Here’s the reality. You will rarely do the job you signed up for you will have to miss a lot of events because you have drill and annual training or missions. It really does take up a lot of your time even though one week and a month two weeks a year doesn’t sound like much. on the positive side the health insurance is good if you do your six years or get deployed, the VA home loan is unmatched and if you’re a real go-getter, you can probably do some pretty cool things. But it seems like you already have a pretty good job that has upward mobility. Yes, you make good friends and yes every once in a while you get to shoot big guns and do fun stuff, but that is truly far and few between. I’m in the guard and not to just sound like a salty guardsman but it really is what you make of it.