week 27: freedom, pt 1
this week on the little dream farm
This weeks Farm Note is part one of a two-part series. Tune in next week for the second half!
I am free.
But I don’t mean that before I wasn’t free—it’s just that I was choosing for my time to be occupied in a different way.
Back in 2020 I got a message from a woman I’d met while we were both working at the Department of Defense Warrior Games when it was hosted at the Air Force Academy in Colorado in 2018. She was in the Navy at the time that I met her, but had since transferred to the Air Force Reserve. Her Reserve when she reached out was at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations—the Air Force’s NCIS (it stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service), which you’re likely more familiar with because of the hit television show. She was going on maternity leave and wanted to know if I was available to fill in while she was out.
I told her to ask the one-star general if he’d be ok with me being in class during part of the duty day—this was just several months into the COVID-19 pandemic and I was in the middle of getting my MBA that was previously full time in person but had gone virtual at the same time Chris’ job at Comcast did, too.
The general and the command team said it was no problem and welcomed me to the team.
Those few months with AFOSI turned into a year. At the one year mark, the general asked if I’d stay on another year, this, just after having graduated with my MBA a few months prior. I loved the Pubic Affairs work I was doing for the team (media engagement, social media, writing stories, website work, creating communications for the general and leadership teams, connecting with the units and agents all around the globe) and happily signed on for another year. This was just weeks before finding the farm in July 2021.
As Chris’ role was starting to look like it was going to return to mostly in-person, he began applying to other jobs and luckily landed a new remote role with a company based in Milwaukee, WI just around the same time we moved to the farm—he’s still in this job and absolutely loving it.
Just ahead of the two-year mark of my time with AFOSI, I was starting to think about what I’d planned to do next. Now on the farm, I knew I wasn’t interested in applying for in-person roles, either in or out of the military. I was also still coaching a small group of personal training and nutrition clients virtually—something I’ve been doing since I was a very junior officer because it fills my cup and because I got a masters degree in exercise science and became a personal trainer, nutrition coach, and life coach during my first few years on active duty so that I could do work I really loved while also serving in the military. So, did I want to take my coaching full time? Was I ready to write another book? What about that cookbook I’d been thinking about? How about those children’s books that have been on my mind for a few years?
Then just before my orders were about to end, my first boss from back when I was stationed on Guam reached out and asked if I could support his team stationed in Virginia remotely with some travel mixed in.
At the time, he was running a Public Affairs division for Joint Task Force Civil Support—a team that trains to support stateside hazard response. You’d find it comforting to know that there’s an entire contingent of wicked smart people with PhDs who spend all their time thinking about how we’d respond in all types of major catastrophes here across the homeland. It was way out of my comfort zone and something I hadn’t ever learned about or been exposed to during my time in the military. I happily said yes at the chance to work with my old boss and get to learn about and work in something totally new, and the work was fascinating and really expanded my skills as a communications professional and military officer.
I spent a year with that team and would have stayed with them if it had been an option. Again, I was thinking about coaching, thinking about books, even thinking about a YouTube channel for the farm.
I’d hopped on the phone with an Air Force mentor of mine and she’d recommended I connect with another PAO about a role she’d been working in. We were on the phone the very next day and a day or two later I was on the phone with her boss interviewing for the team.
This was a group of Reservists who all held full time jobs at Amazon, Marriott, a law firm, defense contracting companies, etc., and had all come together remotely to build a strategy to enhance the way a large subset of Reservists support our active duty units.
This is the kind of work I love to do—strategic planning, project management, and change management. Give me any problem, big or small, and I love to help think about the desired end state, work backwards from that, design a plan to get to that end state, and then execute the plan with targets and milestones along the way.
I signed on with that team for a year, excited about the changes we’d make. The work itself was incredible, but the people and the bureaucracy was incredibly challenging. Determined not to let the cattiness of other people or the nearly stalled progress get to me, I agreed to sign on for another year, but was then let go from that role just a few days before Christmas. It was a huge blow that I was in no way expecting and didn’t take gracefully, but was also a blessing in disguise.
