Either everything matters, or nothing matters. That’s why I believe dreams can be massive earth-shattering things or simple everyday moments. We have to have both, and we have to have a bunch of them. Maybe all of our dreams won’t come true. In fact, I can almost guarantee they won’t. We all have an expiration date on this earth, and will definitely leave things unfinished.

Moving on from the comedy show (although I'm sure I'll keep referencing it because it was fantastic), but sticking with my Ireland trip, let's talk about the Blarney Estate. Blarney Castle is located in Cork, Ireland, and is probably most famous for the Blarney Stone. The stone is located at the top of the castle and is said to grant whoever kisses it the gift of eloquence. As someone whose dream is to speak in front of audiences, it was a must.

Part two of what I learned at the James Acaster: Hecklers Welcome comedy show is that we must protect the child. James shared that growing up, anytime he was in some sort of audience, where some sort of performer was doing something, his immediate life goal became to do whatever the performer was doing. At some point during his kindergarten year (or whatever they call it in the U.K.), his grandmother came in to teach the class about weaving.

Sunday night, I attended a comedy show written and performed by one of my favorite comedians, James Acaster. We bought these tickets months ago and then promptly planned a trip to Ireland to use them. He hasn't gone on tour very much, and it's been a while since he's been to the U.S. (although I was considering driving the 7 hours to Austin to see him last year when I was 8.5 months pregnant, but the show sold out too quickly). All that to say, this was a dream come true, and I immensely enjoyed the show. In my husband's words, "It met and exceeded expectations."

Often, the biggest thing holding us back from our dreams lies between our ears. It's the constant battle that we face in our head between everything that we know we've been and everything that we know we can become. It's the thing that keeps us from asking for what we want. It's the thing that keeps us from trying new things. It's the thing that keeps us from changing our lives.

The pain point will come. I am telling you this now so that you can anticipate it. If we wait until we are too deep into the pain point, then we will delegate from a really negative place. It’s hard to find the right person to help us out if we are looking at the task as the worst thing ever.

With every endeavor, we enter a buyback loop. This is especially true with our dreams. As we go forward in our quest to achieve, we will inevitably hit a point that hurts. It might hurt from the repetition. It might hurt from the boredom. It might hurt from the monotony. We all get sick of doing the same thing over and over again, no matter how exciting that thing was at the beginning.

Continuing on the importance of consistency, we not only have to be consistent with our actions, but we also need to stay consistent with our metrics. We live in an ever-evolving world with an infinite amount of information at our fingertips. With every new thing we learn, we will likely want to change things.

Consistency will forever and always be the biggest indicator of our chance at achieving a dream. We have to stick to the basics of what our dream demands. We have to show up every day, week, and month in whatever way our dream needs. Rain or shine, we do what we need to do. It’s only through that consistency that we can make real progress towards our dreams.

For those following our house-hunting saga, here is a quick update. We put forth an offer, they countered, and we accepted it. The next step is to send in the earnest money and get the inspection taken care of. We close in less than a month! Having our housing situation pretty much taken care of is definitely a weight off of my shoulders. Although, I forgot about how stressful spending this much money upfront is. I felt the same way last time we bought a house, which my husband reminded me of. But, still, it is hard to basically empty our savings to cover closing costs and moving (because we all know that the “military pays for everything” doesn’t quite work out that way).

There are advantages to everything. We choose one school because it has excellent sports programs, and we choose another because they offer the best education in our field of study. But having these advantages doesn’t do us any good if we don’t take advantage of them. Going to a school because it has a great business program and then studying English doesn’t really make sense. Now, if we go to that school because it is all around great and just excels in and is known for business, then English is a fine route to go. And it may very well be the best program that we can afford to get into. But if we join something for its advantages and then don’t take advantage of them, we are missing out.

This post is purely self serving because I need your help. I am currently on a whirlwind trip trying to find our next house. We are moving to Robins AFB in January, and right now is the best window for me to look for a house. I am fortunate enough that I was able to see these places in person since I know so many families buy sight unseen and not by choice. After seeing some of the houses I loved online in person, I am grateful that I didn't have to do that for this PCS because, man, some of those houses were weird.

When we start anything new, we have to understand that we will probably be terrible at it. That’s not always the case at the beginning, but it is almost always true that we will hit a point when we realize how much we don’t know. I’ll be honest; school was generally pretty easy for me. I got the concepts pretty quickly and did well on tests without studying. That was until I took a Biology 201 course in my junior year of high school.

I had another post planned for today, and I have gone back and forth on writing this one. I know many of us have seen the news. We’ve been monitoring what is happening in Israel and are holding our breath to find out what will happen next. This will not be a political post. I certainly have biases from being raised half-Jewish and remaining very much in touch with those roots.

In this life, it is easy to get caught up in the grind. It is easy to stay in countdown mode for the next TDY, deployment, or move. It is easy to lose the magic. Once we lose the magic, though, that is when things get complicated. This applies to all aspects of our life. When we lose the magic in our marriage, parenting, or careers, things go downhill.

Since I’m just coming off of this conference, I want to share some of what I learned. It’s all fresh, and I got a lot out of this event, so I want to write about it. This is a space where I do a lot of processing, and being able to put what I learned into my own words can keep those lessons in front of me. It’s definitely a strategy that I recommend to everyone who has gone through an impactful event. So allow me these next couple of days to cover these points. Then, I promise we will move on to the third biggest issue affecting military members and their families (we definitely spent so long on separations that even I forgot that’s what we were originally doing).

Monday’s blog post did not go up this week. I’ve got three pretty solid excuses that I can give for why that happened, but it’s not really worth it. While they are all valid reasons as to why I pushed off writing, they aren’t enough to justify, at least in my mind. The reality is that I did not prioritize my dream enough to make sure that I stayed consistent. That’s on me to recognize and correct.

People change over a deployment. My husband and I were both different people at the end. In so many ways, this was better. Our marriage was stronger on the other side of the deployment. Our communication was smoother. We had grown and were ready for the next step of our lives, which was parenthood (I know, very cliche again). We were very fortunate that my husband didn't come home with any sort of PTSD from his deployment. If you or your spouse did, please get help sooner than later. There are so many options for anonymous treatment, at least starting out, for those who are worried about something ending up on their military record.

Service members, I'm begging you, please set your spouses up for success before you leave in whatever way you can. We all know that a happy spouse can create a happy house. Our spouse's stress can quickly become our stress. In the case of our household, stress has certainly been ever-present during the past few weeks.