The Stories We Tell, The Paths They Close

I was at a virtual job interview with a hiring manager, a fellow veteran, for an enforcement role I hadn’t applied for. I was answering questions about my experience that illustrates grace under pressure. It’s the kind of job I thought I'd left behind when I separated from the Navy ten years ago. That's when I understood: I had spent a decade building a new identity, and the world still saw only the veteran. Disappointed? Absolutely not. Curious? Yes.

The irony cut deeper because I had helped the world see me that way.

The Path Behind Me

I was a Navy Corpsman. First a combat medic attached to Marines, then later a cardiovascular tech. I saw death in firefights and in clinical settings. The intensity made me realize I needed a different path when I separated.

I found it in sociology. Qualitative research and ethnography became my passions. I finished undergrad in three years, powered by the logic of military efficiency and GI Bill economics, then went straight into a fully funded PhD program. The research was compelling, but academia wasn't my long-term home. After coursework, I pivoted to User Experience (UX) in government tech.

The transition story I crafted worked well. I was the veteran: disciplined, mission-driven, skilled at navigating complexity. I was also the creative: the designer, the researcher, the innovative thinker. It resonated. Doors opened. Three years in, a sudden government reduction closed them.

I needed work, so I cast a wider net. I was pursuing a UX design and research role when a tech company recruiter suggested something different: a job with an element of enforcement. My soon-to-be manager saw my military background and thought I'd be a strong fit, and I got the job.

The Pattern I Started Seeing

Ten years out, I have real skills in UX design, research, and storytelling. I’ve created designs. I’ve led projects. I've built expertise that has nothing to do with my military service.

Yet here I am doing enforcement work, working for a fellow veteran, doing what people expect veterans to do well.

I created this. I packaged myself this way because it worked. I have been leaning into the veteran narrative in every college application, everything resume, and every interview. In fact, I think doing so helps me stand out because my looks and mannerisms don’t exactly signal veteran. A surprise can make a person more memorable.

It is also genuine. My eleven youthful years in the military. Since separation I have fully embraced, with grace, though with many struggles along the way, my veteran identity. Lucky for me, this opened doors I needed opened.

What I didn't see until now is how that same story narrowed what I imagined was possible. I applied to jobs that fit the frame I had built, and then the frame became the ceiling.

Let me be clear: I'm not unhappy. Quite the contrary, I’m ever so grateful. My job offers great benefits and interesting work. But this experience raised questions. Even with graduate training, self-taught skills, intentional reinvention and most importantly, time, I felt compelled toward roles that align with how the world sees veterans.

If that's true for me, what does it mean for veterans without those advantages? For those from rural areas, underfunded schools, families without college degrees or professional networks?

Who We Were Before

Throughout my eleven years of service, I met creative people. Musicians, photographers, writers, artists, people with deep curiosity about the world. Some were in combat roles. Some weren't. Their passions had nothing to do with the military.

I wonder where they are now. Whether they're still playing, photographing, writing. Or whether the veteran service ecosystem, well-intentioned as it is, guided them toward predetermined options. Government contracts. Logistics. Cybersecurity.

I was one of them. Born in Korea, raised in the Maryland suburbs wanting to attend an art institute. That dream didn't fit the narrative of who joins the military or what veterans become. I set it aside.

Ten years out, I'm learning it's okay to pick it back up.

What the System Shows Us

Crawl through veteran online job platforms. I've seen many. The messages are predictable: defense contractors, federal agencies, cybersecurity firms, logistics companies. The online brochures promise "translating your military skills" into civilian roles that look remarkably like military roles.

These are good jobs. Many veterans thrive in them. The system works for them, and that matters. But where's the booth for aspiring filmmakers? Where are the veteran-focused programs for designers, artists, small business owners in non-traditional industries? Where are the resources for the arts that aren't framed around trauma and healing, that simply say you can make things because you want to make things? Why do we not know that some of the great contemporary American artists, such as Jasper Johns and Donald Judd, were veterans? How many people know that Adam Driver is a Marine vet?

I've searched LinkedIn groups, nonprofit programs, employment resources. The pattern is consistent. The pathways are narrow. The message is clear. If you don't fit the expected trajectory, you're largely on your own.

