There is a life cycle that every military spouse goes through.  We need different skills for each stage, and we have different questions that need answers, but for the for most part, every military spouse you know has passed through each of these phases, and we’ve definitely done some more than once.

I want to spend the next couple of weeks discussing the big and small questions of military life. I’m sure some are low on your totem pole of priorities and high for others. These questions all affect the ease with which we can move through military life. Knowing which spot to step on can help us avoid the land mines in our path.  

Friday, I wrote a post about feeling like I could keep my head above water with military life, so of course, Sunday night that kicks me in the teeth.  We said no to a dream last night.  Of course, it isn’t a forever no, and we will still see that dream come true one day, but we knew today wasn’t the day for it.  That being said, it is tough to turn down a dream that we know we wouldn’t think twice about if this was 14 years from now and the military was behind us.

I hope you were able to create a list of 100 dreams this week and then narrow that list down to create a focused path forward for this year, but I understand if you weren’t. Military spouse life demands a lot from us, and if you are like me at certain points over the last five years, then you may be completely underwater. Dreaming is very hard when you can’t even tell which way is up.

I’ve established the 12 goals I will focus on in the New Year.  If you look at my list from a year ago, five have been replaced with new dreams as I achieved them, five have been carried over, and two have been left behind.  I want to explain my reasoning in case you have trouble deciding which dreams to pursue and which to let go of.

Now that we have created our list of 100 dreams, it is time to narrow our focus for the year.  I focus on 12 because there are 12 months in the year.  This doesn’t necessarily mean achieving one dream a month, but it’s a nice idea.  12 also allows me to focus on dreams across different aspects of life and gives me room to have dreams of various sizes come true.  That being said, 12 is just a number; you can choose any number you want.  Last year, I achieved 5 of the 12.  Maybe I will do better this year than a 42% success rate, but I like aiming higher rather than setting my sights lower to create a false sense of victory.  So, here are the 12 dreams that I have decided to focus on for the year 2025; what are yours going to be?

As promised, here is my list of 100 dreams for my life. Remember, this list is ever-changing, and it is not the be-all to end all of my life. I will always find new dreams, and I will replace the dreams I achieve with new ones. I will probably outgrow some of these and remove them from the list in the coming months and years. But for today, this is what I would like to do with, and for my life, and in the coming months, I hope to check a few off that list. Feel free to steal as many as you want! Hopefully something on here inspires the list that you are creating.

Happy New Year! It is officially 2025 (which doesn't feel like an actual year), which means it is time for New Year’s resolutions.  We never need to wait until New Year’s Day to make significant changes in our lives.  In fact, waiting for a hard deadline to start can diminish our motivation to actually achieve those goals.  That being said, it is a natural reset point to pick some new dreams to focus on in the year to come.

2024 is over.  Technically, we’ve got another 36 hours in it, but as far as achieving our dreams goes, the game has pretty much been called.  There are still a few dreams that may allow us to cross the finish line in the next few hours, but for most of us, it is time to shift our perspective to 2025.  But before we look to the future, let’s look at the areas where we didn’t make our dreams come true.  I’ll go first.

The third dream I checked off my list was visiting Canada in September. This dream had a clear deadline, and I knew I would achieve it at the start of the year because I was a bridesmaid in a wedding up there. It would have taken quite a bit to stop me from being there, so it was pretty much a given that I would achieve it. But this dream certainly looked different than I expected. I am incredibly grateful for the trip and thoroughly enjoyed being there for my friend’s wedding, but I don’t feel like I checked visiting Canada off the list for several reasons.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all! The two holidays don’t always overlap, but this year, the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day.  All the more reason to celebrate December 25th with family, at least in my house.  There is no place I would rather be on a holiday than with my family, but I know that is not the case for everyone. Being raised in a religiously blended family had some downsides, but mostly, it was all positive.

I wanted to share two principles that were instrumental in meeting my favorite author back in October.  First and foremost, we are a walking billboard for the things that matter to us, and we either add to or diminish the credibility of those things.  There’s a trend on social media that says, “If they wanted to, they would,” and I 100% buy into that concept.  As military families, we are well aware of that truth in the world because we see relationships move heaven and earth to stay connected while others put all the responsibility on one party.

Back in October, I had a second dream come true.  I got to meet my favorite authors, Sheila Wray Gregoire and Rebecca Liendenbach.  I set this dream to be completed this year with relatively low expectations of achieving it.  Any dream that requires meeting/interacting with another person can always be trickier because you have to have access to that person.

 I haven’t forgotten my dreams for this year since I’ve been gone.  During the past three months, I have had three more dreams come true, and they all played out differently than expected.  At the beginning of this year, I created a list of twelve dreams I wanted to achieve in 2024.  I’ve now checked five of those off the list. 

It has been a little over three months since I last wrote on the blog. My break was primarily unintentional, but I was fully aware when I decided to stay in it. I didn’t have a good reason for taking that time off. Life got crazy, and my new estate planning work turned out to be heavier than I expected, but none of that explains why I took three months off.

Like I shared on Monday, last week was a hell week. It was truly awful, and I am just glad that it is behind me. But in every moment, no matter how bad things got, there was something to be grateful for. This post is not to shame anyone for not finding gratitude in their situations. I just want to remind myself that there is beauty in the chaos. And as a believer in a higher power, I see miracles in the pervious week.

Two weeks ago, Murphy hit me with the double punch of losing a nanny and infesting the house with caterpillars. The update on that story is that our home has moths from all the caterpillars we did not get out in time. That was the hardest I've been hit up until last week, when Murphy came in guns blazing.

If we can't depend on motivation to carry us through to achieving our dreams, then we have to depend on ourselves. The good news is that we have been relying on ourselves to get through things for a long time. The bad news is that we may not have used the best strategies when left to our own devices. John Maxwell talks a lot about the fact that decision-making is overrated while decision management is underrated.

So let’s answer the question from Monday, how do we keep our motivation when the going gets tough (or boring)? The answer is, we don’t. Motivation doesn’t last. It is a gift that gets us into motion, but we have to rely on physics to keep us in motion. We are constantly held by the law of inertia.

You know the old saying, “When man plans, the gods laugh,” that’s pretty much how this week has gone for me. We are week three into this TDY, and Murphy hit me with a double punch. For those who haven’t met Murphy yet, let me explain.