All right, Post #2 and I’m already making this blog my personal confessional booth!  (Of course, not being Catholic, my knowledge of actual confessional booths is cobbled together from movies and off-color jokes, but that’s neither here nor there.)  Before anyone gets all excited, this isn’t an earth-shattering revelation.

This is not my first blog.  Nor is it the only blog I currently keep.

It is the first one I have consciously devoted to a single subject.  My other ventures into the wonderful world of blogging (dating back to before the turn of the millennium, which makes me feel positively ancient) have been aimed primarily at keeping in touch with friends and family.  My intended audience was comprised largely of people I already knew in real life

My plans for To the Nth are deliberately tailored toward joining the “milblogging” community while retaining sufficient anonymity to let me feel comfortable writing for anyone in the world who cares to look.  I wonder, at this early stage, how successful I will be in maintaining that comfy distance without compromising the inherently personal nature of a blog whose content will be drawn from my own life as a Navy wife.  That is sort of the point: to share what it’s like being married to a Naval Aviator and living the Navy life.

The trouble is, I’m not married to “a” Naval Aviator, an archetype interchangeable with some set of generic squadronmates.  Do you think every Navy pilot would use the phrase “minty urgency” to describe a new lotion?  My husband just did.  I suspect that, being married to my particular Naval Aviator, my idea of “living the Navy life” will be significantly different than that of a friend married to her particular Naval Aviator.

Sometimes, civilians have an image in their heads of a monolithic military made up of cookie-cutter people.  Those of us close to the military are well aware that sharing a uniform doesn’t enforce mental conformity by any stretch of the imagination.  Even within the same community — same job, same aircraft, same squadron — people have different experiences.  I haven’t the foggiest what it’s like for SWO families, or the loved ones of those crazy submarine guys, or heck, even for the families of the enlisted aircrew my husband will be working with every day.

All I can write about is my own version of Navy life.  The trick will be not allowing myself to mistake my individual circumstances — even when others might be able to relate — for some imaginary Universal Truth of Navy Spousehood.