The only reason I can even get out of bed in the morning is because of my ability to simply not think about or realize how truly miserable I am I thought just one year into living in England.
I am a spouse of an Active Duty military member, and I am an honorably discharged veteran, as well. I am familiar with the military lifestyle and its great demands and sacrifices. In January 2016, when I was just a full-time student (i.e. unemployed), my spouse received orders for a permanent change of station (PCS) to the U.K. We had lived in Alaska, but the U.K. would be our first real assignment overseas. It was wonderful, exciting, and stressful. There were so many unknowns – but one thing was definite: it was going to be the best tour of our lives. We could travel, we could experience new culture, we could realize our dream of seeing the world.
It was hell moving to the U.K., even without expectations of smooth sailing. It cost us $2000 just to move our 3-pound chihuahua with us along with being especially strategic in our flight plans. We arrived to find our gaining unit had completely dropped the ball on welcoming us: unsuitable hotel accommodations, no welcome packet detailing cultural and legal norms, and no one was willing drive my spouse to her place of duty despite no car or British traffic law knowledge. However, we were completely enamored with the area once we got settled into a hotel: downtown accommodations with a ten-minute walk to a real, preserved medieval castle and access to tons of shops and restaurants. I honestly felt like I was losing weight from all the walking and tourist activities we were doing.
Once we got a rental car and acquired a “sat nav” (i.e. GPS such as Garmin), we started looking for a house to rent. Let me just say that if you have never been inside a British house, then you would probably assume that a “Munchkin Village” is actually a rare oddity. I felt like Gandolf in the Shire or when Alice drinks that growth potion during our exploration of “affordable” housing in England. Thankfully, I had job offer from previous employer and it seemed like good money to boot (spoiler: the dollar goes about half as far in England). Finally, we found a place that was only slightly cramped, but it had a huge workshop and garage building which stored the stuff that wouldn’t fit – all for a rent twice as much as our housing allowance.
Well, we got our house, I got that job, and we got some cheap used cars. The sacrifice was that my spouse and I would work about 3 hours apart and have lengthy commutes. The cheap cars seemed ideal since I would be driving over 100 miles (and 3 hours) a day for work. Thankfully, I could flex my hours, and I only needed to work 4 days a week. However, that meant at least 2 hours to get ready for work, 1.5 hours to drive to work, 11 hours at work including lunch, and 1.5 hours to drive home ifeverything went according to plan. Perhaps we were the designers of our doom, but the plans never went well.
Mechanic shops are not open on the weekends, so it was an insurmountable waste of time and money when our cars broke down (regularly). It was much worse than that, though. I had to make up for the mere 5 hours of sleep each weeknight by ‘recovering’ each Saturday. I gained weight and lost energy. I stopped doing classes for my degree when I felt my sanity slipping. I would ‘relax’ with wine and tune out to television every weekend night. I went weeks without leaving the house except for work or to take a car to the shop. We didn’t travel like we wanted. My spouse was growing more and more miserable by the day and voiced her dissatisfaction with me regularly.
It went on like that for a year, when I finally decided to broach the subject of changing our living arrangements. We floated the idea of me renting an apartment near my work for during the week. My spouse was not happy about any of it. Eventually, though, she looked for places closer to the middle point of our commutes (hers was 45 minutes). Then, as if a divine force parted our sea of misery, my spouse got to go on a 6-week temporary duty assignment (TDY) to Germany. I drove out and back with her (flying back in the meantime), and it felt like that old magical combination of stress, excitement, and wonderment. While she was away, I looked at a couple of places for rent. And just like that, England gave us an example of how great it can be: we ended up moving into a converted and modernized barn with a heated pool! We still each have a 50 to 60-minute commute, but we now have new cars.
We’ve since had worse “tragedies” with our tour: I took a $15,000 pay cut, we got a $17,000 repair bill for our house in Alaska, our beloved dog died from old age, and our marriage has been through several rough patches because I haven’t had the time and/or energy to travel or even to explore the town we live near. It’s not the “dark ages” anymore, though. I am two months away from being done with my degree, I have the prospect of a better job with better benefits (and more time off), we’ve discovered a diet and lifestyle that allows us to lose weight and increase energy levels, and we have three separate plans on the books for major travel in the next six months. There’s even a chance that my spouse could get a transfer to work with me. It might just be our best tour yet.
