This is my journal entry from November 24, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
I wake up still feeling a little drained, but I am profoundly grateful that I slept well. Going to bed around 9:30 p.m. and waking up a little after 7:00 a.m. makes an enormous difference. I feel good in my body again, steadier. I go to say good morning to everyone, making sure I give space and let them tell me when they are ready for me to come over. When I do, I say hi, and I am immediately met with snuggles. I am still completely broken open emotionally, crying on and off, but in a softer way now. I am deeply grateful to have this time with the kids before I leave for Michigan today. This is the last time I will see them for a week, and that fact sits quietly in the background of everything.
I play with my son in his bed. He asks me to tickle his belly, and I stuff his stuffed animals into his pants, telling him it looks like he just pooped a diaper. He laughs uncontrollably, that full-body laughter that makes everything else fade for a moment. My daughter snuggles with me in the new chairs my ex-wife bought for the front of the house, set up in her little reading nook. Before I leave, I hug my ex-wife and tell her I am grateful for the life we built together and for what we are doing going forward. I thank her for how she handled yesterday. She seems better today, more settled, which is a relief. We tell each other we love each other. As I pull away, my son stands just outside the front door, waving and yelling, “Love you, Dad! Bye!” I am crying again as I drive off.
I arrive about five minutes late to tennis and immediately get a phone call and a text asking where I am. I actually appreciate how prompt and attentive these guys are. I show up for doubles with two men I know from the tennis club and another man I have never met. I enjoy the easy conversation and getting to know them. After one of our matches, where the new guy and I win the first set, I ask them for advice. I tell them honestly that I do not know what the hell I am doing with my life right now. I know I have valuable skills, but I do not know how to apply them in a way that makes money or helps people joyfully. I do not even know how I would begin looking for a job. He tells me he has had a long, successful career in finance, and that his family is well connected downtown. He suggests I send him a résumé and gives me his contact information. I am genuinely grateful that I have the courage to be that honest, to ask for help without trying to sell myself or spin some story, just to say plainly that I am lost and open to guidance.
It also crosses my mind that some of these guys at the tennis club are clearly very successful, and maybe they know things I do not. I end up really enjoying playing doubles with them. At first, I feel conflicted, like I should not be here, like I should have skipped tennis and spent more time snuggling the kids before leaving. But by 10:30 a.m., after winning all three sets, I feel grounded and alive. It becomes clear this was exactly what I needed this morning. All of these guys are twenty to thirty-plus years older than me, and every one of them leaves me feeling steadier.
As we play, I start thinking about love and presence. Is playing and laughing with these men any less important than being with my kids? Can I love them in the same way—not the same kind of love, but love nonetheless? They are here with me, having fun, joking around, talking shit, showing up fully. That matters. And the answer that comes back is yes, this matters too. It is not lesser. This is part of life, and I am genuinely glad it is happening right now. I break a sweat, feel my body wake up, and I really see it today: the social connection in doubles tennis is just as important as the physical movement.
My body feels a little slower after the last two days of burnout, and doubles turns out to be exactly what I needed this morning, especially with this group of guys. Some of them clearly have money and connections, and who knows what kind of help or perspective they might offer. I ask honestly and without expectation. I never assume anything will come of it. I just ask and listen. And here I am, already talking with someone who actually knows what paths might exist from here.
I head home acutely aware that I have one hour to get myself ready to leave for Michigan. Earlier that morning, before my ex-wife and the kids were up, I laid almost everything out on the bed, so now it is just a matter of stuffing it into my backpack. I shower, eat, and get the house set to leave. I make a huge salad to use up lettuce that would otherwise go bad while I am gone, wanting to leave with a full stomach. I pack a plastic container of beans to eat on the road. Simple, practical, done.
