This is my journal entry from December 8, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
Today is my thirteen-year wedding anniversary with my ex-wife, and at 10:30 a.m. we’re going to UPS to get the marriage settlement notarized. It’s strange to write that sentence and notice how good I actually feel. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. after a great night of sleep, took the kids to school, and then called one of the owners of the house I’ve officially been approved to rent. They’re happy to move forward with me and said they’ll be sending over the lease. All I need to do now is give them a check for the security deposit, and I’ll be cleared to move in at the beginning of January. Hearing that made everything feel real in a grounded, calm way instead of a frantic one.
I had that conversation with them while sitting in the my yoga studio parking lot, and I even managed to squeeze in my morning bowel movement right before power flow. A yoga instructor taught the class today. It wasn’t overly hard, which actually felt perfect because I noticed I had more resting energy than push energy this morning. I still moved my body and stayed present. She always throws in something I’ve never done before, which I appreciate. The woman from yoga was supposed to be there today but didn’t show up. She had texted me back yesterday saying she’d be there, so I found myself wondering if there was something I should have followed up with. Did she want the conversation to continue? Did something come up? I don’t know. She didn’t show and didn’t message either.
I noticed myself looping on that more than I needed to. I think I need to let her go from my awareness. It doesn’t feel like a good use of my energy. That brings up a bigger question for me that I don’t fully have an answer to yet. Is it loving to pay attention to people and let them know you’re thinking about them, or is it sometimes more loving to just stop investing energy entirely? Maybe be friendly if you see them, but not actively think about or pursue anything. I don’t know. That might be something I need coaching around at some point.
What I do know is that I saw a yoga instructor I’d spoken with sitting upstairs, and after our conversation a month ago, I felt a strong desire to make things right and get on the same page. I’ve never gone upstairs at my yoga studio before, but today I did. The second floor is usually reserved for instructors and owners. Another instructor was up there, so I said hi to her, then talked with the one I’d come to see. I thanked her for talking to me a month ago and for the feedback she gave me. I told her that what she said genuinely helped me realize I needed a better strategy for giving my books away. Just handing out books with my phone number inside was missing a big opportunity. It missed the chance to promote my other books and the fact that I help people write books. It was also confusing, especially since she thought I might have been leaving my number in a book as a way to pick someone up, which wasn’t my intention.
I was honest with her. I said that while I could imagine a scenario where a woman might interpret it that way, my primary motivation was always to connect with readers and hopefully have someone reach out about the books themselves. The letter I’m planning to include going forward fixes that completely. I also acknowledged that it must have been uncomfortable for her to have that conversation with me in the first place. She really appreciated that. Her face lit up, and she told me that they love me at my yoga studio and really appreciate me as part of the community. Hearing that was exactly what I needed. It landed deeply.
I reflected on how much progress I’ve made over the last month. At the same time, I know that if I go back to where I first described that situation, I’m a little embarrassed by how toxic my thinking was at the time. But this project is about publishing my life honestly. In an ideal world, I’d want my books to reflect only versions of myself I’d be proud to show anyone. But that isn’t how growth works. What happened then is the truth. What’s happening now is also the truth. And this is me working through it.
I feel genuinely good about where things are today. I’m also glad my my yoga studio membership is paid through March, and I’m actually thinking about asking if they offer a business-style membership like the one I have at Crunch. Being part of that community feels important to me, and I want to support it in a way that reflects how much it supports me.
I meet my ex-wife at the UPS store. The same woman who has notarized several other documents for both of us is there again, which feels oddly fitting. I make a few jokes about how it’s our thirteen-year wedding anniversary and that this is the last set of divorce paperwork we should have to sign. I can tell my ex-wife is feeling delicate, and I feel very open and loving toward her, which I’m grateful for. When my heart is open like that, everything feels cleaner and more honest. I give her a big hug and tell her I love her. As I walk her halfway back to her car, she starts crying in the parking lot. She jokes, “Oh, now you’re turning the romance on again,” and there’s this brief, tender moment where I put my hand on her back and she puts her hand on mine. That’s about as much physical closeness as we’ve had in the last couple of months aside from hugs, and that boundary feels right. We don’t want to slip back into the old relationship, because that relationship carries all the old baggage with it too.
Still, it was really beautiful. Standing there in a parking lot, hugging, acknowledging the death of our marriage while also recognizing the rebirth of the rest of our lives, felt sane and humane. The idea that you’re supposed to meet someone when you’re twenty-something, like my ex-wife and I did when we were twenty-six, drinking, barely grown, and then stay together forever under that kind of pressure feels insane to me now. That expectation is nuts. What we’re doing instead feels grounded. We were together fourteen years, married thirteen. Now it’s time to get divorced. Okay. Sounds good. Let’s do it.
