactly correct, there's some people called
00:40:37
me nine lives in many ways, but yeah, I can go into one of the deepest darkest times of
00:40:44
my life and it was not a war zone.
00:40:48
It was not in the war.
00:40:50
The deepest and darkest time did not have to do with getting shot at or seeing people getting
00:40:55
shot.
00:40:56
It really had to do with your own people, my own organization, the people that I work
00:41:02
with that are in peacetime.
00:41:03
That's what it had to do with.
00:41:04
And it was a personality situation.
00:41:07
I'm going to tell you that I was not always the smartest knife in the drawer.
00:41:12
I was not, I was a little bit awkward, a little bit socially awkward.
00:41:17
That's just my character.
00:41:19
That's kind of, and I was a quiet, I'm not as, I'm not as outspoken as I was back then.
00:41:25
I was more quiet and shy and stuck to myself a bit.
00:41:30
I had an awkwardness about me, but I didn't get along.
00:41:33
I was a senior person at the time when the darkest times hit.
00:41:36
I was a senior.
00:41:37
I was a lieutenant colonel in the army.
00:41:39
I had served probably at that time over 20 years in the military and I was in South Korea.
00:41:46
South Korea is just a station that we go to.
00:41:49
I've been there.
00:41:50
This is my third time going over there.
00:41:52
This is where the situation that I'm going to talk to you about happened.
00:41:55
It was in South Korea.
00:41:56
It was peacetime.
00:41:58
Even though it was post 9-11, we were peacetime with South Korea.
00:42:02
It was a garrison environment, you know, nine to five job pretty much.
00:42:07
And I had my family there.
00:42:08
So I was not alone.
00:42:09
I had my family.
00:42:10
I had a daughter.
00:42:11
I had a wife.
00:42:13
I was pretty much doing pretty well in the military overall.
00:42:18
I have not gone overseas to the war zone.
00:42:20
I had been to El Salvador.
00:42:22
I had been to other places, but not into the war zone.
00:42:25
But this was my worst time that happened.
00:42:28
And it was just a personality conflict, really, of how I should do my job.
00:42:34
Now I have strengths.
00:42:37
My strengths are leadership and executive work.
00:42:40
Not really doing a lot of the detailed network of publications and research.
00:42:46
So I had a conflict with some senior people, just more of a conversational, like a disagreement
00:42:53
about not nothing yelling or screaming, just like, you know, I feel that I could do better
00:42:58
if you put me in these executive levels, like just leadership and management, instead of
00:43:03
like having to do neat detailed type of a work.
00:43:07
And it didn't go well.
00:43:09
The power, what I did not, what I failed to understand, my failure at understanding is
00:43:16
power politics in the military.
00:43:19
And I didn't know that people can take things so personal that they get a vendetta.
00:43:26
They get vindictive towards you.
00:43:28
To me, I just thought it was a disagreement and not necessarily anything personal.
00:43:34
And it's like, you know, if you want to do this, that's fine.
00:43:36
But I feel I need to do this.
00:43:39
And it was more like, more of a, but they took it, they took it personal.
00:43:45
Everybody's got a little space of turf that you walk.
00:43:48
I didn't, I walked on the turf, I treaded on the turf.
00:43:52
I didn't know the turf was so damn important.
00:43:55
And so that was my failure as well, not understanding that.
00:44:00
And I felt, I found myself in a series of investigations and accusations that were very
00:44:06
hurtful to me.
00:44:07
I mean, frankly, I've been shot at in war, but I would rather, I would rather be shot
00:44:12
at than have these things.
00:44:14
But well, I can, I'll develop the story also that it is really difficult to get rid of
00:44:23
a senior military person.
00:44:25
It is really difficult to even transfer them because you want your set in the government,
00:44:32
either it be the government or the military, once you, it's kind of hard to, you know,
00:44:39
to transfer you or to eject you out.
00:44:41
And, but what you can do, these, these people that were against me, what they did do is
00:44:48
they stirred up rumors and then later on an investigation.
00:44:51
So I'll, I'll form it that way.
00:44:54
So there are, there are games that can be played in the government, in the military
00:44:59
that can screw with people and get them away or get or transfer them.
00:45:04
So what it was in the beginning, I talked to you about, I just didn't walk the walk.
00:45:08
I didn't talk to talk.
00:45:09
I didn't, I walked on some turf.
00:45:11
I did some things that there, nothing unprofessional, more like just a gusset.
00:45:15
Well, the first thing that I faced was I was considered a pedophile, a full colonel in
00:45:22
the young son army garrison throughout a rumor throughout not only the office, but
00:45:26
the, that I was a pedophile and that was only a rumor and it was an accusation and didn't
00:45:34
go anywhere.
00:45:35
Didn't go anywhere, but I had to live with false allegations that I, from senior people
00:45:40
that I was a pedophile, nothing happened.
00:45:42
There was no investigation, nothing.
00:45:44
It was just like, okay, I got dirty looks and things of that nature.
00:45:47
My daughter and my wife were there and they, my daughter went to the Seoul elementary school
00:45:52
and I was a playful father.
00:45:54
I was a very outgoing love fatherhood very, very much.
00:45:58
And yes, I went to the school and I ate lunch with my daughter and I would play out there
00:46:03
on the playground, swinging on swings.
00:46:04
And I just, you know, I love that young phase of fatherhood very, very much.
00:46:09
So, and, but I was not a pedophile, but they threw that out there.
00:46:14
Nothing happened.
00:46:15
Okay.
00:46:16
So a year later, after the pedophile was gone, then this was more serious.
00:46:21
This accusation, this was a federal investigation of subversion and espionage against the US
00:46:26
government.
00:46:27
So with this one, I went on top of the Hill, Yongsan Army Garrison, there at the Dragon
00:46:32
Hill, Dragon Hill.
00:46:35
And this was like, okay, they had CID, criminal investigation division, and then they had
00:46:40
MMI, military intelligence.
00:46:42
So I'm going to give my, the enemy credit.
