It’s cold for Texas this week. I’ve discovered that my newly replaced ankle does not like the cold very much. There’s some extra aching going on down there. But also, my “good” foot with all the original parts has decided to develop a bit of plantar fasciitis in the heel, so that’s fun.
I returned a day earlier than planned from my LA trip because Trovarsi & Honey both came down with the flu and I decided to leave before I caught it. Multiple days after exposure it looks like I dodged the flu bullet. I still need to fully unpack from my trip. I also have lots to do around the house. I’m converting my old office to Darcy’s new room and reclaiming her old room as a true guest room for the house. My music studio is now my new office, since I’m currently not working daily joining Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting day after day, week after week, year after year.
The earth is healing.
I’m re-evaluating my life. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for the last several years. Separation and divorce from the person that had been my person for 20 years and losing not only her, but her whole family in one fell swoop was a bit of a life explosion. I’ve been happier emerging from the other side of the divorce, but it was definitely chaotic for a while with feelings of betrayal and abandonment and having to walk a very careful tightrope to avoid falling into all the red pill America nonsense online, while also protecting myself and making room for my personal growth vs continuing patterns of sacrificing for my significant other when she was suddenly no longer significant to me.
The kids
My kids became more significant and took front seats in my life and I’ve worked hard over the past several years to ensure that I’m not only being a good co-parent with my ex, but also that I’m as fully focused on loving and caring for Jackson and Darcy as I can possibly do every other week when I have them. Doing that while working full time as an executive in a growing company that was just acquired by private equity and was tasked with growth was definitely a challenge, but I rose to it and avoided easy outs. I never hired a nanny or any sort of help to “take care of the kids” even though I could afford it. It was important to me that I was fully present for my kids, and fortunately, my job and coworkers were accommodating to that need and allowed me the grace to not be available for meetings every other week when I was ferrying my kids to and from school / after school activities, and to allow me no travel during the weeks when I had my kids.
I did continue the cleaning service that I had in place before the divorce and separation, although I did eventually switch to a new provider. I also continue to pay to have my yard taken care of, because I swore after being allergic to grass and having to push a lawnmower on the regular growing up that as soon as I could afford to pay someone else to do it to never do it again.
Cooking
Grocery shopping and cooking have been easy and a joy actually. In our marriage, this was one of the things that my ex complained about the most, but she also wouldn’t let me help and wouldn’t let me cook because I made “too much of a mess” when I cooked. One of the post-marriage joys I’ve discovered is cooking regularly for myself and the kids. Meal-planning and groceries are simple things to more or less automate these days with online ordering for pickup or delivery of groceries. And I found that now that I’m not shoo’ed out of the kitchen all the time, I really enjoy cooking. And I’m good at it. And I clean as I go, so I’m not actually messy. Dishwashers are amazing things.
Laundry
Despite all this, about a year ago, I found myself overwhelmed and stressed out by everything that being a lone parent entails with the kids. Then I realized what was most overloading me: laundry.
For a few months, I took a break from it, and started taking all the laundry to a local laundromat where I dropped all our clothes off and picked them up several hours later fully folded and ready to be put away. Over time, though, this wasn’t cost efficient, and we found a few pieces of other people’s clothing in our folded clothes, and I can only assume that some of our things ended up missing elsewhere. So I started doing laundry again, but made Jackson do his own and had Darcy help with hers. Then a few months ago I got a new washer dryer and everything has been better since then, because everything actually cleans and dries much quicker than was happening with the 10 year old units that were starting to fall apart.
Showing up
One of the things I’ve taken the most pride in as a solo dad is actually being involved with everything my kids do. My ex, for a while there during our separation and beginning of the divorce, was threatening me with a narrative of our marriage that was fully false from my perspective (although I’m sure she believes it to this day) that I’m an introvert, she’s an extrovert, and that’s why we didn’t work and I was anti-social and she was the champion of socializing for our kids etc etc. She used this narrative as a weapon early on. Acquaintances and friends in the neighborhood would come up to me and say things like “Sorry about you and [ex]. She tells my wife you’re a really good father though.”
That “though” at the end. Implying all the things they didn’t say that they heard I wasn’t good at being.
I would matter of factly reply, “Actually, I’m a great father, and was a really good husband too. I excel at most things. I think she’s just going through a midlife crisis, but we’re done and I’ll be fine. I’m just focusing on the kids.”
This shocked people, to say the least, and I’m pretty sure it enraged my ex when she heard about it, but it was the truth. She had made multiple threats early in discussing our divorce, and I didn’t know what she was saying to everyone about why we were divorcing, so I felt it important for me to speak my truth and then to prove it by showing up.