After we say goodbye, I walk back to my car and get a text from my massage therapist saying she had to cancel because she hurt her hand, and maybe we can reschedule for tomorrow. I stay completely open-hearted about it. No problem. I move my schedule around easily. I already had a call scheduled with Chris Yost from the ICP community, so I reschedule that. I shuffle personal training and massage around. Everything clicks neatly into place. No drama.
When I get back home, I feel grateful for how clear my structure is now. When I’m alone at this house, it’s work time, grooming time, sleeping time, or eating time. That’s it. I have lunch, which is more of the bean soup, and holy shit, I am ripping farts the rest of the day after that. That soup is full of nourishing stuff. Beans, sweet potatoes, celery, carrots, spices. My body is processing it aggressively. I eat, laugh about it, and then get to work on a friend’s book.
I’m realizing how important it is to prioritize my work correctly if I want to feel good. So I sit down and finish editing a friend’s book. From the time I started running her dictated audio through ChatGPT last night to sending her a clean, rough-edited manuscript in Microsoft Word, it took about three hours total. The final manuscript is 19,000 words, which is perfect. A solid, short book that she’ll have for the rest of her life. I send it to her, feeling really good about the work.
After that, I pick the kids up. On the way, I stop by my new landlord’s house and drop off the security deposit check along with the signed lease. The kids immediately confirm they love the location and are excited about being near Crescent Lake. Hearing that seals it even more for me. I drive them over to my ex-wife’s house, update her on everything, and then head to the 4:00 p.m. AA meeting.
Today I make the final decision to close it down. I’d been thinking about it yesterday and the day before, and today just confirms it. We actually have a nice meeting. There are about six of us, all men. Lately, almost every meeting there has been men. I don’t know exactly what happened to the women, but my sense is that women tend to have more structured schedules with work and often go to meetings together with friends. A lot of the women who go to meetings on their own end up choosing women’s meetings. The women who did show up to this group were usually either brand new or people that I or another member personally invited. I tell the group that I’m going to close it down, and no one else wants to take on carrying it. After the meeting, I go home and email intergroup to have the meeting removed from the list.
It’s sad, but it feels similar to the divorce. It’s the end of something and the beginning of something else. I want the freedom to go to meetings during the day in a way that fits my life. Once I start having two or three overnights a week with the kids, I won’t be available in the afternoons for a daily meeting. I’m not going to keep pushing the kids off onto my ex-wife just so I can maintain a meeting schedule. I want my time with them. I want to do at least my third of the parenting and be a primary presence in their lives.
After emailing intergroup, I start looking for a hard drive where I backed up my old video courses and realize I’ve lost some of them. That’s frustrating, but it is what it is. I also email someone to tie up a loose end on a website I sold earlier this year. It’s amazing how finishing little unfinished tasks like that instantly makes life feel lighter, like there’s less clutter in my head. I make a big salad for lunch using the rest of the lettuce I have. I consider going to Whole Foods but decide I’ll do that tomorrow since I’ll already be over that way.
Once all that’s done, I have some quiet time to myself. Afterward, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I feel creatively inspired and a strong pull to start dictating my Friday Yoga Crush book. So I do. I dictate the first fifty-seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds straight through. It’s a fiction book, though it’s heavily inspired by my real life. I change details wherever I want to make it fiction, and I lean into elements that are clearly imaginative, like after-death experiences and alternate timelines. It’s loosely in the spirit of The Midnight Library, but centered around yoga. What’s wild is that the audio version is created completely in real time. I dictate it unedited, almost like channeling it, and that feels incredible. I get a full hour of it down in one sitting.
After that, I go downstairs and visit my mom. She’s not interested in watching Battlestar Galactica 1980 tonight, so we just talk for about thirty minutes. Then I come back home. I feel good. My diary entry for the day is dictated. The work I needed to do is done. It’s about 10:11 p.m., and I’m settled.
It’s strange to think that just a week ago, when I was in Michigan, I was seriously considering moving there. I’m really glad that’s not the plan. Instead, I’ve got a month to prepare for a move that’s just across town. It’s a much better plan. The Michigan option could have worked if my family had fully supported it, but this feels happier and more aligned. Life is interesting that way. You have free will and real choices, but some choices seem to get more support from life itself, at least in the short term. That’s something worth paying attention to.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.