How I Ended Up Here

A Recap before 2026 starts

A picture I took on a recent walk

I officially stopped looking at Instagram today. I realized it did not spark joy so I decided enough. But I still wanted a space to write and post pictures. So here I am on Substack. Not to make money. Not to hit a certain number of subscribers. But to document my life in a different way from my journal and planner.

Let’s start with a condensed version of my life so far:

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. My mother died when I was eleven of breast cancer and my childhood abruptly ended. I graduated from high school in 1984 when I was seventeen and a month later left for Air Force basic training.

I became an imagery analyst and was stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, then a year in Korea and then back to Omaha. I spent ten years on active duty and left in 1994. During that time I obtained my college degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

I moved to western New York State and joined the Air National Guard. I got my commission and became an Intelligence Officer. I spent the next ten years doing a lot of deployments. I moved from being a part-timer in New York to being a full-time GS employee in Pennsylvania and finally to Montana as an AGR.

And then I had enough. I loved my military time but at the age of forty I decided to have a child. I retired, got pregnant and got married. At the age of forty-one I had my child in 2007.

In 2010 my husband got the civilian job with the Air Force that he wanted and we moved to Tucson. I tried to love it but ended up just making the best of things. Since about five minutes after moving here I have been counting down to 2026, when my child will graduate from high school.

Shortly after my child was born I learned a few surprising things about my husband and knew the marriage wasn’t going to last. But I didn’t want our child to suffer so we stayed together, not as a couple but as a family. We lived in the same house (separate bedrooms in Tucson) and ate dinner together and traveled and went camping. We did all the family things. I got to be a stay at home mom and he had someone to do everything for him. Cook, laundry, pay bills, parent, shopping etc. (The man couldn’t even buy a pair of pants by himself!). But he wasn’t abusive or an alcoholic or anything. Just incredibly lazy and I later learned a narcissist. But I wanted our child to have equal access to both parents so I stayed.

The pandemic put an end to the living in the same house but I stayed in the city. I don’t regret it. I feel like my child is better for having both parents nearby. But they are eighteen now. They are looking at colleges in various states and will probably end up in another state. I feel like my obligation to stay near his father will be done with their graduation. That I will be free to pursue the next phase of my life.

Military career and retirement secured? Check.

Full-time motherhood? Complete.

Retirement? The sky is the limit. Within reason of course.

So this is where I am. In the planning stage. The dreaming stage. The decision making stage. What do I want the next twenty years (more or less) to look like?

Stay tuned.