The thing is: I’m not an introvert. I’m an ambivert. I’m extremely energetic and extroverted with people who give me energy. But I also need to cocoon up and retreat and recharge when I’m in social situations for too long where I feel like my energy is being drained. I had never bothered to be very involved in all my kids extracurricular and school activities (other than showing up as a spectator) during our marriage, because she had that covered and I was working my ass off to provide for our family. Post-divorce, every other week when I had the kids, parents were visibly surprised to see me everywhere. At pickup. At drop off. In the numerous GroupMe chats that are dominated by moms as one of the few dads who actually chatted with everyone. I was present. I still am. And also, on my off weeks, I still showed up to all the kids events, even when she didn’t.
I’m proud of this. Not in a spiteful petty way (although I can totally be the Prince of Pettiness, I realize). I’m proud of it because it was uncomfortable for me to do. It was scary. It was new. It was all new territory. But I did it and stuck with it and didn’t drop any of the spinning plates. And everyone could see my truth no matter what anyone else ever said or didn’t say about me behind my back.
Most importantly, my kids see it. They’ve seen me prioritize them and show up every day and they know their dad is on their team and fully supportive of them.
Every other week empty nester
The morning of the first day after the kids go back to my ex is always the worst. I wake up to the quietest version of my home. Just me and Nigel, my pug, and Misha, my Eclectus parrot. And when kids aren’t jumping around, bouncing with life, both the pets are actually quiet too.
I wake up early ready to go for the most part, and before the divorce, my routine had been to get up with the kids and get them out the door and to school. She handled all the afternoon stuff, but mornings were mine. Not spending every morning with my kids, as I had become accustomed to, was one of the starkest moments of emptiness for me. It still is challenging on the first day they are gone, although now on my off weeks, my ex still drops my son off with me to get him to school because her new job would have him waiting outside at a bus stop for too long. That’s been a bit of joy with me and Jackson and another bit of me showing up and doing more that I’m proud of and he feels.
I was talking to my therapist about the quiet of every other week being alone and she noted that I was actually going through being an empty nester every other week and it was a good thing, because it’s early and I’m still young and I can focus on what fills life for C.K. when C.K.’s kids aren’t there.
It’s an interesting challenge for me to actually focus on what fills life for C.K. That may sound odd given how incredibly obsessed I am with myself and always have been. I’ve never been accused of being humble. I’m a consummate over-sharer, as evidenced by my social media trail and my long years of blogging. I even did an AI Art project called Multiverse C.K., where I fed an AI program 10 pictures of myself, had it generate hundreds of alternate C.K.s that I curated into a short run ‘zine.
Despite all this vanity, I had built my entire life around my ex.
We had a very egalitarian marriage where we made all our decisions together. Although I think I often deferred to her (and I’m sure she probably thinks the reverse). She interviewed one of my CEO’s once before I took the position, for example. But the point is: I made many of my decisions for my life and what I wanted based on her needs and what she wanted. Some of those were clear and direct: she wanted a daughter and a second child when I thought one was enough. Now that Darcy is here, I’m glad we made that decision because she is an absolute joy. Others were less direct: When we first started dating, my ex quipped that she was attracted to me because I had “high earning potential” to some of our friends. So I focused on success and growing my career and earning more and more. She wanted a house, so we bought one as soon as we made enough to do so. I had always preferred the idea of apartments back then, because one didn’t have to worry about the upkeep of a yard etc. Funny now that we’re divorced that I kept the house and never plan to move (and also just had the foundation repaired, some of the floors replaced, and some landscaping done to improve it all).
One of the odd things post-divorce is I found myself successful in a job that I excelled at, but which I had really achieved in order to provide for my wife. She was gone. The center no longer held. We had a successful exit to private equity, so I was able to buy her out of the house, set up college funds for my kids, and suddenly I had achieved a level of success where no one really needed me anymore. The center was gone. Why was I doing everything I was doing?
I’m not sure if I have the answers to that one yet. What I do know is that time with my kids is the most important thing to me. But they are their own people with their own lives and I only have them every other week. I already know what being an empty nester is like. There is a freedom to it that is extremely refreshing. What is most important to me in the absence of my kids?
Creativity. Building things. Making things. Making music. Creating art.
Sometimes business can be an art and can be creative and I’ve become very good in my career at building teams that build great things. I do feel fulfillment from that.
But I don’t love meetings.
So now that I’ve left my last employer and have some money in the bank, what should I do now? What’s the new center?
That’s what ambivert me is spending time contemplating and ruminating over now as I wrap my little winter cocoon.
Breathe.
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