Justin is finally at the end of his twenty-year navy career and we are retiring from navy life. Yes, I said we. This life is very much a shared experience. He may be the one actually retiring from the Navy, but our family is retiring from this way of life. That means some big, scary feelings.

Navy life has been ingrained into our beings for so long. We are used to the navy being first, always. Navy needs before all. As a wife of a submariner, I know all too well how to roll with the punches, go with the flow, be adaptable and flexible because everything can change. The kids and I had to learn to stop being disappointed, stop getting mad, and learn how to pivot. It’s a hard lifestyle to get used to and we have been doing it for a very long time. Don’t get me wrong, we definitely won’t miss it, and it probably has prepared us more than anything else for this adventure we have ahead of us. However, that doesn’t mean that the change will be easy. We have become used to so many things in our Navy life that just won’t be anymore after we retire.
Just to be clear we are not scared of retiring, just the opposite actually. We have this epic retirement plan, in fact, this very blog is part of it. Our plan is simple, but not easy. We plan to sail away in our 44’ sailboat and explore the world. First, we have to retire this Navy life and trade it in for a lifestyle that is a little less structured and secure. Circling back around to the scary feelings, we are excited but also worried about what the end of Navy life means.
The biggest change will be having Justin home. We have never had more than a week or two of Justin being home every day, and during that time we usually have things planned and a list of honey-dos for him to complete before we lost him again to the demands of the Navy. This will be so different. He will be home. We will have all the time. This is not a worry for me like it is for some wives. See, Justin is my best friend, he’s my person. We love to hang out and pal around. We actually enjoy each other’s company and prefer it to be just us. Well us and the kids too, sometimes. We like hanging out with our kids, they are awesome humans. Mostly it’s the working for ourselves part that is kinda scary. We have to hold ourselves accountable to you guys. Our readers, our followers, our supporters. It’s because of you that we get to do this next part.
We can’t even begin to express how grateful we are to our supporters. I have to say it is nerve-racking to put yourself out there and hope that there are other people out there that think you’re interesting, your stories are interesting, or just like you enough to follow your journey. We had no idea if we were going to actually make this work, but we did it anyway. We are still doing it. We are exploring new platforms and trying out ideas and learning to create content and do all the behind-the-scenes things that make it worth sharing a little of your time with us. It’s more work than we ever thought it was, but we also kinda love it.
I love to write these blogs, the girls and Justin work on their own blogs too, but I really found my happy place in writing. I like to share all my tips, tricks, and how to’s in hopes of making someone else’s life a little easier. Blogging is a great platform for that type of content. Also, I am a huge introvert and I feel like my true self is always a little muted when I get in front of a camera. Here I get to just be me. Share my thoughts and experiences and pass along lessons I’ve learned in the forty two years I’ve lived on this planet. I wish I would have found this outlet sooner. I guess everyone who finds something they really love has that wish. The thing is, I don’t know that I would have been all that good at it if I had started any sooner. Had to learn a few things and go through some shit so I could have something to write about. Hindsight is a bitch, am I right?
Justin really found his niche with the social media platforms. For so long he didn’t even care. Now I can’t get him to put his phone down. Especially with Instagram Reels and Tik-Tok, he loves them. For him I think it’s kinda like the meme sites that he used to scroll through. He was always on those sites. I use to get annoyed with the stupid memes he would show me, mostly I just didn’t get the humor. Now he does it with the Reels, lol. I don’t mind so much now. Now they are actually funny. He really likes to create video content. He has so much fun with it, editing, creating, and watching his vision come to life. The more he does it the better his videos get. We recently started a YouTube and Patreon channel. Our first post was a little intro and we have discovered just how hard putting together a quality video is. Nonetheless, Justin is hard at work figuring it out, playing with techniques, watching a lot of how to tutorials. He’s got a great start, organizing his ideas, compiling footage, and storyboarding future episodes. It’s so cool to see him have passion for it and to be excited for what comes next.
There was a time, not too long ago, when he was just looking for his next career as a civilian. Now he is excited about what he is doing. He enjoys it. It’s all I wanted for him. Why shouldn’t he retire and do something that he loves. He spent twenty years doing something hard and most of the time very unpleasant and stressful. Working for people who didn’t value him or his time. He definitely was underpaid for his skills. He worked long hard hours to keep our lives normal and safe. He deserves to relax and enjoy his work. I love to see him creating and doing something totally different than what he ever thought he would be doing. I knew he had a creative side. He loves woodworking and for a while he thought that he would build furniture as a side hustle. He still loves to wood work and much of that is translated to our boat-building experience, but now I get to see him be creative in a different way and it’s super cool. I love that I can still discover something new about him after all these years.
So this is our retirement plan. To blog and YouTube our adventures around the world and everything leading up to it. You make this a possibility for us and we just want to say thank you! Thank you for supporting our journey. We are working hard to bring you along with us every step of the way.