From there, I go to see my massage therapist for a massage. I tell her everything that has been going on, and without hesitation her first response is that this Michigan trip is exactly what I need right now, that it should go really well, and that it will likely be a beautiful experience for everyone involved. I feel restored to sanity almost instantly. It is like something unclenches. I realize how much fear I have already let go of, how much growth has happened in just the last twenty-four hours, and I feel profoundly grateful for my friendship with her. Again, the same thought returns: isn’t this love and friendship just as important? Isn’t the love I share with my massage therapist just as valid as the love I share with my kids, with my ex-wife, with anyone else? Don’t I have the capacity to love far more broadly than I usually allow myself to? The love I feel for my kids—shouldn’t that love be something I give outward, without restriction? I leave the massage feeling deeply relaxed, centered, and fully ready for the trip.
At the airport, I carry the container of beans with me and eat the entire thing straight out of the container. No seasoning, no extras, just cooked beans I made a few days ago, dumped into my mouth while I sit there. I throw the container away, chug my entire water bottle, and head through security. For the first time, I do not have to take my shoes off, which feels like a small miracle. I am oddly delighted by it. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, there are only two scanners open at first, and the line starts backing up, but thankfully they have built a dedicated area that actually has room for everyone. They open two more scanners, and things move quickly. All I have to do is slide my driver’s license in for identity verification. I notice how strange it is that I do not even need to show a boarding pass anymore.
I get to the gate and sit down, noticing that I am listed as standby. I assume I will get a seat. I read more of Can You Catch a Cold? which I am almost finished with now. As I look around the airport, something shifts again. I miss my ex-wife. I miss the kids. But I look at all these people sitting around me and think: aren’t all of them someone’s kids too? Aren’t all of them deeply loved by someone, or at least worthy of being loved? Couldn’t I love all of these people the same way I love my own children? It feels like a real revelation. My love has been narrowly focused on my identity as a husband, my work, my kids, my immediate family, and a small circle of friendships. What if love were more generalized, more expansive, reaching outward to all of humanity? Isn’t that what we actually need? If we could all love one another with the same intensity and care we reserve for our closest people, wouldn’t that solve everything? Literally every problem on this planet would dissolve if even a relatively small number of people lived that way. It would spread.
The plane is on time. I get my seat assignment and board, only to find a couple already settled in, with the guy sitting in the window seat that technically belongs to me. He clearly wants to stay there, and they have the aisle seat open. They offer to move, but I tell them it is fine and that they should stay where they are. They look comfortable, and I genuinely do not care whether I am on the aisle or the window. As long as I am not in the middle, I am good. The middle is survivable too, but aisle or window are the real wins. I take my seat and immediately think, this is probably going to be another cry session, isn’t it?
It feels eerily familiar. Just like a year ago, I have the perfect book at the perfect time. On my trip to Michigan a year earlier, I already knew my marriage was over. I knew it in my bones. I knew I had loved my ex-wife deeply, that we had a good marriage in many ways, but I also knew this was not the future I wanted. I knew I needed a divorce. I knew I wanted to find another woman to have children with, because my ex-wife did not want more kids, and I did. On that July 2024 trip to Michigan, alone, I finally admitted something to myself that I had been afraid to say out loud: I wanted another woman, someone different from my ex-wife, someone who truly wanted to have kids and build a family with me. For the first time, I pushed through the shame, the guilt, the remorse, the feeling that wanting that made me wrong or selfish. I let myself feel the desire honestly. And once I did, I realized I could have a genuinely good life following that path. Getting divorced, finding another partner, having more kids could be a happy, valid, meaningful life. In many ways, it could be just as right and beautiful as staying married. It might even be better.
But when I asked people for advice back then, everyone told me to make my marriage work. Everyone told me to focus on fixing things with my ex-wife. When I got home, I told her I wanted to take a romantic trip together. We went to a beachfront resort, and for a day, it felt wonderful. It felt like we had our old relationship back. But as soon as we returned home, everything snapped back into place. Business as usual. I was unhappy again. I hoped that more romance and sex might reignite something, that it could be the spark that brought us back together. Over the past year, it became painfully clear that it was not that simple. There were deeper issues. More sex was never going to resolve my ex-wife’s refusal to have more kids or my desire to have them.