00:46:46
If they didn't hit me one way, they tried to hit me a different way.
00:46:48
So I went from a pedophile to a spy within a year and a half.
00:46:52
So I went up there and I faced the wind about a federal investigation of espionage against
00:46:57
the US government.
00:46:59
And CID was there.
00:47:01
So they had two different offices on this, in this office up there near the gas station.
00:47:06
So it was a Japanese compound, but they, so you had CID, two sets of CID, two sets of
00:47:13
MMI.
00:47:14
One was in my commander's office and one was in the office that I was being briefed and
00:47:19
they were being briefed at the same time with two sets of them.
00:47:22
This is what's going on.
00:47:23
This is what's going on.
00:47:24
This is what Jason's accused of.
00:47:26
This is what's going to happen.
00:47:27
We're going to follow through with this investigation to see if there's any, okay.
00:47:33
I was really angry and I was also blindsided because I thought, oh, well, I'm going to
00:47:39
go face pedophile charges, but no, it was espionage charges.
00:47:43
They had changed this thing up.
00:47:44
And that became like, oh God, I can't believe this happened.
00:47:47
I like, no, I have not been selling secrets.
00:47:50
I have not been passing on information to foreign nationals.
00:47:54
And so for, from that point on, I went through an investigation that occurred for about a
00:47:59
year, year and a half.
00:48:01
My security, you know, I had to get a defense attorney.
00:48:04
I didn't, I never went to the level of having to go to court because there was nothing there.
00:48:10
And, but I had to just get a defense attorney and tell him what was going on and just watch
00:48:16
my back.
00:48:17
And they had monitored my computer.
00:48:20
They had monitored my activity and they were scoping me.
00:48:24
They were scoping me out.
00:48:26
And nothing, nothing happened.
00:48:28
Nothing, there was no, no, nothing that went to the court, but it did drive me into paranoia
00:48:35
because I don't know, like, I definitely know people are out to get me.
00:48:39
I became a damn pedophile.
00:48:41
Now I'm a damn spy.
00:48:42
I haven't done a damn thing.
00:48:44
So I is developed in the back of my head.
00:48:48
I was even wondering myself, like, am I really going crazy?
00:48:52
And I felt guilty.
00:48:54
I felt ashamed and I haven't done anything.
00:48:58
That was the hardest part of my entire life was right there as a senior person in the
00:49:05
military with many, many accomplishments and many college degrees.
00:49:09
And but no, I first time I ever seek mental health was there.
00:49:14
And that was when it was not popular and at all.
00:49:17
And I, I, I, I went to Chaplain to get him.
00:49:20
There's been any time I was like, I was like crawling on the floor, like starving for something.
00:49:25
I said, I'll go, I'll go chaplain.
00:49:28
I'll go mental health.
00:49:29
I'll go in.
00:49:30
That's how bad it was to try to get some help.
00:49:33
And I had my family there as well.
00:49:36
They, they were, they were very helpful with me, but I unloaded a lot to you.
00:49:41
So I don't know if you got any questions about that is crazy.
00:49:49
I mean, because I'm just, I'm trying to understand now, is all of this able to get pushed to
00:49:56
the extent it was pushed just off based off of hearsay?
00:50:01
Like there was nothing that they had that they can stick on you or, you know, any kind
00:50:07
of evidence or anything.
00:50:09
It's just a superior that is saying this.
00:50:11
And so because of that, they were able to take it to where they were going to push charges
00:50:15
and really throw the book at.
00:50:17
Yes.
00:50:18
Yes.
00:50:19
They had verbally told me that I would go to a board of inquiry and that I would be
00:50:26
kicked out.
00:50:27
That would be kicked out.
00:50:28
That would be kicked out.
00:50:29
And she told that fucking bitch told me, she said, once they know you have issues with
00:50:36
children, you will, you will not be nor a popular guy.
00:50:41
What did that come out of?
00:50:42
Because you were spending time with your daughter?
00:50:44
Yes, I was.
00:50:45
And she, that, that woman didn't have a damn daughter.
00:50:47
She didn't have any children.
00:50:48
She was not married.
00:50:49
I don't even know if she ever had a boyfriend or not.
00:50:52
But for her to say that she's not a, she doesn't know.
00:50:56
And so she was sort of like a woman on the rag in a way that was a Colonel.
00:51:02
It was like, she was screaming and yelling.
00:51:04
Although she was always upset about something, but that's just her temperament.
00:51:08
And I think, you know what?
00:51:11
But knowing that that's where I almost dropped.
00:51:13
I've never dreamed of years to kill people like a fantasize over.
00:51:20
We've all got angry and we say, I'm going to kill them in a day or two.
00:51:22
And that was a fantasy.
00:51:23
I would fantasize for years on the people that did me wrong in the situation that I
00:51:30
described.
00:51:31
And not just one year, two, I talked about five years, six years.
00:51:36
I had, I had to go through therapy after retirement just on this one event that I talked to you
00:51:41
about.
00:51:42
And it lived with me for a long time.
00:51:44
Those are some serious charges.
00:51:45
There were some serious charges.
00:51:47
They had pushed, they had pushed me in a way.
00:51:50
I don't know.
00:51:51
We all got our trigger point, I guess.
00:51:53
But it pushed me in a way that I have never been pushed before.
00:51:58
And it really affected me.
00:52:00
It really did.
00:52:01
It was a, it was a, it was like, this is the only thing I've succeeded at.
00:52:05
And now they're trying to throw you out of the fact.
00:52:09
Even people around you, right?
00:52:10
I'm sure that there was a lot of people around you that were looking at you a little different
00:52:13
now.
00:52:14
Like, wait a minute.
00:52:15
Yeah.
00:52:16
So that got, yeah.
00:52:17
And so, yeah, so yeah.
00:52:18
Assassinating your character.
00:52:19
Yeah.
00:52:20
So the only thing that you talked about, it was a assassination character.
00:52:22
It was sort of a grieving process.
00:52:25
I'm back on my own.
00:52:26
I'm back on the street again.
