I got separated in March 2020 and finally divorced in January 2022. It was a long time in coming, but it wasn’t awesome.

In hindsight, I disassociated a bit, spreading the pain out over time rather than feeling it all at once. Immediately after our separation, I could easily distract myself for months by getting the new house in order, but I soon found myself with more time on my hands than I’d had in over a decade. The pandemic and lockdowns soon set everything askew.

I didn’t keep my separation or divorce a secret (even mentioning it here to anyone who reads my entire posts), and acquaintances I’ve known for years or decades came out of the woodwork to privately share their stories about troubled relationships. A year after we separated and a year before the final divorce paperwork, I wrote a post-mortem of my marriage, including some thoughts on the impact of social media. I challenged myself — was thinking and talking about the end of my marriage helping or hurting my mood? When I felt down, I tried to tease apart whether I was missing her, vs. missing being married at all.

Throughout 2022, I saw a counsellor on my company health plan because, well, I got divorced, and that’s what you do. I enjoyed our sessions, but mostly I just talked. And talked. And talked. I probably spoke for 55 minutes of every hour. At the end of 2022, the company switched health plan providers. My counsellor wasn’t in the new network, so further appointments would cost me around a hundred bucks an hour. While continuing our sessions might be worth it, I figured that for that much, I might find a massage and walk outside with coffee more effective for my mental health anyway. I changed my mind after my Kilimanjaro trip and decided to restart our sessions — they’re worth it.

To move forward, I knew I’d have to be more proactive about my life’s choices than I’d been in a long time. I challenged myself with each decision: “What do you want more”? And I knew that moving forward meant that I needed to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I adopted some mottos which now adorn my walls: Memento Mori. Tempus Fugit. Don’t get dead.

I started blogging more. I started eating better and working out, losing 50 pounds. I made sure that I went outside every day, because “touching grass” inevitably improves my mood. I started spending money on things I wanted (car, vacations, home solar, exercise equipment) rather than trying to hoard a larger and larger pile. I got a housemate, both because living with a friend is fun, and to help ensure that in a few years I wouldn’t find myself unable to live with other people.

ProjectK gave me a guiding star on the horizon; an ambitious but achievable goal which would require achieving many sub-goals, and which would prove that I can “do big things.” Now that I’ve completed the project, I am noodling over what to pursue next.

Life is a series of ups and downs, and I have to remind myself of that almost every day.

I love my kids.

Impatient optimist. Dad. Author/speaker. Created Fiddler & SlickRun. PM @ Microsoft 2001-2012, and 2018-, working on Office, IE, and Edge. Now a GPM for Microsoft Defender. My words are my own, I do not speak for any other entity. View more posts