On that trip last year, I listened to The Light Between Us and Signs by Laura Lynne Jackson, and they were exactly what I needed at that moment. I remember sobbing uncontrollably on the plane, thinking how absurdly perfect it was to have those books in my ears at that exact time. Today feels the same. Now I am listening to Broken Open, and once again, it could not be more perfectly timed. I am crying on the plane all over again. As I listen to stories of people who have been through far more than I have, I am not comparing or minimizing my own pain. The point is not comparison. The message of the book is that these kinds of experiences crack you open. They strip away resistance, soften the ego, dismantle old patterns, and allow you to emerge as something truer and more expansive.
That is exactly how I feel. I feel myself opening into a fuller, more loving version of who I am, rather than clinging to a narrow identity built around being a husband, a father, or an online persona. I am not just those roles. I am a human being capable of loving broadly, openly, without conditions. I feel more connected to my soul self, less trapped by old definitions of who I am supposed to be. I feel like someone with an open heart and an open mind, and for the first time in a while, that feels like enough.
As the plane hums along, I remember thinking earlier this year that I needed to have more compassion for other people. Right now, that compassion feels like it is overflowing. I used to be deeply judgmental about divorce. My ex-wife’s sister got divorced years ago, and I judged her harshly for it, sometimes out loud to my ex-wife, often just in my own head. That judgment had to have shaped how I treated my ex-wife and how she felt around me. It carried this unspoken message that divorce meant failure, that her sister had ruined her life, failed her husband, failed her marriage, and that it was mostly her fault. Sitting here now, that way of thinking feels completely insane. If anything, that divorce may have been the very thing that broke her open, expanded her view of life, and freed her from shallow expectations she did not even realize she was living inside of. I can see now how these experiences are not punishments but initiations.
What is also becoming clear is how little we actually understand about how we arrive at these moments. I cannot point to a single, specific thing I did that landed me in a divorce. I did not do this alone. Yesterday, I was drowning in guilt over my contributions to the breakdown of our marriage, and yes, I did my part. But my ex-wife did her part too. We each brought our half. If I had been married to a different woman, I would have brought a different half. The dynamic would have been entirely different, and yet people from wildly different circumstances end up in the same place all the time. In Broken Open, I hear story after story of marriages that looked perfect from the outside—beautiful homes, healthy kids, successful careers, everything seemingly dialed in—while inside, the people involved were stressed, disconnected, and quietly unraveling. One woman in the book talks about being married to a doctor, having young kids, and living what looked like an ideal life, only to end up having an affair because she was starving for passion. These stories are not about moral failure. They are about being human.
The book talks about how, to some degree, we are all just bozos on the bus. None of us really knows what we are doing. We live in a mysterious universe and walk around pretending we understand it, telling ourselves, I know, I know, I know. The truth is, I do not know shit. Out of everything there is to know, what I know is so close to nothing that it is almost indistinguishable from nothing. If the last week has taught me anything, it is how effortlessly the universe can drop an incredible person into my life. The woman I met is a perfect example of that.
She was kind enough to send me a message last night, and it is worth recounting exactly how that unfolded, because it mattered more than I realized at the time. On Saturday—the day I started to spiral—I had messaged her first. I thanked her for our time together the day before and offered to take her to the beach or play pickleball whenever she was free. She wrote back warmly, saying it had been her pleasure and that she didn’t take my trusting her with my story lightly. I replied that our conversation had been a lot of fun and asked when we could meet up again. Then twenty-eight hours passed with no response, and that silence is where my mind started to unravel. Here we go again, I thought. Another great woman, another moment of hope, and then nothing. I replayed our in-person conversation, how open she seemed, how much it felt like she wanted to see me again.
When she finally responded, her message was clear and kind. She said she had enjoyed our conversation too, but in full transparency she had met someone a few weeks earlier and was enjoying getting to know him—nothing exclusive yet, though it seemed to be heading that way—and that maybe she would see me at a future event. I replied honestly, telling her that I appreciated the energy of her message, that our time talking by the water had been a highlight of my week and left me with a lot to think about, and that I was happy imagining seeing her again at another event.
