Catching a Current

A lot of difficult decisions have been hovering in our world for the past few months. John lost his job while he was at his training for the National Guard. After searching for about three months he was able to find a part-time job working the graveyard shift at a home for troubled teenage boys as a mentor. He's done well as a mentor and he's been looking for a new or additional job since then with no luck. I had been planning to apply for sponsorship by a professor once school started (I would help a professor with his/her research and get paid for it). But, things have gotten a little too thin and we decided we need a change in our lives.
John loves being in the military, so, after thinking about it a lot, we've decided to move further in that direction. John has started the process of transferring from the National Guard to the active Army. That way the military can be his career. It will be difficult. But, things have been difficult so far, as well. Yes, he could be deployed, but if I wasn't okay with that I wouldn't have let him join the National Guard at all. This way we'll get to live a lot of different places and in a little while we could more easily start a family this way.
School has been taking a long time for me and at this point only one of us can have our dream. I love Geology, but I love John more and I want to give that to him. So, I've withdrawn from BYU. And for now I really don't want to imagine that someday I'll be able to go back to school and finish. I've gone back to school once already - I've been the old one in the classes and I've tried to pull it off and I don't know if that will happen again or if I'll want it to. I want to let this go and move forward. I don't want to spend my life hanging on to maybes, mights, coulds, and somedays. It will hurt more to hold on to it. Sometimes, letting the hope fall away is a relief. Geology is only one side of me - there are many more and I will keep growing no matter what. Nothing's going to keep me down. :)
It could take a few months for John to get the signatures needed and to go through all of the processing he'll need to. He will basically be re-entering the military, so he'll need to get a physical exam again and things like that. He won't have to go through Basic Training again, though. If they don't have an opening for his current MOS as a Flight Ops guy, he will need to reclassify and do some training again, though. We'll have to figure that out when we get to that point. Things are fairly uncertain at this point - things could go smoothly and we could move in a couple of months, or it could take longer and John could have to reclassify.
It's difficult to have things so up in the air and not under our control, but the idea of changes ahead is comforting to me. I've always wanted to see new places, I didn't ever really want to stay in Utah for the rest of my life. And it's exciting to think that we could end up in Washington, Japan, Hawaii, Germany, Italy, Alabama... anywhere. It's exciting and scary -- rather intimidating, but I think it will be good for us. Things have felt like we were treading water for a while and now it feels like we're going to catch hold of a current (one that's really slow at first but will pick up fast later ;). We'll be together. That's all we need, right?
But, no matter where we go, a wisp of us will be anchored here in this patch of internet. =)