00:52:28
I'm going to have to, and I really thought I was going to get kicked out of false bullshit
00:52:32
that was being stirred up.
00:52:34
And it, so the only thing stick with, the only thing that stuck was a bad evaluation,
00:52:40
one time bad evaluation.
00:52:42
That was the only thing that was a, not, not really bad.
00:52:46
It was a very, it was a much less than best.
00:52:49
That was the only thing that stuck.
00:52:50
There was no legal things that stuck.
00:52:52
My security clearance was, it was clear.
00:52:55
There was no problems there.
00:52:57
But I went through a lot of hell and it really was a punch.
00:53:00
It was something that weakened my core structure of who I was and who I developed to be.
00:53:08
It's sort of, we all got that point where we break away and that sort of, that definitely
00:53:14
that definitely knocked me, that definitely knocked me in a, like a, like a psychological
00:53:20
way.
00:53:22
That was a tough, tough time.
00:53:23
That was, that was a tough time.
00:53:25
And of course, you know, my thought process was, you know, suck it up like I do everything
00:53:31
else.
00:53:32
Just suck this thing up.
00:53:33
And, but that doesn't work really well sometimes.
00:53:36
And you eventually, you have to, you break.
00:53:40
I mean, other things that come along in life are going to make you more, you have to process
00:53:46
things out.
00:53:47
You have to get things out.
00:53:49
Because if you don't get it out, you can't become stronger later.
00:53:52
You, you have to get these emotions, these things and feelings.
00:53:56
And I, at the time I was like, I've got other things to do, man.
00:53:59
I'm going to, I've got to, I'm going to knock out Afghanistan.
00:54:02
I'm going to go over here.
00:54:03
I'm going to go over there.
00:54:04
And I'm going to show them, I'm going to show them throughout time, success will be my
00:54:10
revenge.
00:54:11
How long did, did this process get dragged on where you were having the, where you had
00:54:16
this, these charges over you and you're dealing with one thing after the other.
00:54:20
They didn't tell me they were sorry.
00:54:22
They didn't come to me and say, we fucked things up.
00:54:26
They didn't say that.
00:54:27
There was not, it was just went away.
00:54:29
But in my mind, I was still in, I was in paranoia, feeling that even after I left South Korea,
00:54:37
maybe somebody's still trying to get me.
00:54:39
You know, I was like, and so I'm in a war zone.
00:54:42
My father had died shortly after that in federal investigation.
00:54:46
My father had died.
00:54:47
I had talked to him about it.
00:54:48
And then I was going to be placed into Afghanistan in a war zone after my right, right when my
00:54:54
father died, right after he died, I went over there and I took a command over to Afghanistan.
00:54:59
But the war zone was not really bad.
00:55:04
In other words, to me, I had been trained up for this is my life.
00:55:07
This is what I've been doing.
00:55:08
So the war, it was having these other skeletons in the closet that I hadn't processed with.
00:55:15
I had the damn federal investigation that was giving me paranoia on a day to day basis,
00:55:21
regardless if I was in a war or not.
00:55:23
And then of course, my dad's death, I hadn't, I went right over to Afghanistan after my
00:55:28
dad's death.
00:55:29
So when I was in war, my processing ability had gone down and I had to tell my soldiers,
00:55:35
I could have declared mental health and avoided the war because we have to go through a screening
00:55:40
process.
00:55:41
But, you know, I don't know, I said, you know, my father wouldn't want me to do this and
00:55:46
he had just died and I told my troops that my father had died and then that you're going
00:55:51
to have to help me out because I'm like really low.
00:55:54
I never did tell them about the federal investigation because it was still too raw in my mind.
00:56:00
Nobody could, I couldn't even understand that myself of all that stuff that happened.
00:56:05
And so I just said, just take care of my, just take care of me.
00:56:10
And they did, they took care of me, I took care of them the best I could.
00:56:14
I was the commander over there and we did about a year in Afghanistan.
00:56:18
You know, we had three to five times a week where you had bombs that would come in, indirect
00:56:24
fire and mortar rounds.
00:56:26
We would run out of the bunkers and go to, we would run out of our tents to go to the
00:56:30
bunkers.
00:56:31
We were just doing our job over there.
00:56:33
We were not the war fighters as far as going to kill people.
00:56:36
We were pretty much in there for medical support and their support.
00:56:41
I saw a Humvee got blown up outside of the gate, had an IED, an improvised explosive
00:56:46
device just vaporized the Humvee with everybody in it.
00:56:51
And again, you know, how I've got through some things was an entire, like a deep focus
00:56:57
on what I need to do.
00:56:59
Left foot in front of the right, go straight, don't deviate, try not to get distracted.
00:57:05
I have an end in mind, end is to get out of the event or get through the mission.
00:57:11
So I would not like go to funerals.
00:57:14
I would not want to go see the Humvee got blown up.
00:57:17
I didn't want to see it because I had a focus.
00:57:19
I said, I'm going to stay.
00:57:20
They weren't, they were not my soldiers anyway, but I was, I wanted to focus on one foot in
00:57:24
front of the next and go towards the mission, get out of there.
00:57:29
And then we can, I didn't think about this stuff later on.
00:57:31
So yeah, that's kind of how my thoughts were at that.
00:57:34
I checked out your website and then you had some blogs and some of the topics are navigating
00:57:39
through navigating mental health and then just overcoming challenges.
00:57:44
Now, is there something that really helped you out during the deployment?
00:57:50
Because it sounds like you had two battles going on.
00:57:52
You had the battle that's going on around you externally.
00:57:55
And then you had that internal battle with the death of your father.
00:57:59
And then on top of that, like you mentioned, these federal investigations that were hanging
00:58:03
over your head.
00:58:04
I mean, how, how, how were you, yeah, what were some tools or some resources or something
00:58:10
that helped you out during that time?
00:58:12
Oh yeah.
00:58:13
Oh my gosh.
00:58:15
Yeah.
00:58:16
So, um, this was like really early on, uh, gosh, I did this by accident.
