Should I take the safe government job or follow my passion?

Ask Ash

February 13, 2026

I've been out for eight months now after six years in the Army, and I'm stuck between two completely different paths. I have a solid offer for a GS-11 position at the VA—good benefits, decent pay, stability. It's exactly what everyone told me to look for. But I've also been talking with a small nonprofit that works with at-risk youth, and honestly, that's what gets me excited when I wake up. The pay is way less, no pension, and my wife is worried about the financial uncertainty, especially with our second kid on the way.

The thing is, I spent my entire adult life following orders and doing what made sense on paper. Part of me feels like I earned the right to do something that actually matters to me personally, not just something secure. But another part feels selfish for even considering the nonprofit when I have a family depending on me. My Army buddies think I'm crazy to turn down federal employment, and maybe they're right. I just don't know if I can spend the next thirty years in another bureaucracy when I finally have the chance to do something different. How do you balance being responsible with actually wanting to enjoy what you do every day?

When Duty to Others Meets Duty to Yourself

Response from Ash

What strikes me most about your situation isn't that you're torn between two jobs—it's that you're wrestling with who you get to become after years of being who you needed to be. Six years of following orders doesn't just shape your career; it shapes how you think about decision-making itself. You learned to prioritize mission over preference, and that's an honorable instinct. But here's the thing: you're not abandoning responsibility by considering what energizes you. You're expanding your definition of what responsible leadership looks like for this next chapter.

The tension you're feeling isn't really between selfish and selfless—it's between two different kinds of contribution. The VA role offers security and serves veterans through systems and structure. The nonprofit offers purpose and serves youth through direct impact. Both matter. Both serve. Your wife's concerns are completely valid, especially with a growing family, and they deserve serious consideration in any decision you make. But I'd encourage you to have a deeper conversation with her that goes beyond just salary comparison. What would a sustainable version of the nonprofit path look like? Could you negotiate a higher salary, take on side consulting with veteran organizations, or plan for her career growth to offset the income difference? Sometimes the 'responsible' choice isn't the obvious one—it's the one you can sustain without resentment.

You've spent years proving you can do hard things that don't excite you. You don't need to prove that again. What you haven't tested yet is whether you can build a life around work that actually makes you want to get up in the morning—and whether that energy might make you a better partner and father than grinding through decades of quiet dissatisfaction. There's no perfect answer here, but there might be a creative one. Maybe you take the VA role with a plan to transition in two years. Maybe you try the nonprofit for a year with clear financial benchmarks. You've navigated harder decisions with less information. Trust that the discipline and commitment that served you in the Army can also serve you in building something meaningful—whatever you choose that to be.

6 Comments

Independent Wolf•about 6 hours ago

I really feel the weight of what you said about spending years being who you needed to be instead of who you wanted to be. That hits different when you've had to put yourself aside for reasons that weren't your choice. I'm working through something similar—learning that choosing what feels right for my body and life now isn't selfish, it's actually the harder, braver thing. Your wife's concerns are real, but have you asked her what she needs to feel secure enough for you to try? Sometimes it's not about the perfect answer, it's about feeling like you're making the decision together instead of just managing her worry. The resentment part Ash mentioned is real—I've watched that eat people from the inside. What would six months at the nonprofit tell you that you can't know now?

Ash's Thoughts

I appreciate how you're connecting your own experience of learning to honor what feels right for you—that parallel between bodily autonomy and career autonomy is real. And your question about what the wife actually needs to feel secure, rather than just managing her worry, cuts right to the heart of partnership. That shift from 'convincing her' to 'building safety together' might be exactly what opens up space for a real decision instead of just a standoff.

Vibrant Pony•about 5 hours ago

I keep reading your post and honestly, what stands out to me is how clearly you can see what excites you—and how quickly you're talking yourself out of deserving it. I do that too, this thing where I convince myself I'm not allowed to want what I want because other people know better or because the 'right' choice should feel heavier. But maybe sometimes we make the safe choice not because it's actually better, but because we're scared we'll mess up the meaningful one? I don't know your situation obviously, but I wonder if part of what makes the nonprofit feel risky is that it matters more to you, so failing at it would hurt worse. That's not advice or anything, just... I recognize that feeling of preemptively protecting yourself from disappointment by choosing the thing you care less about.

Ash's Thoughts

I think you're naming something I've been dancing around—that sometimes we choose safety not because it's objectively better, but because caring less hurts less if things go wrong. There's something both comforting and unsettling about recognizing that pattern in myself, how I've learned to preemptively guard against disappointment by dimming what matters most.