Shortly following that news, I’d connected with another Air Force mentor, who asked me if I’d join her team as they needed the support. I agreed to six months with them, as the news from the current administration at the time was that remote work would no longer be authorized beyond a certain point. That, and as a Reservist you’re only allowed to be in active status consecutively for a certain period of time, and I was going to be coming up on that time at the midpoint of the year.
I finished those orders at the start of this week and then worked a couple of days with my unit at the Pentagon. It’s clunky to explain but here’s how it works. As an Air Force Reservist, I am in a role currently assigned to the Pentagon and I have to fulfill the equivalent of 30 days out of the year with that unit. All the other work that I was doing these last few years was additional orders outside of those normal duties. So, now that those orders have expired, the only responsibility I currently have to the Air Force is to continue to support my unit at the Pentagon a few times throughout the year. I’ll do a few weeks in person at the Pentagon later this year.
This makes me a free woman.
As a Reservist, you begin to collect your retirement pay at age 60. A few weeks ago I received an email stating that due to the time I’ve been in active status these last several years (along with a six-month deployment back in 2018) I am now eligible to begin collecting my retirement several years before that—an absolute game changer.
You have to know that at each of these transition points between roles, I was at a really big crossroads personally and professionally. As someone who cares a lot about, thinks about, and has kind of centered my life and identity around dreams and the pursuit of them, I was feeling like I kept putting mine on hold.
And as much as I kept trying to tell myself I could and should be doing both, I also know that doing a hundred things half-heartedly cannot compete with doing just a few things with focus and doing them well.
David had left me with an important charge when this farm changed hands and changed stewardship between him and Chris and I.
“Listen, and allow the answers to come,” he’d told me.
Those words have lived in me since he said them and have served as a guidepost for my decisions personally, professionally, and for us here on this farm.
So I’ve been listening, and the answers have been coming in all the most serendipitous ways.
I think we’d like to believe that life will shout the answers to us. That epiphanies will come. That the next step or the next path will be marked clearly. That it’ll be easy. That we will just know.
But my experience with determining what comes next has always been marked by quiet nudges, inner knowings, and signs sometimes so small you almost miss them entirely.
Those small signs and inner knowings and quiet nudges have been coming to me throughout the last few years. And as much as I’ve wanted to leap and to act and to push and to add more to the plate, there was also a very quiet energy that was nudging me to wait.
And now, there’s nothing left to wait for.
The last few years have been incredible for me professionally. I’ve had the chance to do things as a Reservist that I never would have had the opportunity to do had I stayed on active duty.
I just submitted the package for my promotion to Lieutenant Colonel before wrapping up my orders. The board will meet in September and I’ll find out sometime in December if I’ve made it.
But now the doors to this period have closed. Even if I didn’t want them to, the changes to the return to in-person work policies would mean I’d have to move in order to continue any role.
It’s like all my quiet nudges had been saying, “Wait. Hold on just a little longer. The time will come. When it does, you will know.”
I’m closing this chapter with nothing but gratitude and I’m turning the page with pure excitement and wonder and curiosity.
I’ve been listening. I’ve been allowing the answers to come. I’m eager to share with you what I’ve been hearing and how I plan to work with it.
Come on back next week and we’ll dive in.
xxo,
Sarah
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Your title “Freedom” got me back to checking in with you again, as I have been very otherwise occupied with the many unconstitutional actions and stance of our current administration.
However, the post was not what I expected. Perhaps it should not be so.
I have loved everything you have written (including your first book which I bought directly from you) and every post you and Chris have made since I started following you less than a year before your move to the farm. What you bring is an open, honest sharing of so many diverse things, including your personal life (so brave of you), but the love of animals and our poor Mother Earth at the heart of it. And, I am sure you bring it so many people, who like myself are pretty compassionate, kind people.
So thank you once again, for doing what it is you do so well and always sharing lots of love and light with it🥰💜. Particularly at this time in the world, it is desperately needed.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It’s interesting to learn about your military career and how the organization works. I truly believe that LOTS of things present themselves and show the way - sometimes the decisions are not so easy but opening your heart and mind the way you describe definitely nudges you in the right direction. I am really looking forward to next weeks message (good hook)!