Receiving her message with the energy she sent it in felt good. It was honest, respectful, and clean. And as I sit here now, I can see the deeper truth: I am not ready for her in my life. If I were truly ready, maybe she would have felt ready to prioritize me. But I am still spending hours every day with my ex and my kids. I clearly do not have space right now to wake up next to a woman every morning or to build something new in the way that would require. Seeing that does not hurt the way it might have before. It feels clarifying. It feels like another piece of the larger picture coming into focus.
Talking with my massage therapist helps me see this at a much deeper level. She talks about how much she appreciates waking up next to her boyfriend every day, how that is the best part of her day. Hearing that makes everything click. If I had a woman like her in my life, someone I genuinely wanted to be with, of course I would want to wake up with her every morning. I would want those mornings together. And that would mean giving something up. That would mean I would no longer be taking the kids to school. That alone is about an hour a day, five hours a week. Add in weekend mornings, bedtime routines, evenings together, and suddenly I am giving up ten or more hours a week with the kids. That is the real tradeoff. And then there is the question I cannot ignore: would a woman like that be okay with me spending hours every day at my ex’s house just to be with my kids? If I put myself in her position—single, never married, no kids—I know the honest answer. That would not feel good. It would not feel like she was a real priority. It would not feel like she was number one.
Between that conversation with my massage therapist and her message, it becomes obvious that this is actually a gift. I need more time. Right now, this is a transition period. It has only been a couple of months since everything shifted, and I am still finding my footing. I want to see the kids as much as I can during this phase, partly to minimize the disruption for them, and partly because I still need that closeness myself. The reality is that I am not seeing them much less than I was before, and in some ways, I am more present with them now. When I am with them, I am really with them. But I also know the broader truth: being a divorced dad often means seeing your kids significantly less. That is just how it goes. And that has to be okay. If I want another woman and possibly another family someday, they will become my priority, just as my current family once was.
Ideally, I would meet another woman before having to cut that time with the kids, but life does not always line up neatly. Other changes could reduce that time too—getting a job, moving somewhere else, shifts I cannot predict yet. Today, though, I feel grateful. I genuinely appreciate her honesty and the clarity her message gave me. I can see now that I need time to make this transition internally. And when I am truly ready for a woman, when one comes along, she will be ready for me too.
I think about how many people have told me they met someone and just knew, that there was an unmistakable energy there. Sometimes I get frustrated when I am around people and do not feel that spark, wondering why it is not happening yet. But when that person does come, she is going to require a lot of my time. And while that intensity can feel euphoric, it also comes with real sacrifices. When I really sit with the idea that being in a relationship means missing time with my kids, I feel surprisingly okay with taking my time to date. I am okay with just talking to people, getting to know them, having conversations, and not forcing anything. I am starting to see that it is my responsibility to love myself.
A lot of the emotional weight I have been carrying around dating comes from an unconscious belief that if I meet a woman I am madly in love with, then this divorce makes sense and is justified. And if I do not, then it must have been wrong. Seeing that belief clearly now, I can let it go. No matter what happens next, the divorce is happening. That part is already in motion. Whether I like it or not no longer matters. What matters now is accepting reality as it is and learning how to live well inside it.
I could fight this and create more problems, but I am not doing that anymore. The divorce is happening. That is the reality. Whether it was right or wrong no longer matters, because it is already in motion. What does matter is that I learn how to love myself where I am, appreciate my life as it is, and show up with genuine care for other people. If I do that, I am completely confident that there will be a woman I go absolutely crazy for who goes crazy for me too, just like my ex-wife and I once did. If anything, the last few weeks have shown me how fast that kind of connection can appear. Meeting her and feeling that rush—the ease, the intimacy, the hand-holding, the depth of conversation almost immediately—was proof. That kind of euphoria can happen quickly. Shockingly quickly. And when I really sit with that truth, I also see the other side of it clearly: I am not ready to give up ten or more hours a week with my kids and with my ex-wife right now. I am just not.