I am a spouse of an Active Duty military member, and I am an honorably discharged veteran, as well. I am familiar with the military lifestyle and its great demands and sacrifices. In January 2016, when I was just a full-time student (i.e. unemployed), my spouse received orders for a permanent change of station (PCS) to the U.K. We had lived in Alaska, but the U.K. would be our first real assignment overseas. It was wonderful, exciting, and stressful. There were so many unknowns – but one thing was definite: it was going to be the best tour of our lives. We could travel, we could experience new culture, we could realize our dream of seeing the world.
It was hell moving to the U.K., even without expectations of smooth sailing. It cost us $2000 just to move our 3-pound chihuahua with us along with being especially strategic in our flight plans. We arrived to find our gaining unit had completely dropped the ball on welcoming us: unsuitable hotel accommodations, no welcome packet detailing cultural and legal norms, and no one was willing drive my spouse to her place of duty despite no car or British traffic law knowledge. However, we were completely enamored with the area once we got settled into a hotel: downtown accommodations with a ten-minute walk to a real, preserved medieval castle and access to tons of shops and restaurants. I honestly felt like I was losing weight from all the walking and tourist activities we were doing.
Once we got a rental car and acquired a “sat nav” (i.e. GPS such as Garmin), we started looking for a house to rent. Let me just say that if you have never been inside a British house, then you would probably assume that a “Munchkin Village” is actually a rare oddity. I felt like Gandolf in the Shire or when Alice drinks that growth potion during our exploration of “affordable” housing in England. Thankfully, I had job offer from previous employer and it seemed like good money to boot (spoiler: the dollar goes about half as far in England). Finally, we found a place that was only slightly cramped, but it had a huge workshop and garage building which stored the stuff that wouldn’t fit – all for a rent twice as much as our housing allowance.
Well, we got our house, I got that job, and we got some cheap used cars. The sacrifice was that my spouse and I would work about 3 hours apart and have lengthy commutes. The cheap cars seemed ideal since I would be driving over 100 miles (and 3 hours) a day for work. Thankfully, I could flex my hours, and I only needed to work 4 days a week. However, that meant at least 2 hours to get ready for work, 1.5 hours to drive to work, 11 hours at work including lunch, and 1.5 hours to drive home ifeverything went according to plan. Perhaps we were the designers of our doom, but the plans never went well.
Mechanic shops are not open on the weekends, so it was an insurmountable waste of time and money when our cars broke down (regularly). It was much worse than that, though. I had to make up for the mere 5 hours of sleep each weeknight by ‘recovering’ each Saturday. I gained weight and lost energy. I stopped doing classes for my degree when I felt my sanity slipping. I would ‘relax’ with wine and tune out to television every weekend night. I went weeks without leaving the house except for work or to take a car to the shop. We didn’t travel like we wanted. My spouse was growing more and more miserable by the day and voiced her dissatisfaction with me regularly.
It went on like that for a year, when I finally decided to broach the subject of changing our living arrangements. We floated the idea of me renting an apartment near my work for during the week. My spouse was not happy about any of it. Eventually, though, she looked for places closer to the middle point of our commutes (hers was 45 minutes). Then, as if a divine force parted our sea of misery, my spouse got to go on a 6-week temporary duty assignment (TDY) to Germany. I drove out and back with her (flying back in the meantime), and it felt like that old magical combination of stress, excitement, and wonderment. While she was away, I looked at a couple of places for rent. And just like that, England gave us an example of how great it can be: we ended up moving into a converted and modernized barn with a heated pool! We still each have a 50 to 60-minute commute, but we now have new cars.
We’ve since had worse “tragedies” with our tour: I took a $15,000 pay cut, we got a $17,000 repair bill for our house in Alaska, our beloved dog died from old age, and our marriage has been through several rough patches because I haven’t had the time and/or energy to travel or even to explore the town we live near. It’s not the “dark ages” anymore, though. I am two months away from being done with my degree, I have the prospect of a better job with better benefits (and more time off), we’ve discovered a diet and lifestyle that allows us to lose weight and increase energy levels, and we have three separate plans on the books for major travel in the next six months. There’s even a chance that my spouse could get a transfer to work with me. It might just be our best tour yet.
