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2. If you are in the guard, how does or did your employer accommodate your schedule for your Guard obligations and training? Do they resent you for having to make special considerations for you?
If you're going to miss work, you have to provide your employer a copy of your orders or drill schedule or whatever legitimate documenation as early in advance as you can. Maybe some barracks lawyer can correct me but I think the minimum is like 30 days in advance. Your drill weekends will most likely be scheduled 6+ months in advance so this won't be too much of a problem.
Caveat to drill scheduling. There is some dependence on whether Dallas has a televised game or not
At least during my era anyway.
Your employer is obligated to let you go to drill and most importantly the 2 week Annual Training. They are not obligated to pay you for the time you didn't work. There are lots of scenarios out there for pay during AT.
When I worked for the State of Texas, they would give you up to 3 weeks time off with pay for National Guard AT. When I worked for Dell, they would do some sort of deal where they would reimburse you for the delta between your Guard pay and your Dell salary so that you didn't lose money by serving in the Guard. So, it depends greatly on the employer.
If you look carefully at many of the folks higher up the ranks, you'll find that many of them are teachers, State and Local Government employees, etc. Folks who get lots of time off. My perception was also that many of the long-term Guardsmen might not have civilian jobs that were extremely demanding.
So, I never had any trouble getting time off or getting hassled about it. But... be warned, when you're not in the office for 2 weeks, even though you've been busting your ass putting in 16+ hour days everyday, you're co-workers believe you were on vacation and having a great time "playing Army". I helped dispel some of that perception when one of my co-workers asked me about how good the Air Conditioning system was on the M1 Abrams Tank.
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5. Do you truly enjoy being in the Guard?
This is a Yes and No. I think back to some of the times I had and they were great. There were also a ton of really miserable times too. I liked learning how to lead people and training a team to become technically and tactically proficient at their military job regardless of what their civilian job might have been - jailer, police officer, butcher, janitor, data processing specialist, student, backhoe operator, etc.
I'll say this, two of my best friends in the entire world and two guys who I would trust even more than my Corps buddies are the guy who was my first tank gunner and a guy who was a fellow Platoon Leader. Those two guys are among the very few who I would trust without question. By the way, that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes and so on. It just means that I have a deeper bond wtih those two guys than anybody else I know.
Did I enjoy putting main gun down range and rocking off on the .50 cal MG? Oh yes. Did I enjoy all the paperwork and general dick arounds the Guard throws at you? No. But... what you can learn from this is the ability to run circles around most of your civilian peers. Especially the ones who punch out at 5pm and forget about work unti 8am tomorrow.
There will be a day when you ask yourself how long you should stay in for. That's your decision. Personally, I got to a point where the demands for my Guard job (extra training activities, etc.) were conflicting with my civilian job (extra demands at work, etc.) and I needed to make a decision. I could excel at one or the other but not both. Since the civilian job paid significantly more and offered many more growth opportunities, I wrapped it up after 6 years and spend my final 2 years IRR.
Hope that helps. I say do it. Years down the road, you won't regret having served. Of course if your hair is as long as mine is, you might surprise some people when they find out that you did serve.