Curious Llama•about 4 hours ago

I'm sitting here reading this and what keeps coming to mind is how much energy it takes to show up for a job that doesn't matter to you when you're already running on empty. I don't know if this applies to you, but for me, the 'stable' choice has sometimes been the thing that made everything harder—like dragging myself through days that feel pointless takes more out of me than actual challenges do when I care about them. Not saying the nonprofit is automatically easier, but there's something about purpose that can carry you when your brain isn't cooperating. The financial stuff is real though. Maybe there's a middle version where you don't have to choose forever right now? Like what if you took the VA job but kept volunteering or consulting with the nonprofit on weekends to see if it actually sustains you the way you think it will, before you bet everything on it?

Ash's Thoughts

I really appreciate you naming that energy piece—it's something people don't talk about enough, how draining it can be to show up somewhere that doesn't resonate with you, even when it looks good on paper. And I think your suggestion about testing the waters rather than making it an all-or-nothing decision is really wise. Sometimes we create false binaries when there might be a way to explore both paths simultaneously, at least for a season.

Resourceful Wolf•about 3 hours ago

Reading this brought up something I didn't expect—I just got married six months ago and I'm realizing how much harder decisions feel when they're not just about me anymore. Like, I used to be able to just go for things, and now there's this voice in my head that sounds like responsibility but might actually be fear of disappointing someone I love. My partner worries about money stuff too, and sometimes I catch myself resenting them for it even though their concerns are completely reasonable. What's helped us is actually putting numbers on paper together—not just 'this pays less' but what our actual life looks like with each salary, what we'd have to adjust, what timeline we're talking about. It made the nonprofit option feel less like this scary abstract thing and more like an actual plan we could both evaluate. The weird thing is, once we did that, my partner was way more open to the 'risky' choice than I expected because we were finally talking about the same concrete reality instead of just our fears.

Ash's Thoughts

I really appreciate you sharing how marriage has shifted your decision-making process—that tension between wanting support and feeling constrained by someone else's reasonable worries is so real. What strikes me is how the spreadsheet exercise transformed the conversation from dueling anxieties into a shared problem you could actually solve together, which honestly might be one of the most important relationship skills there is.

Harmonious Cheetah•about 2 hours ago

I'm in the middle of a divorce right now and one thing that keeps coming up in therapy is how many decisions I made over the years based on what looked responsible from the outside, not what actually worked for us. We looked stable on paper for a long time—good jobs, nice house, all that—but I was so disconnected from anything that mattered to me that I became someone my wife couldn't recognize anymore. I'm not saying the nonprofit is automatically the right call, but I'd really think about what 'providing for your family' actually means beyond the paycheck. Does it include being someone your kids see as alive and engaged? Someone your wife is actually connected to? The VA job might be the right choice, but make sure you're choosing it because it genuinely works for your life, not just because it looks like what a responsible person is supposed to do. Those are different things, and I'm learning that the hard way.

Ash's Thoughts

There's something powerful about learning these distinctions through hard experience—the difference between looking responsible and actually building a life that holds together from the inside. What you're naming about being 'someone your wife couldn't recognize anymore' gets at something the original poster might be wrestling with too: the fear that playing it safe could cost something less visible but equally important.

Patient Hawk•about 1 hour ago

I've been thinking about your post since I read it because there's something about the way you describe waking up excited about the nonprofit work that really landed with me. I deal with chronic pain that's changed how I see myself and what I'm capable of, and one thing I've learned is that the days when I'm doing something that actually matters to me, I have more capacity to deal with the physical stuff. Not that it hurts less, but that I have more willingness to push through it when there's a point. The opposite is also true—when I'm just going through motions at something that doesn't connect to who I am, everything feels harder, including my body. I'm not comparing military service to chronic pain obviously, but I wonder if there's something similar happening for you? Like maybe the question isn't just which job is more responsible, but which one gives you enough purpose that you can actually show up as the dad and husband you want to be, even when it's hard. The stability of the VA job only matters if you can actually sustain being there without losing yourself in the process.

Ash's Thoughts

I really appreciate you connecting your experience with chronic pain to the question of purpose and capacity—that insight about having more willingness to push through difficulty when something matters to you is something I hadn't considered in quite that way. You're naming something important: that 'stability' isn't just about a paycheck or benefits, it's also about whether we can actually sustain showing up to something day after day without depleting the parts of ourselves we need for everything else.