i left the air force in may 2025. went to Pensacola for two months because i was going to grad school in flagstaff later with my gi bill. so i moved from California to Pensacola, then from there to flagstaff in august. went to school for a bit but it wasn't my thing. did not enjoy it, and was not the path i needed to do. plus the gi bill wasn't paying enough to support myself and my husband who is unable to work. so then i started a job search and moved to fort Walton where i would go to work at Hurlburt as a network administrator. we move again in November.
then i rented out a house, big house, very nice house. then had to plan for holidays, visitors on thanksgiving and Christmas, and i was just sick of that. but since then, nothing has really defined being here besides work. that's all the meaning and purpose I've found, because if i do not work, everything collapses. before i was married, i lived alone, and had a lot of solitude. it allowed me to make sense of life and everything that was happening by letting me effectively talk to myself, or reflect, or have spiritual health. but since getting married and after moving and dropping out and moving again, and moving back to florida, solitude was such a hard thing to get. it still is.
i would love to just go away for a couple of weeks. go to the great plains and be in a huge grassland secluded from everyone and everything. but that is not feasible, not realistic, because if i do not work, then everything goes to hell. i can't be at home without having the reminder or thought of the fact that i'll be going to work the next day. work being the thing that defines life now is horrible. I've had brief and periodic glimpses of true peace and relaxation out alone wherever--on the trail or out in nature--and i would love to have something like this peace and relaxation be embedded into my daily life, but these glimpses are only that: glimpses. they are so temporary that their weight and value are unable to equal that of the very knowledge that work is all there is...
there is no buffer, little space, little stillness. it was a significant part of life that was mostly taken away. yet now, work is necessity, survival, obligation, and i used to have meaning outside of it.
there has to be something i can do, even just this weekend. for one whole day, be away somewhere. get up early in the morning before sunrise, and go somewhere far, but not horribly far. 2 hours or less. then i get back home just to sleep. that entire day can be spent somewhere nice. but i don't know many spots around me i can do that.