The Great Reset

Creative Commons photo by Bruno Furnari. Click to see the original.

Deciphering Closing Time

Before you read this, you should read Closing Time, a blog entry I posted a couple of weeks ago.

On my first night of my visit to Montreal a couple of weeks ago, I had a dream after which I woke up in the middle of the night and was unable to sleep. This is very unusual. Although I’m a bit of a night owl, I’m one of those guys who’s out like a light ten minutes after head makes contact with pillow and sleeps like a bear through the night. I become insomniac only when jet-lagged or when things have gone seriously awry.

On the rare occasion that I find myself waking up at oh-dark-thirty and unable to nod off, I find that the most effective fix is not to lie awake and try to sleep, but to do something until I get sleepy enough. That particular night, I fired up the laptop and wrote about that dream in a blog entry titled Closing Time.

Handy Life Tip: If you’re going to lie awake during one of those “long dark nights of the soul”, a Fairmont Hotel, such as Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth, is a pretty nice place to do it.

It never occurred to me that people would interpret it as work-related. Since posting the article, I’ve had a number of friends ask if I’m thinking of quitting my job and shooed away about a dozen phone calls from recruiters hoping to land a prize.

Instead, the article Closing Time and the dream that inspired it were about something a little more personal: it’s that Wendy has asked for a divorce.

I won’t get into the hows or whys of the matter here. Splitsville is a complicated place, and a blog is not the appropriate place to hang up your dirty laundry. It will simply have to suffice for me to say that I love Wendy dearly, and that I wish her all the happiness in the world. If you are a friend of hers, please reach out to her.

Anything I write about breaking up will not be about her, but about me and the question I will be attempting to answer for the next little while:

“So what do I do now?”

My Current Mood

I’m not going to write much about how I feel right now, other than to say that the photo below should give you the general idea.

If you really want to find out more, you’re going to have to do it in person, and drinks have to be involved. And yes, I’m always going to pay for at least a couple of rounds.

The “Don’t” List

I’m a list writer. Whenever I’m working on a big project of any sort, I find that writing lists of end results and then working backwards from them with lists of how to get there very helpful. Hitting the reset button on your life is about as big a project as it gets, so it seemed to me to be the perfect time to make a new list.

I wrote my first list the day after “the talk”. I was still reeling from what had just happened, so I went with an easy one: what I would not do.

I have witnessed first-hand the antics of newly-divorced men:

• “Retail therapy”, especially the classic mid-life crisis purchase: the expensive (and often impractical) sports car.
• Going on serious binges of a-drinkin’ and a-druggin’.
• The $600-a-night habit at “the ballet”.
• One or more instances of the wildly inappropriately young new “rebound girl”.
• Angry, over-the-top rants about the ex.
• Hiring prostitutes and asking them to slap you.

Oh wait: that last one wasn’t real; that’s Don Draper from Mad Men.

I’ve seen friends and acquaintances indulge in the other items on the list. I think I can avoid these fairly easily, but if any of you see me do any of this stuff in a moment of weakness, could you do me a favour and call me out on it?

Location, Location, Location

Wendy’s moving into her own place in a couple of weeks. For the time being, I’ve decided to stay put in our current High Park apartment.

I’m not staying out of any particular attachment to the place. In fact, it’s a big reminder of what once was. Although I’d like to move out, I should probably try to keep the number of major disruptions in my life down to a manageable level. Moving can wait for a little bit. Perhaps I’ll rearrange the furniture to at least make the place a little different.

The time to move will come soon enough. Perhaps I’ll move once the weather warms up. I’ll probably move closer downtown, but still within reasonably easy access to Lake Shore and the Gardiner so that my regular visits to my family’s homes and weekly commute to Microsoft HQ are fairly easy.

I’m open to suggestions for new neighbourhoods to call home. If you have any, I’d love to hear where and why. If you feel so inclined, let me know in the comments.

All That Free Time

“Idle hands,” the saying goes (more or less), “are the Devil’s Xbox.”

I know that especially for the first little while, I’m going to have great swaths of free time in the evenings. The fact that it’ll be the dead of winter and the sun sets early will make those nights seem even longer.

I’m thinking of disconnecting the TV cable (it comes free in my building, so I can’t cancel it). Television is a great de-motivator; watching it, you substitute your own life for those of the people onscreen. With TV, you can while away an evening and have nothing to show for it. Worse still, those evenings easily add up.

In the place of TV, I plan to do constructive, creative, possibly unusual things. Some will be computer-related (I’ve been meaning to take on some kind of ambitious hobby tech project for some time), some will be musical, some will involve me expanding my community role, and some of it will involve hitting the gym a little more often. I’m still fielding ideas for this one, but the point is to not sit idly while the world moves on.

Hitting the Road

I like travel, so when I was job-hunting, I took the opportunities for business travel into consideration. Wendy’s not fond of travel, so when we got married, I adjusted my plans accordingly: business travel became my prime opportunity to see new places and meet new people.

With “The New Normal,” travel is back in the cards. I’ve had a chat with my manager John Oxley to see if I can get slotted for some upcoming work travel opportunities, and it turns out that from January to April, there are a number of potential destinations including Montreal, Seattle, Austin and Las Vegas.

As for personal travel time, I’m mulling over some destinations. I’d made peace with the possibility of never seeing the Philippines again, but I can now go for a visit. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the U.K. and Europe, and I’ve never been to South America, Africa or Australasia. Even Burning Man’s an option again. I’ve got the vacation days, the cash and the frequent flyer points – what I need is a destination. (Suggestions are welcome; feel free to make them in the comments.)

Reconnecting

My friends have all asked variations on the same question: “Is there anything I can do?”

The answer is yes: be my friend. I want to hang out with my friends and reconnect with those whom I haven’t seen in a while. And no, I don’t want to always talk about my own situation; I also want to hear about yours. You’re not boring me with talk about your work, hobbies or kids – I want to hear about that stuff.

My calendar opens up quite a bit after the touring madness of TechDays ends at the end of next week, so if you want to catch up, drop me a line.

Hooking Up

(Ah, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell: where would we be without your fantasy paintings?)

This will eventually happen, either casually or more seriously. I’ve given this almost no thought, simply because this hasn’t been a concern for years.

While I’m not chiseled like the studly centaur in the painting above, I’ve got reasonably good looks, social skills, more than two coins to rub together, more than my fair share of luck and of course, the accordion. I also have a circle of friends, associates and even customers who are already offering to set me up on dates (thanks, but it’s too soon).

For the time being, I’m not going to worry too much about this one.

It Just Got Real

Creative Commons Photo by Kevin King. Click to see the source photo.

There probably isn’t a single First World adult who hasn’t had the idle fantasy about what they’d do if they could drop one or more of their major responsibilities.

What could I do if I weren’t in a committed relationship? Who could I be if I didn’t have these mortgage payments looming over me? Where could I go if I didn’t have these mouths to feed? If I could ditch this job right now, what would be the first thing I’d do?

Where I am now isn’t too distant from those scenarios. I’m about to become single again. I have no kids, no mortgage and no debt. I’m relatively young; they say (well, actually, I say) 43 is the new 33. Those fantasies are now my reality.

As Ice Cube might say: “Shit just got real, dogg.”