00:58:24
Like I said, I was a sort of a creator.
00:58:26
I played around with things and this is what worked for me.
00:58:30
Um, I got on the machine, the elliptical machine.
00:58:33
I started to cry on the machine while I was in a physical state and I started to laugh.
00:58:39
And I didn't care about who was around me.
00:58:40
I got mad on the machine.
00:58:41
I like beat up the machine and I allowed my internal feelings to come forward while I
00:58:49
was in a physical state of sweat.
00:58:52
That, that right there just did something to me.
00:58:55
It felt like I was using the bathroom.
00:58:57
You know, you, you've seen people with a punching bag.
00:59:01
You can probably imagine what they're thinking about punching a bag, but you can do this
00:59:06
also with grief.
00:59:08
You can do this with loss of life.
00:59:10
You can do this with many, many things and it doesn't, and you can allow the, the, your
00:59:16
emotions to come through with the physical process.
00:59:18
And it's kind of like an emotional vomiting or using a toilet.
00:59:23
It was just, I cleared myself very well that way and I would continue to do that over and
00:59:29
over, over a period of time that helped me out a lot.
00:59:32
So, um, but you know, it could be walking your dog.
00:59:36
It could be talking to your dog or crying with your dog.
00:59:40
What I'm saying is there's a toolbox there.
00:59:42
There's many different tools.
00:59:44
You just got to check out what's right for you, but a lot of people that they may not
00:59:48
want to do.
00:59:49
So, man, it's too hard.
00:59:50
I have to, I have to try this.
00:59:52
I have to try that and that's going to take me stress to do this and do that.
00:59:56
Yeah, exactly.
00:59:57
Got it.
00:59:58
Got to try it out.
00:59:59
Man, it's like a menu, a buffet like we talked about.
01:00:01
Try it out, man.
01:00:02
It's like, just give it a try.
01:00:03
Well, I don't like crabs.
01:00:05
Oh, well, I don't know.
01:00:06
I don't even know what to taste like.
01:00:08
Maybe I can try them.
01:00:09
So it's just one of those things.
01:00:11
Try this method out and you know, personally, I don't like yoga, but that's just me.
01:00:16
Meditation, maybe okay.
01:00:18
But you know, there's just many things out there to help you with your trauma or your
01:00:24
situation that you're in.
01:00:26
Personally, I don't care about the medicines.
01:00:28
I'm more of a natural, but that's just me.
01:00:31
But hey, medicines may help you, but they didn't help me at all.
01:00:35
But that's just my thoughts on these things that you try and try and try again and check
01:00:41
it out.
01:00:42
And that's something that you would do.
01:00:43
Were you doing that like on a weekly basis or a daily basis?
01:00:47
On a daily basis.
01:00:49
I do it now, not necessarily to that degree because I'm not in that state of hell that
01:00:54
I was before.
01:00:57
But if I do get into some stressful times, I will do that more of a minimalist way.
01:01:03
I mean, like, you know, you're out there gemming, you're running it, or you have your iPod and
01:01:09
you're allowing your emotions to come through this way or that way.
01:01:12
But I'm thinking you've got to get in touch with the feelings of the core self, express
01:01:17
them through a physical, to me, just physically, and then allow that to come out.
01:01:25
It's kind of like a healing.
01:01:29
We all, every day we go to the toilet, every day we have to go to sleep, wake up, we have
01:01:33
to eat something.
01:01:34
It's sort of a management technique that you can do that I found that was good for me.
01:01:41
I found another thing out, not long ago there's a facility where you can sit into a sauna,
01:01:49
allow all the sweat comes out, and then jump into an ice bath, then get that cold, that
01:01:59
heat.
01:02:00
I said, ooh, I did that today.
01:02:02
It just makes me feel good.
01:02:05
They say there's a bunch of science behind it, but I don't know.
01:02:08
I just do it because it feels good to me and it works for me and it's not a drug.
01:02:12
But like I say, nobody likes to sit in the ice water.
01:02:16
I understand that.
01:02:17
But your mind, you break a barrier, you push back.
01:02:22
You don't know what you don't know and now it's a relief for me in many ways.
01:02:26
I think that's important and that's something that you see that could be a problem for people.
01:02:33
I mean, I'd say myself included.
01:02:35
Like you mentioned, if there's anything that's going on in your life and that you're struggling
01:02:41
with things that you've dealt with, failures, mistakes, trauma, abuse, whatever it is, but
01:02:48
to be able to sit or like you said, be active, but to feel those emotions.
01:02:56
Because it's real easy to run away from them or to just numb it with, we have medications,
01:03:03
we have alcohol, we have drinks.
01:03:05
Let me take your pic.
01:03:06
There's a lot of ways where we can just numb it and we don't want to deal with it because
01:03:09
it's painful.
01:03:10
It hurts.
01:03:11
But after that, like you experienced, there's a release.
01:03:15
That's the only way I think that you're going to flush it out, release it and then you can
01:03:21
move forward with it.
01:03:23
But you have to be able to sit and experience those emotions.
01:03:27
Yeah, it's tough though.
01:03:28
In our times, it's tough.
01:03:30
I mean, you go through the pain, reliving the pain, reliving the failure, the broken
01:03:38
situations that have may occurred.
01:03:41
And then my book was also a release.
01:03:43
This is another way of my therapy.
01:03:46
You're helping and I continue by talking to you and telling you these stories.
01:03:51
That's also another method of healing and letting other people say, hey man, this happened
01:03:57
to you.
01:03:58
But so I go through different ways of doing this.
01:04:02
You, the book, the writing, the podcasting, whatever it takes to heal and to come to the
01:04:09
closure.
01:04:10
And you know what?
01:04:11
Like if somebody says, hey man, you helped me out a lot.
01:04:14
So I'm on that level of the mountain where like if I help somebody out and they tell
01:04:18
me something happened to me, it makes me feel good in a way that is probably different for
01:04:24
me to help somebody out.
01:04:26
I'm at a point in life where like if I help anybody out, dude, you don't know, there's
01:04:32
no amount of money for that.
