The first step in this journey is to get yourself laid off back in March. That forces you to look for options. I'd always known that going back on active duty would be a good short-term financial move but I didn't want to come back after a year or two just to be in my mid forties and have to start at the bottom of some company all over again. That decision has now been made for me already. (Plus, after seeing some of my buddies getting jobs with defense contractors, I realized that military duty might not have as many negatives as I previously thought.)
So I started looking into mobilization options. Two great sources for reserve Marines are the MarForRes Global Billets list and Reserve Duty Online, which is an MOL thing. What with two wars going on there are plenty of opportunities out there. After sifting through them all I circled in on a billet with CJTF-HOA, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. It's a standing command with responsibilities throughout the East Africa region.
What followed was an almost comical series of email exchanges where the addresses on the cc line became more and more numerous. Finally, back in May, I located the person at my current unit, MarForPac HQ, that was responsible for putting my package together and forwarding it on to approving authorities. Luckily for me, I happened to be in Hawaii for another exercise and I could go talk to him face to face. That shortened the process considerably. (I suppose I should mention that I live in Seattle, where it is currently raining and 65 degrees.) From that point on the process gathered inertia and began rolling down the line like the boulder chasing Indiana Jones. But, remembering rule number one, until it happens it hasn't happened.
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