The Weight of Overlapping Identities

Being Asian American adds another layer. The model minority myth and the veteran identity create a specific expectation: technical, competent, disciplined, unquestioning. Not creative. Not artistic. Not someone who questions the path.

This intersection, veteran and Asian American, makes the predetermined path feel even more inevitable. Two identities that prize duty, structure, and practical outcomes. The space to simply create feels smaller.

I know I'm not alone in this. But we're scattered, isolated, often invisible to each other and to the broader veteran community.

Why the System Looks This Way

I have a theory: During the conscription era, the veteran population was demographically diverse, drawn from all segments of society. The GI Bill enabled genuine exploration. Veterans could take time, wander through possibilities, figure out who they wanted to become.

Today's all-volunteer force attracts a particular demographic. To avoid repeating how Vietnam veterans were treated, we built robust support systems. They focus on efficiency and volume: assess skills, identify matches, place quickly, move on.

These systems help many people. They're also structurally narrow. They optimize for speed and legibility, for paths that make sense to case managers, employers, and metrics. They're not designed for exploration, for long shots, for veterans who need time to figure things out.

The system reflects its incentives. And those incentives don't include helping a former infantryman become a ceramicist, or a logistics specialist become a screenwriter.

What Could Exist

What if we built something that complements the existing system? Something that actively encourages exploration, creativity, and unconventional paths?

I see space for programs, platforms, and communities that:

Normalize veterans in creative fields. Not as exceptions, not as feel-good stories, but as ordinary. Veterans make films. Veterans paint. Veterans write novels. This should be unremarkable.

Create visible pathways into arts, education, social entrepreneurship, and fields where veterans are underrepresented. Not just how to get a job, but how to build a life.

Connect veterans with mentors outside traditional networks. Not veteran-to-veteran exclusively, but veteran-to-artist, veteran-to-scholar, veteran-to-whoever-is-doing-the-thing-you-want-to-do.

Provide resources organized around possibility, not deficit. Not only trauma-informed arts therapy (though that has value), but funding for your short film, studio space, the community who gets it.

To be clear: these resources exist. I've found them, and I know there are many more. What's missing is visibility, scale, and integration into the larger narrative. Veterans in unconventional fields are not at the front and center of the banners. We don't see each other. The broader veteran community doesn't see us. We exist, but we're not represented in the ecosystem that shapes how veterans imagine their futures.

Why This Matters

The fact that I can see this pattern means others can too. The fact that I've navigated this path, imperfectly and circuitously, means I can help map it for others.

I'm building toward something. Not out of anger or frustration, but from curiosity. I want to help veterans discover paths that feel right for them, even if they're the first to forge those paths. I want to make unconventional journeys more visible, both within the veteran community and beyond it.

I want to be one example among many. And I especially want to encourage those who look like me, who come from backgrounds like mine, who have passions the world doesn't expect, to imagine more freely than I could at their stage.

There's a lot out there. Not just high-paying jobs, but fulfilling lives of all kinds. A quiet life in a small town. Becoming a horse vet. Being a screenwriter who wins competitions. Whatever brings joy and purpose.

These paths exist. I've met veterans walking them. They're just harder to find, less visible, less validated by the ecosystem.

My goal is to play even a tiniest role in changing that.

The Story Continues

As of late, I see jobs as a means to an end. The end is the life I'm building with the person I love, and the things I want to create and contribute.

This isn't the final chapter. In this stability, as stable as any job in tech can be, I can write, research, create, and help others see what's possible.

If I, with all my advantages, feel the pull of the predetermined path, I imagine that pull is strong for others too. But if I can create space for a divergent path, maybe I can help others do the same.

The veteran community is more diverse than the stories we tell about ourselves. Not everyone wants government contracts. Not everyone thrives in enforcement. Not everyone needs to translate military skills into military-adjacent careers.

Some of us want to make art. Some of us want to teach. Some of us want to build something small and meaningful in a field no one expects.

Each path is valid.

The work now is making sure everyone knows that.

[This piece is part of an ongoing exploration of veteran transition systems and the narratives that shape post-service life. For the full structural analysis, see “From Recruitment to Reintegration: Contradictions in the Veteran Transition System.”]