I did send the email yesterday morning saying I was not going to rent that house, and that already feels like a relief. Today, I feel even more clarity around my living situation. I want to reduce it to the absolute minimum. I start thinking about whether I could sleep at my mom’s house, if she is okay with it. She has an extra bed. I could be out most of the day, come back in the evening, spend an hour or two together, and then go to sleep. Financially, that feels like the smartest move I could possibly make right now. This transition period has been helpful, but taking on a new lease that does not feel perfect makes no sense. Paying that kind of rent for a four-bedroom, three-bath house would be insane. Even renting a modest apartment would eat a significant portion of my income, even if I landed a solid job. That does not even account for utilities, time, or mental bandwidth. What I really want to do is write books and build a life coaching practice. I am thinking seriously about pursuing a book deal for something similar to I Was Famous on the Internet. I need to acknowledge that building a local writing and coaching career may take time. Keeping my expenses as low as possible buys me that time.
Talking with my massage therapist reinforces this. She mentions the same thing the woman from the spiritual community brought up a week earlier: there is a Facebook community of conscious-living people who rent rooms to each other, often specifically looking for sober roommates. Some even ask for people in Alcoholics Anonymous who do not use drugs or marijuana. That actually sounds like it could be a really happy living situation for me. One of the clearest lessons coming out of all this is that I should not live alone. I remember saying before that I never wanted to live alone again, and I believe that more strongly now. Living alone has absolutely contributed to my loneliness and emotional instability. I can imagine having a genuinely good life sharing a house with a few other guys, something simple and social, without the weight of managing an entire property. I briefly thought about setting something like that up in the four-bedroom place I looked at, but the landlord made it clear I would not be able to sublet or manage roommates myself. In hindsight, that is probably a blessing. It makes far more sense to rent a room than to be responsible for an entire house.
There is also the possibility that I meet a woman down the road who already has her own place. If that happens, flexibility will matter. Staying at my mom’s house in the meantime could allow me to pay nothing in rent, support her, and not lock myself into anything unnecessary. As long as I am not camped out there all day, it would not feel intrusive. Sleeping there, sharing evenings, and being present without overwhelming the space could actually be really good for both of us. I plan to talk to my mom about this when I get back from Michigan. I am even thinking about whether I can avoid paying another $2,000 in rent and utilities for this month where I am now. I will probably keep the place through December, but $2,000 a month is draining my savings fast, and I am not getting nearly enough value out of having my own place to justify it. When I really look at it honestly, living at my mom’s house would give me almost everything I need right now, without the financial and emotional pressure I have been carrying.
I find myself genuinely curious about where I am going to live next, and what stands out most is that I am approaching it without fear. That alone feels like progress. On the flight to Michigan, I have a few friendly, casual exchanges with the couple sitting next to me. I notice he is watching Bad Boys and she is watching I Know What You Did Last Summer. There is also an attractive woman sitting to my right, and I am aware of her, but I am not in that grasping, searching mode anymore. I do not feel like I need to try to meet anyone. I can just put out calm, loving energy and trust that if there is a real connection to be made, it will happen naturally.
When I get on the Enterprise rental car shuttle and arrive at the Detroit airport, the whole experience feels strangely magical. There is a song playing over the speakers in the bathroom, something about having to die in order to live, and I just stand there thinking, holy shit, this is exactly where I am right now. Walking through the Detroit airport carries this mix of wonder and grief. I feel joy remembering how many times I have been here with my ex-wife and the kids, and at the same time I feel the ache of being here alone, in the middle of a divorce. I feel completely broken open. And yet, the same realization keeps returning: aren’t all these people here enough to love right now? Why did I pour so much of my identity, my worth, and my sense of meaning exclusively into my ex-wife and kids? It feels like I was overdoing that and underdoing my love for the rest of humanity.