01:04:33
I'm at a different zone and that's priceless.
01:04:37
Yeah.
01:04:38
It's priceless.
01:04:39
It's priceless on that one.
01:04:40
Yeah.
01:04:41
So got me on that one.
01:04:42
Got me going on there.
01:04:45
Talking about how I mentioned earlier, I was on your website and then one of the quotes
01:04:50
that I like that I read from you was the one that said, I have been neck deep and shit
01:04:55
and almost drowned, but I got out and you can't.
01:04:58
And I have been neck deep and shit.
01:04:59
If you want to go to that story, I got that one.
01:05:01
I got that one.
01:05:02
Yeah.
01:05:03
Yeah.
01:05:04
I can, I have been, I have almost drowned in shit really.
01:05:10
And it was in 1994.
01:05:12
It was in South Korea.
01:05:14
It was my first station to South Korea.
01:05:16
I was a soldier.
01:05:17
I was a lieutenant.
01:05:18
I was there, you know, laying navigation, walking around in the woods with a map and
01:05:25
a compass is sort of a basic skill thing that we train on.
01:05:29
And you know, I'm a lieutenant and I got a map and a compass.
01:05:33
That's kind of dangerous.
01:05:34
But no, it really was.
01:05:35
Walking in circles.
01:05:36
Walking in circles.
01:05:37
Yeah.
01:05:38
But I was on this field exercise, but it was more of a, it's called an expert field medical
01:05:47
badge.
01:05:48
It's a badge that you get.
01:05:49
It's on the, it's, it's, and we did this solo.
01:05:53
We did this on our own as far as these exercise.
01:05:56
Well, the situation was, okay, I'm going to do some land navigation.
01:06:01
They dropped us off about 20 of us to do this exercise.
01:06:06
We get some of them more private.
01:06:08
Some of them were sergeant.
01:06:09
Some of them were lieutenants like me, whatever.
01:06:12
So we have our individual areas that we go to, to find our maps, to find the points on
01:06:18
the map and to go through the exercise.
01:06:21
It was at night, we were alone.
01:06:23
Well, I was walking along at night and everybody was different doing different places.
01:06:30
We're all separated from each other, doing different types of extras, doing the map navigation,
01:06:35
land navigation.
01:06:36
I smelled it.
01:06:37
I smelled a cesspool.
01:06:39
They had told us these things were there.
01:06:41
They used shit as feces.
01:06:43
They used it as fertilizer in their crops.
01:06:46
And I said, okay, I could smell it.
01:06:49
I know it's over there.
01:06:51
I'm going to stay away from it.
01:06:53
And so I, but, you know, there's a slick.
01:06:56
I slipped into something that was very slippery.
01:07:00
And then like a night, like really, very fast, I went into the, I went into a cesspool.
01:07:07
It was on the side of the, I was neck deep in it.
01:07:09
I felt at the time that I was going down.
01:07:12
It was like a quicksand material.
01:07:14
I don't understand, I have my rifle and I have my equipment, my backpack, and I have
01:07:19
a lot of things on me and it's sinking.
01:07:21
I'm sinking down into it.
01:07:23
So I was going down and shit.
01:07:25
And it was at night and I was alone.
01:07:28
And it was in a foreign country, a place that they don't speak English very well out in
01:07:33
the countryside.
01:07:36
And you know what?
01:07:37
I felt that I was going to drown in shit.
01:07:39
I really did.
01:07:40
I felt that I was going to die, die there and feces and shit as a lieutenant.
01:07:46
I was only, I was probably 28 years old and never, never been married, never had children.
01:07:52
Damn.
01:07:53
And so I thought, you know, my thoughts at the time while I was going down like in the
01:07:58
feces of the shit, I thought that, you know, I got more to life to learn.
01:08:03
I've got, I mean, I don't want to die like this.
01:08:06
I felt, you know, I've never had any family.
01:08:08
I've never had any children.
01:08:10
And, you know, my last name is Pike and they're going to call me pooping pike.
01:08:16
And I'll go down like, you know, I'm going down in shit.
01:08:19
I mean, I'm going to drown.
01:08:21
This is not a great thing.
01:08:22
This is not a way to go out.
01:08:23
And I started like experimenting.
01:08:26
I got up, I kind of got up on as a caterpillar movement, very, very slow caterpillar movement.
01:08:32
And I got on top of it instead of it bringing me down, but it took me a slow time for me
01:08:37
to sort of maneuver my, I low crawled out of the shit.
01:08:41
And then I made it onto dry land.
01:08:44
I flipped over on my back and I looked up at the stars and I thought, you know, God,
01:08:49
you know, why do you put me in this shit?
01:08:51
Like you, you, I almost drowned in shit.
01:08:55
And I got out.
01:08:56
I felt God, why does this happen to me?
01:09:00
It seems like, you know, it's all these stupid things that happening to me in my life.
01:09:05
And I'm like drowning and I'm like, and this said, well, you know what, now I've got another
01:09:08
problem.
01:09:09
And this was my mind.
01:09:10
I thought, the next problem I have is to get out, find a way.
01:09:14
I'm a mob of shit.
01:09:16
I'm smelling like shit.
01:09:17
I've got to find a way to get back to camp without anybody knowing about it.
01:09:22
I don't want to say anything.
01:09:23
I want to save my face, my embarrassment.
01:09:26
You know, I'm a lieutenant.
01:09:27
I just fell into shit.
01:09:28
And like now I'm a, so I said, I find a way to save my face.
01:09:33
So I walked to, I'm not supposed to do this, but I did it anyway.
01:09:36
I walked to a Korean farmhouse family.
01:09:39
I went up, I don't even know how to speak Korean.
01:09:41
I knocked on the door.
01:09:42
I knew how to say, oh, I knew how to say, oh, I knew how to say, oh, they come, the woman
01:09:46
comes to the door, looks at me and is like, I knew, I knew.
01:09:51
He's like, I was like, I don't, at this point, English was not necessary.
