Anecdotally, I dropped out of officer selection once I realized I'd rather kick in doors than be a paper pusher. Didn't meet many officers I admired, I wanted t

Anecdotally, I dropped out of officer selection once I realized I'd rather kick in doors than be a paper pusher. Didn't meet many officers I admired, I wanted to be an NCO even though it's a less privileged position. Then I blew stuff up for 4 years, came back to a wrecked economy, did odd jobs, failed to start two businesses, sold cars, and taught myself web development. I basically went through every failure mode before finding my "thing". Now I make six figures in cloud engineering, have a house, family etc. Long story short but the "blowing things up" part was pretty interesting and a formative experience for me (not that I'd do it again; I've come to believe we're not blowing up the correct things / people).