The Messy Middle
A few nights ago I attended (virtually) our Board of Directors meeting for The Ready Room Project. While “Board of Directors” might sound fancy, the group is made up of people we know and trust to help us steer this ship.
To be honest, we (my co-founder, Jeff, and I) were a little anxious heading into this particular meeting. I think some of it has to do with having really high expectations for ourselves and wanting to do well. We also want The Ready Room Project to have BIG impact, and things at the beginning tend to take time.
You have to learn to crawl before you can run, and that takes patience. I like to say patience is a virtue, but it’s not one of mine.
Showing up
It’s been an intense season both personally and for The Ready Room Project. We’re beyond the starting line, far from the finish, and grappling with overwhelm and fatigue.
The board meeting proved to be the shot in the arm we needed.
The feeling reminded me of attending a spouses meeting or event in the middle of a deployment or tough set of workups (the period of intermittent separation and training leading up to a Navy deployment). Sometimes I didn’t want to go.
Separation of any length can be exhausting for the spouse at home, who’s often working, raising children, and handling all of the household tasks that would ordinarily be shared with the absent spouse.
The last thing I wanted to do was find a babysitter on a weeknight and put on anything but an elastic waistband.
But I never regretted the times I sucked it up and showed up.
The messy middle
This week marks one year since Jeff and I shook hands and said “we’re going to do this.” We stood in his kitchen and I busted out my laptop, bought the domain, and designed a simple logo. It’s the same one we use today. Maybe not perfect, but “good enough” to start.
As we got to work on the more tedious aspects of setting up The Ready Room Project, I experienced some burnout. But launching in August to friends and family, receiving donations (it actually worked!) and then running our first project boosted morale.
A few months later, we find ourselves in another “messy middle” season. In the coming posts, we’ll share the work we’ve done over the last few months and the families who’ve been impacted by your generosity.
But I wanted to reflect just a bit on what it feels like to wade through the messy middle of any endeavor, how important it is to acknowledge it, and the power of well-timed support.
I know this is especially true of military life.
In the beginning
The beginning of things can be exhilarating. It’s the middle that tends to be a slog, when the excitement wanes, the adrenaline fades, and the overwhelm appears as you start to uncover how much there is to do.
I experienced this with every deployment. In the beginning, there’s a lot of support, chatter, and get-togethers to attend. Over time, that necessarily fades as life goes on.
Hitting the wall
On Nick’s last deployment, I hit a few walls (it was a long one!), but I remember one of them being in January 2021. We hadn’t seen him in over eight months, and we still didn’t have a homecoming date. That “middle” felt really dark. Nick was the commanding officer at the time, so I had the privilege of leading the spouses and families at home.
I hosted a meeting with other spouses and significant others on Zoom (remember those days?), and during a lull in the conversation I shared that I was having a hard month.
I didn’t sugarcoat it. I was overwhelmed and anxious. I felt some cynicism creeping in. I wasn’t sleeping through the night.
It seemed like we’d never get where we wanted to go. There was just too much to do, too big a mountain to climb, so much unknown still ahead of us.
One by one, the other spouses chimed in with murmurs of solidarity.
They felt it, too. The holidays came and went, our loved ones remained at sea, and the short winter days felt like they were closing in on us.
I didn’t feel better overnight, but it felt good to know I wasn’t alone.
Navigating the messy middle
I don’t think it’s a stretch to see the parallel with our work at The Ready Room Project. It’s a familiar feeling - that low hum of stress, the never-ending to-do list, the nagging suspicion that I could be doing more, better, sooner.
Attending our board meeting the other night felt like a breath of fresh air. Once again, I didn’t feel alone.
Of course, there’s my partner-in-crime, Jeff. But in these “messy middle” moments, he feels the pressure too. We needed to hear the encouragement, support, and offers of help from our Board of Directors.
We can’t ignore, dismiss, or even remove the work needed to move beyond the “messy middle” into a season when things are running on autopilot. And there will be plenty of these seasons to come.
But the value of well-timed, relevant resourcing and support can’t be understated.
Our goal at The Ready Room Project is to meet active duty kids and spouses in that “messy middle” of military life.
We want to be a source of support when the band stops playing, and the deployment gets extended, and the movers leave a hundred boxes in the house for them to unpack alone.
We’re doing that by filling in the gaps between what military life demands of families and what it can provide to support them.
We want to see military kids and spouses thrive - even in the messy middle. We’d love it if you'd join us!
Donate, sign up for our email list, and/or follow along on Instagram.
Our DMs and inboxes are always open to you.
Please share this post with someone who might benefit from it!
