Ron Capps, 57, served in the Army for 25 years before retiring in 2008 as a Lieutenant Colonel. In between, he also held positions as both a senior military intelligence officer, Foreign Service officer and peacekeeper. He wrote about his experiences in a “part military and diplomatic memoir” titled “Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars In Ten Years.” He resides in Washington, D.C., and is the director of the Veterans Writing Project, which provides free writing seminars and workshops for vets, service members and their families. He told his story to web producer Ruth Tam.

“Moving from a military job –where things were at times life-threatening– to a civilian job, where things were not life threatening, was a challenge. As a soldier it’s easy to separate what’s important from what’s not. You ask yourself: ‘If this isn’t done, will someone die or will we fail at our mission?’ If the answer is no, it’s not a high priority. When I got to my civilian job, it seemed that everything was of critical importance. Several of us in my entry group had been in the military and we joked that for some of our colleagues, ‘Every day is the Super Bowl.’ That is to say that everything had the same, ultra-high priority. People seemed to get really spun up about getting a document signed or edited as if someone’s life depended on it, when it clearly didn’t. Our colleagues certainly didn’t share our view of prioritization and didn’t like when we questioned theirs.

In many ways, D.C. is a good city for vets to return to. It’s a big city with all of the support mechanisms that come with that: VA hospital and clinics, lots of former military around, military and government-based contractors who understand the transition, jobs focused on things that matter, and so on. But in some ways, no. D.C. culture is very focused on what one does rather than what team one is a part of. Individual achievements are lauded in the military but the core of the work is team-based. The culture here at events is often portrayed as holding a conversation with someone who is only interested in you if you can help them move up the ladder. That’s true to a great extent, I think. It’s also just a toxic environment here now because everything is so politically divided. I suppose things might be similar in other places, but there is certainly no getting away from it here. But maybe these are more broadly complaints about D.C. rather than what makes it bad for veterans.

I wish people knew that the military and veterans communities truly are microcosms of America. There are males and females, blacks and whites, Asians and Hispanics, gays and straights, liberals and conservatives in military and veterans communities –just as there are in the rest of America. It would be great if both groups acknowledged that and stopped treating the other differently.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Photos are courtesy of Ron Capps. For more on military issues in the D.C. area, reserve your free tickets to a live taping of The Kojo Nnamdi Show with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, at 7 p.m. at the Synetic Theater. 

Every weekday, from 12-2 p.m. we do deep dives into diverse topics on our show. But here, on our blog, we want to do more to highlight the human experiences we talk about on air. On our blog, you can read short, personal essays that expand our on-air discussions. Submit your ideas here and happy reading!