This is my journal entry from December 17, 2025, part of my daily autobiography Divorce Day — my real, unedited days, published in order.
Today is the day of our dissolution hearing, the moment when the divorce becomes official and my ex-wife and I meet with a judge on Zoom. I’ve been thinking about the structure of these diary books and whether it might make sense to combine the entries from the beginning of November through today into one larger book. That stretch captures the whole arc from the first wave of pain around the divorce through this moment of closure. Instead of splitting it across several thinner volumes, it might work better as a single book of around 150,000 words. If I’m going to keep writing like this every day for the rest of my life, fewer but more substantial books may make more sense in the long run.
I started the morning by picking up the kids and then getting to work preparing transcripts for the sixth diary book. The fifth book is already submitted and I’m waiting on the proof copies, so the next step was gathering the next batch of entries. I ran everything through ChatGPT to assemble the transcripts and move them through the editing process. By the time I finished organizing them, I already had enough material for another book. That’s when I started thinking again about whether these entries should be grouped into larger volumes instead of continuing as smaller ones.
At 10:45 I met my ex-wife at her house for the hearing. We logged into Zoom from different rooms in the house. I used my laptop in the living room while she joined from her office. My ex-wife was emotional and had a moment where she cried, which made sense. Even though we both know this is the right step, it’s still the end of something that lasted thirteen years. It feels like letting go of a life we built together. At the same time, there’s gratitude in the process because we’ve managed to move through it without hostility.
The judge handled the hearing in a calm, professional way. Two court staff members handled most of the paperwork ahead of time, which made the hearing straightforward. The judge reviewed the documents and asked only a couple of questions. I asked one question of my own to confirm the financial side, and I was glad that we’d reached an amicable arrangement with no money owed between us. Once those points were confirmed, the judge had us take our oath, answer the final questions, and then he declared the marriage dissolved.
The entire hearing lasted about fifteen minutes. After it ended, my ex-wife and I hugged and shared another brief moment of emotion before I left. Walking out of her house, I felt grateful. Our thirteen-year marriage has come to an end, and with that comes a sense of freedom. I’m free to build a new life, to date again, and possibly even to marry again someday. At the same time, she remains a friend and the mother of my children. That friendship feels like something lasting, something that continues even after the marriage itself has ended.
This moment also clarified something about how I want to approach relationships going forward. If I date someone in the future, I want it to be with the hope that even if the romantic part ends someday, we could still remain friends for life. That’s the kind of connection my ex-wife and I managed to preserve through this process, and seeing that today made the whole experience feel unexpectedly beautiful.
After the divorce hearing, I texted a friend to let him know I was ready to play tennis. We met up and had a long warm-up before starting. I opened a new can of tennis balls and we played a couple of sets. My friend was really on today. He took the first set 6–1 and the second set 6–4. He was hitting winners consistently all over the court while I felt a little relaxed and slightly lazy in my play. Even so, we had a great time out there, talking a lot between points and just enjoying being on the court.
After tennis I headed back home to get ready for the evening. I didn’t have anything scheduled until seeing the kids at my mom’s house around 5:30, so I dove straight back into working on my books. My focus was getting everything prepared for the sixth diary book so I could move it forward. While running the transcripts through ChatGPT, it paused on one of my mid-November entries, somewhere around the 22nd. The system flagged it as an intense, emotionally heavy entry and checked in to ask if I was okay. I told it the entry was simply part of a diary from a month earlier and that I was fine. Once that was clarified, it processed the entry normally and we moved on.
Looking back at that period reminded me how intense things felt at the time. Now that I’m past it, I feel grateful for having come through it. As long as your body is healthy and your mind is still functioning, there’s always room for things to turn around. A rough stretch doesn’t have to define the rest of the story.
While working, I finished listening to Deon Cole’s special OK, Mister, which gave me plenty of laughs. I also had a big salad for lunch and ordered a Ninja blender so I can start making hummus again. I’d gotten into a habit of just eating beans straight out of cans, which works in a pinch but isn’t the most balanced way to eat. Making hummus again will make it easier to have things like carrots and celery with it and put together a more satisfying meal.
As I organized the transcripts, I realized that the sixth diary book technically had enough material to stand on its own. The problem was where it ended. At that point in the story I was still in a really low, difficult place, and the entry would close with that unresolved moment. That didn’t feel right as an ending. The next few weeks after that were actually an incredible turnaround for me, almost four weeks of life improving dramatically. It would make much more sense for readers to see the full arc instead of stopping right at the low point.