01:09:56
We kind of, kind of went off the street.
01:09:58
Sign language.
01:09:59
She motions me to strip naked, I strip naked in front of a complete strange woman.
01:10:07
I give her everything except my weapon, my map and my compass.
01:10:11
And then I walk about a mile, about a mile through the woods naked, barefoot naked.
01:10:15
I give everything to her.
01:10:17
We have an agreement that she was going to wash it up and give it to me.
01:10:21
I figure it out where I'm at and give it to me.
01:10:24
And I walk back to camp naked.
01:10:25
You know, at this point, I call it a night for myself and as I was walking back naked,
01:10:31
I made sure I didn't, I made sure I wanted to stay away from anybody.
01:10:35
I didn't want to see them, see me walking back naked or smell me or see me.
01:10:40
So I kind of motioned my way through there and I got back, got back to camp.
01:10:44
I moved everything on the outside.
01:10:46
I cleaned up a little bit because I figured that she was going to come out and come to
01:10:50
the camp and she did it.
01:10:51
My fairy godmother, Ajima, the woman, she came and gave me all my clean clothes early
01:10:56
that morning.
01:10:57
And I got away with, you know, I didn't, I saved my face, I saved my life.
01:11:05
And I got out and I like, but I failed the course, but a two out of three ain't bad.
01:11:10
So I was successful two out of three times.
01:11:13
Wow.
01:11:14
Talking about literally drowning in shit.
01:11:18
Yes, drowning and being neck deep, being almost drowning in shit.
01:11:23
Yes, I got out of that.
01:11:26
That's just, yeah, there's just been so many things.
01:11:29
Just these life events that occurred that are just almost just kind of ridiculous.
01:11:34
A lot of failures and fiascos are throughout the book and a lot of failures and fiascos.
01:11:40
I mean, at that time falling into shit, you know, that was like, I got out of it.
01:11:46
Man, damn.
01:11:47
I think I can do all, you build up these like, oh man, I've been in shit.
01:11:52
I don't want to tell anybody about it, but I had to work just to talk to someone about
01:11:57
it.
01:11:58
It took me years.
01:11:59
To me, that's not trauma, but I don't know.
01:12:03
To me, it could be trauma to somebody.
01:12:05
It could may not be.
01:12:06
At the time I wanted to forget about it and go on in my life, but you know, there's things
01:12:10
that I consider trauma.
01:12:12
But you know what?
01:12:13
Trauma to you is what's not trying to me or vice versa.
01:12:16
You know, and it doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't mean anybody's more tougher than
01:12:21
anybody else.
01:12:22
It just means that some things hit you differently than other people.
01:12:26
But no, that was a funny, I consider that a very funny, good event to look back on that
01:12:32
I experienced.
01:12:33
I was going to ask you something like that too, was that out of all of these different
01:12:38
situations you've been in, like what was one of them that was a real close call?
01:12:43
It seems like that was one of them right there where it seemed like it was almost
01:12:46
curtains free.
01:12:47
It was almost, yeah, that was near death.
01:12:49
It was pretty much I could have gone under.
01:12:51
If I didn't play around with how the caterpillar out of it, no one taught me that.
01:12:56
I just played around in the shit.
01:12:58
You were chin deep in it.
01:13:00
You were slowly going all the way down, slowly going under, slowly going under.
01:13:05
Did it feel like it was going in slow motion for you?
01:13:08
I remember watching these shows in the seventies where a quicksand like a, oh, you gotta go.
01:13:14
I was wanting to go very slowly.
01:13:16
I purposely wanted to go slow.
01:13:19
I'm now in a totally different situation that's bringing me down.
01:13:24
So I wanted to move slowly.
01:13:26
I do remember seeing television shows of people dying in quicksand in Africa, whatever these
01:13:31
yeah.
01:13:32
And I remember then they said, you go slowly.
01:13:34
I used to watch them as a kid and I said, go really, really slow, really slow.
01:13:40
And that's what I did.
01:13:41
I went really slow and I'm moving over to get on top.
01:13:45
Like you're back in, you're here and then you sort of go up horizontal and then make
01:13:50
yourself out.
01:13:51
And that's kind of what I did.
01:13:52
And you were able to think about this as you're going through that and not panic.
01:13:56
You know what?
01:13:57
There is a certain quality, I will say positively that once I go into a situation like that,
01:14:04
I become, I don't know, I become calmer and creative.
01:14:08
There is a certain zone I go into, at least there I became more calm.
01:14:13
I didn't panic.
01:14:14
I didn't do that, which I don't know.
01:14:18
When I was in the EFETO investigation, I was in a paranoia panic mode.
01:14:23
But when I was like living, when I was about to die in shit, I became, I don't know, more
01:14:28
calm and collective.
01:14:29
I was more, yeah.
01:14:31
So different situations I reacted differently to.
01:14:36
There's a whole lot to dig into once somebody picks up that book.
01:14:41
I'm definitely going to check that book out.
01:14:45
And that was the first book that you wrote.
01:14:46
I know you have another one out of the uniform back into civilian life.
01:14:51
Yeah, out of the uniform.
01:14:53
That's like the veteran self-help guy.
01:14:55
It was 31 years in the military.
01:14:58
Now for you, once you were out of the uniform, you hung up the BTUs and you were out of the
01:15:04
combat boots, how was that transition into civilian life?
01:15:10
It was a tough time for me mentally.
01:15:14
I got out of the military because I was so burned out.
01:15:18
I was so mentally exhausted.
01:15:21
Plus, I had that mindset of sucking up, don't try to suck everything up and try to live
01:15:28
with it all.
01:15:30
And I was burned out mentally, not physically, but more mentally, emotionally from what we
01:15:35
talked about, from the federal investigation, my father's death.
01:15:38
And Afghanistan was just minor, but I had burned.
01:15:42
I had burned it and I got out.
01:15:45
I should have really, I'm at the hindsight, I didn't write about this, but I should have
01:15:48
gotten out of medical discharge.
01:15:51
But I went ahead and went out regularly as a retirement honorable.
