I agree that the IWC Community is a crazy right now. In ways, the Navy in general is a bit crazy now. I had a break in service from 2011 till 2018 when I re affiliated with the Navy Reserve.
I still have love for our organization - but generally speaking - the human touch we used to have in the Navy is lacking. Sailors have become metrics on a web page to our administrators and commands. There's always an element of that with big organizations. I was really astounded how little direction was given when I re-affiliated. I was lost in an electronic sauce. It was as if I woke up in the matrix and everyone everywhere claimed me electronically until I asked a question, but then no one owned me when I asked or gave me answers other than go to the web.
Had I been a new accession, I'm not even sure I'd have known I was in the sauce or the Navy. It was really bad. It was not like that when I enlisted in 2003. Accession was very direct, personal, and easy. Someone actually called me to tell me when and where to report the first time. Simple little things. How to get to the gate, what to bring - now you are supposed to find it all in the e-mail with link to the web with a link to the other site you really needed to find and you need a CAC. It's exhausting!
But here we are. It's growing pains from reliance on technology in my opinion, but I think we'll grow out of it again. We get less face to face or phone time to talk about our wants and needs but everyone gets more screen time to do the job and it's easy to point and click away when the personal connections are missing.
I think we will get that personal touch back. That being said, I've worked on the civilian side of the aisle a lot too and I can relate to why people would prefer to be on the active side of the Navy for a while and perhaps a career depending on where they are at in life. I also understand getting out to because I've done both and decided to come back as a reservist.
Life is what we make of it sometimes and sometimes the civilian side ain't so great by comparison. I say good luck if you decide to go for the active side. I contemplate it sometimes too, but I'm in no rush.
My only suggestion is really try to learn as much about the policies that apply to what you want to do because policy will guide and direct much of what you subject yourself to. I share your enthusiasm. A lot of these guys on here do know more about policy than I do. I was never one to let that drive my decisions as much and that has helped and hindered my career in the Navy and otherwise but since I wanted to do what I wanted to do, I don't think the policy stuff gets to me as much.