On the rental car shuttle, I strike up a conversation with a mom and dad traveling with two boys who are both seven years old, but not twins. They were born about a year and twenty-some days apart, which means for three days every year, they are exactly the same age. One of them just had his birthday, and the next day it will be the other one’s. The older seven-year-old enthusiastically tells me all about playing Luigi’s Mansion 3. Luckily, I have seen my son playing it at an arcade before, so I can actually follow along. The other kid is wearing the exact same shoes my son loves, which makes me smile. I chat with the parents for a bit, asking what they are up to. The dad is wearing a “dad bod” shirt with a beer replacing the “o,” and he gives me strong military vibes. I ask if he was in the military, and he tells me he was, mentioning choppers and deployments. We end up having a genuinely nice conversation. I tell them about my kids, and we keep awkwardly saying goodbye over and over because we run into each other repeatedly inside the rental car office.
Eventually, I get my rental car, a 2026 Jeep SUV, and it feels fun and new in a simple way. As I drive, I realize this would be a good moment for some quiet, or maybe a call with the kids. My ex-wife calls me, and I am able to talk with her and the kids right before I arrive at my sister’s house. They have had a nice day, and I feel so grateful hearing that. My ex-wife is with her parents and the kids, and as I picture it, I realize this trip is just as good—maybe even better—than if they had gone with me. Honestly, I think my ex-wife is probably enjoying it more than she would have if we were still married. She gets to be the center of attention with the kids, surrounded by her parents, without having to manage me, my moods, or the pressure around sex and our relationship. She gets to simply enjoy time with her family. That realization fills me with an unexpected happiness for her. This trip is a celebration of her new life too. She gets to be present, supported, and free to enjoy herself without worrying about me, and I genuinely feel glad that she has that.
Earlier in the day, I text my ex-wife to say thank you. After listening to the book and sitting with everything more clearly, I tell her how grateful I am to her for helping us move into this next phase of our lives. She has been the driving force behind getting us through the divorce, and she has made the process far easier than it could have been. She has been steady, cooperative, and kind throughout most of it, which is exactly why I wrote The Kind Divorce and later Sober Through Separation. In reality, the process itself has been relatively smooth, and most of the drama has come from me. That does not mean everything has been simple or one-sided. Sometimes people do end up in dynamics where one person becomes the visible source of drama while the other behaves in subtler ways that offload their own emotions and tension. There may be moments where I have felt a bit gaslit. At the same time, I am very clear that I have agency. I am capable of not spiraling. I am capable of doing better. Both things can be true.
I wrap up a warm call with my ex-wife and the kids right as I pull into my sister’s place. She lives in a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath condo, and as soon as I walk in, I am met with genuine happiness. She and her kids are clearly glad to see me. Her kids are teenagers, and they enjoy swearing, which makes me laugh because my brother and I were absolutely not allowed to curse when we were growing up, even though my parents swore freely whenever they felt like it. After I went away to college and came home swearing, it slowly became normal, and now here we are, a whole group of us casually swearing together like it is nothing.
I have a great conversation with my sister, and she makes an incredible dinner. I even eat a few pieces of the chicken she cooked, which is genuinely delicious, along with rice and broccoli. She makes me some tea, and a little after 11:11 p.m., I get settled on the couch to sleep. Lying there, I feel deeply grateful to be here. If you had told me a week ago—maybe even three or four days ago—that I would be in Michigan right now, I would have been genuinely surprised. That realization opens up a bigger one: how much else do I not know yet?
What if I meet a woman and we end up traveling all over the world together, having a lot of fun and building a beautiful life? That possibility feels real to me now, and it feels worth celebrating. I think back to 2009, when I was dating the dispatcher at the police department where I worked as an officer, something I wrote about in Officer Banfield. I remember how miserable I felt back then, how badly I wanted everything to end. I also remember thinking many times over the last sixteen years how grateful I am that I made it through that period, because it became an incredible experience of growth. My life since then has mostly been very good—far better than I could have imagined at the time.
Sitting here now, I feel like I am standing at the beginning of another chapter like that. I cannot see what is coming, but today has left me feeling confident that there is a really good life ahead of me. I just do not get to know exactly how it will unfold, and that actually makes it better. If you had a full itinerary for your entire life laid out in front of you, knowing exactly what would happen and when, how boring would that be? The mystery, the not knowing, the surprise—that is what makes it alive.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.