01:15:56
I was honorably discharged, but no, I was in Germany.
01:16:01
I was over there where you're at when I was being discharged.
01:16:05
And the damn people would not help me with my veterans disability packet, the information
01:16:10
that you do.
01:16:12
You put in your veterans benefits and you want to get some help.
01:16:15
And the people in Germany were not doing a damn thing for me, not in Longstall, not
01:16:21
anywhere in the entire country.
01:16:22
I did know people in the United States, but they told me it was out of my jurisdiction.
01:16:29
So what I did was I had to do it all myself.
01:16:32
With my book that I wrote, there's only one thing I tell you, the big takeaway is get
01:16:37
a veteran service representative, like get somebody to help you.
01:16:41
Don't do what I did.
01:16:42
But that's the reason I learned a lot is because I had to do it myself.
01:16:47
And I did very well.
01:16:49
I came out completely at 100%, but that's why I wanted to write the book.
01:16:53
My second book was just about veterans benefits and how to get your benefits and how I did
01:16:58
it and stories along that line.
01:17:01
It's more of a self-help guide of how I did it in a very basic language that's easy to
01:17:08
understand.
01:17:09
You hear about it.
01:17:10
I know I've met people that either they said that they've had trouble receiving their
01:17:16
benefits and then some people talk about just the flaming hula hoops that you got to go
01:17:22
through.
01:17:23
And some people get discouraged.
01:17:25
What do you think in your years of experience is like a common hurdle that some veterans
01:17:32
have with going through the process to finally receiving their benefits?
01:17:37
Yeah.
01:17:38
I think one of the big hurdles is their pride.
01:17:40
They feel, you know what?
01:17:41
I'm honorably and I don't need the extra benefits because I am strong.
01:17:47
I have done this.
01:17:48
I don't need any help.
01:17:49
And they don't want benefits in a way.
01:17:51
They don't want to reject them.
01:17:53
So that's for other people.
01:17:55
They don't understand in their own mindset that this is just not about them.
01:18:01
They're not saving the government money.
01:18:05
They're being dishonorable to themselves by not getting the benefits.
01:18:08
This could live past their death to their spouses or to their dependents.
01:18:13
They don't understand the depth of the benefits process.
01:18:18
It's more than just a monthly.
01:18:21
They might think they cannot work because they're labeled as a disabled veteran.
01:18:26
That doesn't mean that.
01:18:27
So there's a lot of myths out there that I try to unfold and pack into the book.
01:18:33
No, you're not being dishonorable to it.
01:18:37
You're being honorable to get your benefits and you're going to provide more fun for your
01:18:41
family, your friends.
01:18:43
Down the road, this thing extends down the road, down the path of life and even after
01:18:49
death, whether it be a gravesite at Arlington or what I'm saying is there are many, many
01:18:56
second and third order benefits that are in this process throughout the life and post
01:19:03
life that a lot of people just don't understand and I try to put that in a way with a series
01:19:09
of links and how I think about this process.
01:19:13
But no, the post traumatic, the trauma, the stress, the suicides, these things have gotten
01:19:20
the attention of many, many people.
01:19:23
There's not domestic violence.
01:19:26
All that stuff is the multiple deployments over the 20 years of Afghanistan and Iraq
01:19:32
took a toll on a lot of people, a lot of family members.
01:19:36
They're coming back home from overseas living and they're doing bad things, they're doing
01:19:44
bad things, getting themselves hurt or hurting other people, but it was just an accumulation
01:19:49
of these things.
01:19:50
When I got out, which was 10 years ago, 2014, and well, yeah, 2014, yeah.
01:19:58
But no, they were talking about it even then and then it just like now it's more and more
01:20:04
of a topic of conversation of how to deal, how to identify someone who's a suicidal ideations
01:20:12
or post traumatic stress situations, but really there's not a magic bullet.
01:20:18
If there was a solution, we wouldn't be talking about it, but it continues to go on, continues
01:20:25
to go on.
01:20:27
And the transition back from a soldier to a civilian in many ways is different.
01:20:35
They have done things, they have drove in multi-million dollar tanks, they've been in
01:20:39
helicopters, maybe they've done things and they've never, they come back to civilian
01:20:45
life and they're like, this is, I can't associate with this stuff.
01:20:50
I used to do this, but now I'm in the Walmart.
01:20:52
Maybe I'm just a box packer in the Walmart, but I used to drive a tank.
01:20:56
So there's a lot of different things that go on and I even had that too.
01:21:00
I had to find my way where I wanted to go.
01:21:04
It took me a while and it took me a few years and for the most part, when I got out, I just
01:21:09
wanted mental health therapy.
01:21:11
That's my focus.
01:21:12
I said, I've got to survive.
01:21:14
I've got to find somebody to help me out and I did that for a while and there's a number
01:21:19
of programs that I went through, but I had to work on that and then I just eventually
01:21:24
said, no, I'm going to write some books.
01:21:27
So I had to find my purpose, but it wasn't, it didn't come easy.
01:21:32
Because everybody in the military, you go here, you go here, you wear this, you wear
01:21:36
that.
01:21:37
Hell, I don't even know how to dress.
01:21:39
I mean, I just put on a T-shirt.
01:21:41
Because I knew my uniform was 31 years, I just wore the same uniform for the most part.
01:21:45
I never wore the rank or the promotion.
01:21:48
I never wore that on me.
01:21:50
It was just a lifestyle.
01:21:52
So my thoughts were, I'm going every two to three years, I'm moving and I'm seeing different
01:21:57
people eating different foods from different places around the world.
01:22:02
So that was just something that I was accustomed to.
01:22:04
I never been really settled.
01:22:07
I never had a garden.
01:22:08
I got a garden now, but you don't have a dog.
01:22:12
I mean, don't have a dog because the dog has to travel with you.
01:22:17
It's more of a headache.
01:22:18
So my life was more of a transitional, more of a, you know, being like going here and
01:22:24
going there and doing this and doing that transient.
