Melanie and Ivey's gap year

It’s happening!  After eighteen years in Hawai‘i, I’m writing this last post from an island that has shaped almost every version of my adult life. It’s strange to think about leaving a place I’ve spent nearly half my life in, and stepping into something completely new — something I get to choose.  The amount of pending free will in my near future is scary and wildly exciting.  For a perpetual daydreamer confined to a military contract for longer than I ever imagined, the opportunities are overwhelming and boundless.

I didn’t have a retirement ceremony or celebration, so please enjoy a photo collage of me in a variety of uniforms throughout my career. Thank you to EVERYONE that has been a part of my journey and contributed to a career I am very proud of.

This month has been a blur of sorting, donating, hugging, crying, laughing, panicking, and eating snacks at inappropriate hours. I made so many trips to the dump, I made friends with the workers!  All the while, layered underneath the chaos is the reality that I’m not just leaving Hawai‘i — I’m retiring from the military, stepping away from a career that shaped me from the inside out and stepping into a kind of voluntary unemployment I’ve never experienced before. It’s a strange mix of freedom and fear, relief and grief, excitement and “wait… what am I doing?”

It’s the kind of life transition you don’t fully process until you’re already on the other side of it. And now, somehow, we are on the other side. The suitcases are zipped. The cat is temporarily relocated. The house keys have been handed over. The chapter has quietly closed.

Our gap year has officially begun.

We’re stepping into this next part with equal parts courage, curiosity, and “well… let’s just see what happens.” I don’t know exactly how time will feel once we’re moving — whether the days will stretch or blur or surprise us — but I do know we’re ready to find out.  Our memories will anchor themselves to new landscapes, new faces, to new moments of awe.

Hawai‘i gave us the strength to try something new — to retire, to reset, to wander off the straight line with snacks and questionable confidence. It held us through military life, through loss, through growth, through the long stretch of becoming who we are now. It taught us resilience, softness, and how to breathe even when everything felt overwhelming. All of that — the community, the quiet magic, the way the island catches you when you fall — is coming with us into whatever comes next. Mahalo, Hawai’i. I will miss your abundant rainbows and absolutely everything else that you offer. It has been a true privilege to spend so much time with you.

So here we go — leaving the familiar, carrying everything Hawai‘i taught us, and walking straight into a year where nothing is guaranteed except change. The next post will come from the road, probably written outside while I listen to Taylor Swift and try to make sense of whatever adventure we’ve stumbled into next.

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