I'll just get rid of my posting reminder......
Don't let anyone try to sell you the old 'You don't know what it's like in civvy street, real workers have to work their bollox off blahdiblahdiblah'. I left 11 years ago and I look back upon (parts) of it as having an absurd dream like quality. Doing 36 hour shifts, then putting your neck on the line by signing off an a/c as being serviceable when you can barely remember what you did to it, or indeed if you did it. Working the same stupidly long hours and getting to SHQ at one minute past five to find they are closed, you all know the story, I guess it's even worse now.
Apart from the top class guys I worked with, there isn't one single little, tiny, microscopically tiny thing that I miss about being in the services. I now earn more money, I have holidays when I want them and a damn sight more than I got in the mob, and the best thing of all is....I can do exactly what I want, I no longer get the wife to answer the phone when it rings, I no longer have to disappear for months on end (the first time I went to the Falklands the locals thought I had left the wife and kids...and no one wanted to ask because they didn't want to embarrass her.....) and most importantly, if I do work hard or go away, it's because I've decided to....
Do you all remember what pit ponies were? They used to keep them underground and used them to pull coal tubs to the lift shafts. Every year, they would let them out for a week into a field where they were looked after. They used to go mad, leaping around an kicking with the joys of spring. I absolutely guarentee that it's exactly the same feeling once you leave the mob. You realise that a shadow has lifted that you didn't know was there.