That led me to think about combining diary books six and seven into one larger volume. It would be a big one, probably thirteen or fourteen hours as an audiobook and a thick print edition as well. The more I thought about it, the more that structure made sense. Instead of releasing a lot of smaller books, it might be better to produce fewer but more substantial ones. If I averaged about ten books a year, over the next decade that would still become around a hundred books in the Daily Autobiography series. Publishing fewer, longer volumes would also save time, since every individual book takes an hour or two just to format, upload, and release.
Around five o’clock my ex-wife called and told me the kids were out walking the dogs and wanted to see me. So I met up with them and walked the dogs for a bit. After that we all went over to my mom’s house. The kids spent about thirty minutes drawing and talking with my mom, and then they watched another episode of Winnie the Pooh. It was a simple, relaxed visit before I headed out for my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
The meeting was held out in the park, and there were about ten of us there. It had a really good atmosphere. When it was my turn to share, one of the ideas that came out was something that struck me as surprisingly helpful. I talked about how people often get upset because they aren’t perfect. We notice our flaws and mistakes and feel like we’re failing somehow. But instead of expecting perfection, I like thinking about life in terms of reducing the error rate. The goal is simply to lower the number of times we seriously mess something up.
Looking at my divorce over the last three months, that idea made me feel proud of how things went. Out of maybe seventy or eighty days, there were only a handful where I felt really down, and maybe two or three days when I was a pain to my ex-wife. That’s less than a ten percent error rate on feeling miserable and less than a five percent rate on being difficult toward my ex. In most of those moments I apologized and made amends quickly, sometimes within hours and usually within a day. That’s a pretty low error rate and a fast correction rate. The goal in life doesn’t have to be perfection. It can simply be reducing the number of mistakes and fixing them quickly when they happen.
That way of thinking applies to everything. When I drive, for example, I don’t expect myself to be a perfect driver. But my error rate is extremely low, and that’s what keeps things safe. The same idea works in relationships, in daily habits, and in emotional life. If the amount of time I spend miserable or off track stays relatively small, then I’m doing well. Focusing on lowering that error rate feels like a practical way to approach growth.
I also shared something about language people often use when talking about God. Sometimes the language becomes confusing or overly abstract. One way that helps me think about it is to replace that idea with something very concrete. Instead of saying “Dear God,” I sometimes think of it as “Dear Earth.” What can I do for Earth today? That perspective reminds me that I’m part of this planet along with every plant, animal, and ecosystem around me. Seeing myself as a small part of a much larger living system encourages thoughts about how to contribute rather than how to take.
The image that comes to mind is the relationship between the cells in a body. Every cell in my body functions as part of a larger organism. When the cells cooperate, the body stays healthy. When individual cells start acting only for themselves, that’s when problems like disease begin. In the same way, each of us is like a cell within the living system of Earth. When we think about how our actions contribute to the whole rather than just ourselves, life tends to move toward balance and harmony. Thinking about it that way brings a sense of peace.
One of the ideas I shared in the meeting builds on that same perspective. In a very real sense, I am the God of the trillions of living organisms inside my body. All of those bacteria, cells, and microscopic forms of life depend on me. I could poison them or starve them if I wanted to, but instead I nourish them. I feed them, hydrate them, and keep the whole system alive. At the same time, I am only a tiny cell within the much larger body of Earth. Earth could wipe us all out if it wanted to. A volcanic shift, a change in the atmosphere, an asteroid—any number of things could end us. Yet Earth continues to sustain life. That idea gives me a definition of a higher power that feels tangible rather than abstract.
When I wake up in the morning, I like to think, Dear Earth, how may I serve you today? Let my mind fill with thoughts about how to be useful, how to contribute as a healthy cell in the body of this planet. Thinking about it that way gives me direction at a very practical level. When the idea of God becomes too vague or mystical, it becomes easy to get confused or misled. People can justify almost anything if they claim it came from some mysterious divine instruction. But asking how to serve the Earth tends to lead to clearer, more grounded choices—choices that are thoughtful rather than selfish.
That same conversation also drifted into how language in recovery programs sometimes needs updating. When people say, “I tried living my way and now I live God’s way,” the phrasing can be hard to relate to. A simpler explanation might be that the way someone used to live was not working, and they learned new ways of living that do work. Over time those healthier patterns become their new way of doing things. In a modern sense, the body and mind can be understood almost like an AI system trained on data. Whatever inputs we feed ourselves—habits, beliefs, environments—become the patterns our mind uses later. Getting sober is essentially retraining the system with different data.
Interestingly, right after the divorce hearing today I got a message from a woman I’d met a while back. She told me she had been thinking about a conversation we’d had earlier and that she’d been working on making some healthier changes in her life. I told her I was glad to hear it and asked what she was doing to support herself. I explained that my own approach includes going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day, reading recovery books, and openly telling people that I’m sober so I stay accountable.
