Flexibilties

Here recently, I have had several friends say, "you should go look at so-and-so's blog," and "I bet you would LOVE this blog," etc. And I have been. Shamelessly. Wedding blogs, military blogs, food blogs, you name it. I'm sold. But the more I've been looking at them, the more my intense desire to get back into blogging has begun.

There have been some pretty significant changes in this stage of life, most of which I would like to share. So, here I am. Sharing.

Any one person can look back at my past blogs and notice that they were all about lessons learned at age 22. Well, now I'm 24. Grad school does that to you...the whole skipping an entire year of blogging thing. The whole point of my original posts were to document the lessons learned at different ages. Let me fill you in on age 23 since I decided to omit that one. 23 was great. I was single for 5 or 6 months of it (several lessons learned there), rushing through grad school and falling in love with my current boyfriend. Yeah, that basically sums it up.

Let me preface by saying that the rest of my blogs from here on out will probably be about the lessons I am learning adapting to military life. This has been the hardest lesson learned in my life. Seriously.

Dating/marrying someone in the military is the hardest thing. I'm just in the dating phase for right now, though. The marrying piece will come soon enough. You know how on job resumes, or in interviews for a job it is usually wise to say something along the lines of "flexible, can adjust to change well"? Um. I think that should be a dating requirement when considering to date someone in the military. Are there dating resumes? There should be.

I've always considered myself to be extremely flexible. This has been the biggest challenge to my flexibility. I'm considering changing my resume to "kinda flexible." How many times have I said flexible in the last paragraph? 4 now. Need a new word. Adjustable. My "adjusting" skills are being refined. MAJORLY.

My first test: our first huge separation. We have done long distance from the get-go. 3 hour drive. Not too bad. We see each other every weekend. No biggie. Introduce Japan. JAPAN. Yes, Evan (is this the first time I mentioned his name? Everyone meet Evan, yay!)is moving to Japan. We said our legit goodbyes tonight. I will see him in one month once he comes home from SERE, his survival training, and we will spend 6 days together. Then he leaves for Japan. He's moving there for 3 years. Oh, and so am I. I won't head over there until mid to late October, though. That's when we are planning to get married. Isn't it funny how in the military we have to discuss wedding dates before we are actually engaged?

While I know there are brighter things ahead, and TRUST ME I am holding on to those brighter things for dear life, it is still hard to wait. It's hard knowing my sweet boyfriend will be on the other side of the world. It's hard knowing he won't be a drive away. It's hard knowing I can't kiss and hug on him after a week of missing him. All of those things are hard. But he is so worth it.

Introduce my new lifestyle. A soon-to-be military spouse. A current military girlfriend. A life ahead of me with flexibility as the main requirement.

Lesson learned at age 24: take it one day at a time.