01:22:27
Yeah, just passing through and that became a lifestyle.
01:22:32
And then you stop and you want to become a civilian.
01:22:36
And then you have a certain language and you have a certain culture.
01:22:40
And then you have to throw that out or somehow modify that to become a civilian.
01:22:47
And you think differently, you act differently and somehow you have to adapt to a different
01:22:53
lifestyle is what it is.
01:22:55
So you have the books that kept you busy once you retired.
01:22:59
Is there anything, you mentioned a garden.
01:23:01
Are there any other things that you enjoy spending your time now that you're, you know,
01:23:09
you've been retired for quite some time, but some people also you hear about having
01:23:14
the, the talk about retirement anxiety, you know, there's some people, like you said,
01:23:20
you know, once you're done, it's like, so what's left?
01:23:23
Are there any things that you fill your days with that you enjoy filling your days with
01:23:26
in projects or hobbies?
01:23:27
Oh, yeah, I've got three dogs.
01:23:31
I've got an Australian Shepherd.
01:23:32
I got a lab and I got a little Chichewawa.
01:23:35
I mixed a little Mexican dog that's really not worth it.
01:23:38
But I've got that.
01:23:39
I got a garden.
01:23:40
I've got a, you know, and I exercise religiously.
01:23:44
Because that's just stay active.
01:23:46
I'm on the books.
01:23:48
I've got the podcast.
01:23:49
I've got the, I'm working on my third book.
01:23:51
I've got two books, but I'm working on a third book.
01:23:53
So it's going to be about toxic leadership.
01:23:56
I'm talking about wicked workplaces.
01:23:58
I kind of hinted to you a little bit about what I went through, but I have many, many
01:24:03
other people who've been in hell.
01:24:06
They go to hell.
01:24:07
Work is hell.
01:24:08
To going to work and surviving on a day to day, a toxic leadership boss.
01:24:14
So, but that's kind of what I'm going to go on a little bit.
01:24:17
There was a study out 20% of all CEOs are psychopaths.
01:24:22
That is a study.
01:24:23
And I, you know, I didn't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
01:24:29
so yeah.
01:24:30
And so I want to go into that a little bit more, which I am.
01:24:33
I'm, I'm, my days are filled with gardening exercise and dogs and books and rating and
01:24:39
things of that nature.
01:24:40
So that's kind of what I'm going and that's kind of what I'm going for and retirement.
01:24:45
When you retire, you want to have a purpose.
01:24:48
You always want to have a purpose in life.
01:24:50
Of course, I financially become very good.
01:24:53
I saved my money.
01:24:55
I invested over time and I've done very well, but also once you retire, once that whatever,
01:25:02
you know, you still want to have a purpose in life, whatever it might be.
01:25:05
And I think that's a big deal in finding your purpose.
01:25:11
Jason, my man, thank you for sharing your story for being an open book, literally, and
01:25:18
speaking your peace with us and taking us through your journey, lessons that you've
01:25:25
learned, experiences that you've had and how you were able to come out a better man.
01:25:30
I hope you all enjoyed the conversation.
01:25:32
The conversation excused the way that it cut off.
01:25:35
That wasn't how it was planned.
01:25:37
We had some audio difficulties.
01:25:39
Something went wrong.
01:25:40
There was a hiccup on my side and it stopped there.
01:25:43
That's where the audio cut off.
01:25:45
But talk about a fighting spirit, not giving up, not giving in, not giving into the outside
01:25:53
noise or chatter saying, you can't do this or you can't do that.
01:25:56
Jason was all about understanding himself, knowing where he was weak at, but he found
01:26:03
his strong points and he worked on those, proved a lot of people wrong in the process.
01:26:09
He challenged himself from nothing comes nothing.
01:26:13
Jason's an example of what hard work looks like with some good, greedy, grindy hard work
01:26:20
looks like nothing was given to him.
01:26:22
He didn't receive any handouts.
01:26:24
A lot of things didn't come naturally to him.
01:26:26
He had to learn it.
01:26:27
He had to figure it out.
01:26:29
It took some doing.
01:26:30
It took mistakes and failures to get it right, to figure it out, to sort through the madness
01:26:36
and to find his own path.
01:26:38
But he did it.
01:26:39
He graduated high school.
01:26:41
He received degrees and author of two books and working on a third one.
01:26:46
Jason, without a doubt, you are a giant amongst us.
01:26:53
So you can go to his website and find both of those books available.
01:26:57
The first one is A Soldier Against All Odds and that's a compilation of his life, the
01:27:02
ups, the downs, all of his trials and tribulations while he was in uniform, the diversity of
01:27:08
his jobs, his assignments, school.
01:27:11
He covers all of that from ages 17 to 48.
01:27:15
That's his memoir.
01:27:16
And that's available in paperback, hardcover, and even audible where he's narrating the
01:27:22
story in his own voice, giving you his raw emotion.
01:27:27
The second book is Out of the Uniform, Back into Civilian Life.
01:27:31
And of course, all of his information will be in the description box, so be sure to check
01:27:36
that out.
01:27:37
Again, Jason, I'm gonna thank you for taking time out of your day to share your story,
01:27:42
appreciate you, and all the best, my friend.
01:27:46
And as well, thank you to everybody tuned in far and wide, appreciate you all.
01:27:52
If you found value in any of this, you can share it with a friend that's free of charge.
01:27:57
Or you can share your thoughts by visiting the website, checking us out on YouTube.
01:28:02
I started to put clips up here and there and I'll be looking to do more with that.
01:28:07
And we're also on Reddit.
01:28:08
You guys have a good rest of the day.
01:28:10
We're gonna catch up real soon.
01:28:12
And before I wrap this thing up, if you would like to be a part of the show and share your
01:28:19
story or even a story of someone in your life that has impacted you in a positive way, you
01:28:25
can always reach out to me via email.
01:28:28
I'd be happy to connect until next time and very soon.
01:28:35
Peace.
01:28:36
I'm looking for a sign to know I'm on the right road.
01:28:52
I'm on the right road.