Her response was that she was focusing on using healthier coping strategies. I realized that approach didn’t sound stable enough for me to get involved with, especially given how much she still had to work through. Later I mentioned the situation to my friend, the one I play tennis with, and he immediately pointed out that getting involved with someone in such an early, unstable phase of change could bring instability into my life. That matched the feeling I already had.
Part of me had briefly thought about seeing her again, but I remembered what happened the last time. The previous book in my diary series ends with the two of us getting involved, and the next few weeks afterward were emotionally chaotic for me. The story in this current book begins with that slow spiral that followed. Remembering that helped me see clearly that I didn’t want to repeat the same situation.
Thus, I chose not to continue the conversation. Sometimes the simplest way to avoid unnecessary drama is simply not to reopen a door that already led to trouble. At this point in my life, I’m trying to be more deliberate about the kinds of situations I step into, especially when I can already see the pattern ahead of time.
What I realize right now is that I need a woman who is solid, stable, and healthy. That’s the kind of woman I want in my life. I hope she turns out to be that kind of woman. I’ve caught myself thinking about her a lot today, and I’ve had plenty of daydreams running through my mind. At the same time, I recognize that she is almost symbolic right now. She represents the idea that what I’m looking for is actually out there. Whether it ends up being her specifically or someone like her, it feels like a sign that the kind of relationship I want is possible.
I’m really looking forward to our date on Saturday and hoping it turns into something beautiful. At the same time, it’s funny to notice how much I’m thinking about her when I barely know anything about her. If someone asked me what I actually know about her, the honest answer would be: almost nothing. I don’t even know for sure whether she’s single. She gives off that vibe, but for all I know she could have a husband or be exploring some kind of open relationship. I truly have no idea what I’m stepping into yet.
The few things I do know are intriguing. She mentioned that she once spent a year traveling and living a kind of Eat, Pray, Love lifestyle, moving around the world, working remotely, and writing. That suggests some depth and curiosity about life, which I find interesting. And yes, I noticed right away that she’s physically attractive. That part is obvious. But attraction alone isn’t enough. I need to see who she actually is as a person.
At the same time, thinking about her has stirred up a lot of reflection about how I express myself in these books. Yesterday I caught myself wondering whether I should censor certain things, whether I should tone down the language or filter my thoughts so they sound more polite or politically correct. The truth is, I don’t want to do that. The whole purpose of these diaries is honesty. If I start sanitizing my voice just to avoid offending someone, then the writing loses what makes it real.
What I want is for someone years from now to read these books and feel like they’re hearing an unfiltered human life being lived in real time. I want them to see the excitement, the confusion, the contradictions, the desires, and the lessons exactly as they happened. I’d rather risk being too honest than end up writing something watered down and forgettable. These books are meant to capture the full experience of being alive as I move through it, not a cleaned-up version designed to make everyone comfortable. Unfortunately, I got so crazy in the original audio in some of these recordings that I did end up trimming a lot of the cursing and profanity. I hope my original message comes through a bit more clearly without it.
When I listen to comedians like Deon Cole, I notice how closely their humor mirrors the way people actually think. The thoughts that run through our heads during everyday moments—like when someone cuts you off in traffic—aren’t always polite or carefully filtered. They’re raw, immediate reactions. And I’ve realized that if I’m going to write these books honestly, I can’t pretend my mind operates in some sanitized, perfectly polite way all the time. That wouldn’t be real. At the same time, a certain level of honesty seems to make it easy to be attacked and therefore, the balance is acknowledging that here in the writing. I’ve left some of the craziness in during this book but I also cut thousands of swear words in the final entries.
What I’m trying to do with these diaries is capture the truth of how I experience life, not a version that has been cleaned up to make everyone comfortable. Too many books feel artificial because the author edits out anything messy, unflattering, or controversial. They present a polished version of themselves that fits what people expect rather than who they actually are. I don’t want to do that. If these books end up becoming part of my legacy, I want them to show a real human life, with all the contradictions and rough edges included. Can I effectively do that while sanding down some of the rough edges? I hope so.
That realization connects with something deeper I’ve been thinking about since the situation at my yoga studio. Being told to keep interactions superficial—to just say hello to women and leave it at that—felt completely wrong for me. That’s not how I move through the world. I enjoy meeting women, talking with them, exchanging numbers, and seeing what kind of connection or energy might develop. That curiosity and openness are part of who I am.
Looking back at my marriage, I can see more clearly where I struggled with honesty. There were moments years ago when I felt strong feelings for other women, and instead of acknowledging that truth and facing the consequences, I tried to deny or downplay it. Reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing recently reminded me of that dynamic. She describes how difficult it was for her to admit that her marriage had reached its end even when she had fallen in love with someone else. I recognize some of that same tension in my own story.
For me, the lesson is about honesty—especially with myself. When I couldn’t admit what I was feeling, I ended up living in a kind of gray area where I wasn’t fully truthful with anyone. There was a woman I knew years ago who confronted me about that directly. She sensed that our relationship was becoming emotionally intimate in a way that conflicted with my marriage, and she said so plainly. In that moment she was actually being more honest about the situation than I was. I kept insisting it was just a harmless friendship, even though part of me wanted something much deeper.
The same pattern showed up again later with someone else. Each time, the real issue wasn’t attraction itself—it was my unwillingness to acknowledge the truth of what I was feeling and deal with it directly. Avoiding that honesty only made things more complicated.
So the commitment I’m making now is to be rigorously honest—with myself first, and then with other people. That doesn’t mean being reckless or insensitive. It means not pretending my life is something it isn’t. If I feel something, I need to be willing to acknowledge it, examine it, and make conscious choices about it instead of hiding from it.
To be completely honest, a lot of the raw thoughts that run through my head don’t sound polished or refined. They’re blunt, street-level reactions to whatever’s happening around me. My mind uses rough language sometimes. It jumps to labels, stereotypes, and crude expressions the same way a lot of people’s minds do when they’re reacting quickly to the world. That doesn’t mean those thoughts define who I ultimately choose to be, but pretending they don’t exist would be dishonest. I’ve spent enough of my life trying to appear more socially acceptable than I actually felt inside. I’m tired of that.
The truth is that identity and culture are complicated. I grew up in a certain body and with a certain background, but internally I’ve always felt influenced by many different cultures and ways of speaking. My mind doesn’t neatly fit into one label. For a long time, I felt pressure to act a certain way because of how I look or because of what people expect from someone who looks like me. That pressure to conform—to behave according to someone else’s idea of who I should be—has shaped a lot of my life.
What I want now is something simpler: honesty. Not honesty used as a weapon against other people, but honesty about my own inner life. I don’t want to pretend my mind is cleaner, calmer, or more socially correct than it really is. The whole point of these diaries is to record a human life exactly as it unfolds.
And that brings me to the bigger realization I want this book to end on: stop lying to yourself about what you actually want. For years I avoided looking directly at my own desires because I was afraid of what they meant. I was afraid of hurting people. I was afraid of disrupting the life I had built. I was afraid of being judged. I remember a moment about a year and a half ago when I was in Michigan and saw a woman doing yoga. I only saw her once, but something about her energy still sticks with me today. She looked joyful, alive, completely present in what she was doing. And the thought that came into my mind was brutally honest: I would love to be with someone like that.
That was exactly how I felt about my ex-wife when we first got together years earlier. I had that same sense of excitement and admiration. But at some point along the way, that feeling had faded in my marriage, and I was afraid to admit it. Instead of facing that truth, I went back to what everyone else told me to do: stay married, keep trying, make it work. And to be fair, I did try. I spent about a year and a half genuinely attempting to rebuild the marriage. I listened to advice, followed suggestions, and did my best to revive something that simply wasn’t alive anymore.
Looking back, I wish I had been honest earlier. Not cruelly honest, not recklessly honest—just clear about what I was feeling. If I had been able to say, “I love you, but something in me has changed,” it would have opened the door to real conversations instead of quiet denial. The lesson I’m taking forward is that honesty about desire matters. When you ignore your real feelings, you end up living a half-truth that eventually breaks down anyway. If a similar situation ever comes up again, I want to approach it differently. I want to be open about what I feel and ask for help navigating it instead of hiding from it.
That kind of honesty doesn’t guarantee easy outcomes. Sometimes it leads to rejection. Sometimes it leads to painful decisions. But at least it means living in alignment with the truth instead of pretending the truth isn’t there. And that, more than anything, is the place I want to live from going forward.
Looking back, I don’t regret the choices I made back then. At the time, I did the best I could with the level of honesty and awareness I had. What matters more to me now is how I live going forward. The commitment I want to carry from this moment on is simple: honesty with myself first, and then with everyone else.
For years I avoided saying certain things out loud because I was afraid of how people would react. I filtered my thoughts, softened my feelings, and tried to fit into what other people believed was appropriate. The result of that was a lot of internal conflict. When you hide your real desires—even from yourself—you end up living a life that doesn’t fully belong to you.
The truth is that sometimes my mind is blunt and unpolished. Sometimes it reacts quickly and crudely to what’s happening around me. Pretending those reactions don’t exist doesn’t make them disappear. What matters is how I respond to them and what choices I make afterward. Honesty doesn’t mean acting on every impulse. It means acknowledging what’s actually happening inside me instead of pretending it isn’t there.
The same lesson applies to relationships. When I look back at moments where I developed strong feelings for someone else while I was married, the biggest mistake wasn’t the feeling itself. Feelings happen. The mistake was being afraid to face what those feelings meant and to talk about them openly. Instead of confronting the truth early and working through it honestly, I stayed quiet and tried to make things work in a situation that wasn’t aligned with what I really wanted.
What I see now is that honesty creates the possibility for real solutions. If I had been able to say clearly what I was feeling, maybe the outcome would have been different, or maybe it would have led to the same ending sooner. Either way, everyone involved would have been dealing with the truth instead of a hidden version of it.
So if I’m going to close this book on one theme, it’s that nothing matters more than honesty. The most useful thing I can do for the world—what I called serving Earth earlier—is to live as an example of someone who tells the truth about his life. Not a polished truth designed to impress people, but a real one.
Courage, after all, isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is doing something even while fear is present. And yes, writing things like this takes courage. Ending a book this way makes me uneasy because I know some people won’t like it. But the alternative—continuing to live cautiously, hiding parts of myself so I don’t upset anyone—feels worse. I’ve lived enough of my life that way already. From here forward, I want to live differently: honestly, openly, and with the courage to go after what I truly want in life.
Thank you for making it to the end of this book. I’ve shared everything here in the spirit of love, joy, and truth. If I have a mission on Earth, it’s to help human beings speak the truth. Most of the problems on this planet—and most of the opportunities for growth—come down to whether people are willing to tell the truth and hear the truth. Not spin, not narratives, not omissions or half-stories. Just the truth.
Imagine if leaders actually did that. Imagine if presidents stood up and told the truth about what they were doing. Imagine if CEOs told the truth about how their companies really operate behind the scenes. Then people could decide for themselves whether they wanted to support them, vote for them, buy their products, or believe their messaging. When people are given the real truth, they can make real decisions.
The question is always the same: can you handle the truth? I like to think that I can, but that starts with being able to handle my own truth first. Truth is easy when everything lines up nicely—when who you are fits perfectly with what people expect from you. It’s easy when the life you want is exactly the life everyone else says you should want. The challenge comes when your truth disrupts things. When your truth means ending a marriage. When your truth means admitting desires that make people uncomfortable. When your truth means living in a way other people judge.
In those moments you face a choice. You can hide your truth and try to keep everything comfortable, or you can speak it and deal with the consequences. Sometimes speaking it means relationships change. Sometimes it means you have to find new communities, new environments, or new paths forward. But hiding the truth carries its own cost. The worst thing I can imagine is reaching the end of my life knowing I spent it hiding who I really was. I’m done with that. No more hiding the truth. No more pretending to be someone else just to make life easier. I don’t want to look back someday and realize I lived like a coward because I was afraid of judgment.
If these books become anything—if they last beyond my lifetime—I want them to stand as a record of a real human life being lived honestly. Not polished or sanitized, but real. That’s the whole purpose of this Daily Autobiography series. I want it to feel alive. I’m honored to be doing this work. Truly. Writing these entries every day and turning them into books feels meaningful in a way very few things in my life ever have. It feels like building something real.
And before I close, one last thought that’s been on my mind. I’ve been thinking about how much our minds are shaped by the things we take in over the years—music, movies, conversations, culture. For years I listened to a lot of hip-hop, especially Tupac, over and over again. I watched movies like Pulp Fiction. Those things leave an imprint. Even years later, the language and imagery from them can still echo around in my mind.
Lately I’ve been wondering if I can consciously reshape some of that programming. I haven’t been listening to much music recently, and I’ve noticed how the old songs still come back even without reinforcement. It makes me curious whether adding new influences—new music, new ideas, new voices—might gradually change the way my mind thinks and reacts.
I’ve always enjoyed comedians from every background, and I keep exploring new ones. I’m planning to listen to Ali Wong’s newest special next. That kind of curiosity has always been part of who I am: taking in new perspectives, new styles, new ways of seeing the world. Maybe I should do the same thing with music again. Explore new sounds that resonate with who I am today and let them slowly overwrite some of the older programming still running in my head. That might be the next adventure. Anyway, this book has reached about 150,000 words, which means it’s definitely time to stop. See you in the next one.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.