Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Reboot

It's been a while huh?  Like 4 years since the last post!  What can I say? Life gets busy.  So what's been happening? 

When we last chatted I was married to a woman, and was just welcoming a 3rd little girl into our home by way of Foster-to-Adopt.  Shortly thereafter that woman decided I was no longer necessary, so out of the blue, that just a week previous I'd bought a new car with some input from her on the process.  I had to find an apartment in less than a day!  I had no legal claim over the girls and supported her to the Children's Aid Society as a good mom.  I also gave up any claim to pensions or spousal support or anything, heck I even paid her, and she kept the house!  I lost/gave up everything except my personal things and my car.

As you can imagine, my life was upside down for a while there.  I was working for a while about an hour away from where I was then living and so everything kinda started to slide.  I did try to keep up running and biking but it was very difficult.

I then took a new position, Site Supervisor of a school age program which split my hours up a bit, early morning and late afternoons, that was good, I moved much closer to my work and that was good too.  For a while in there I could have - and maybe should have written a dating blog!  Those were some adventures to be sure.  I continued to ever increasingly see the little ones that my ex-wife had in her care and did finally adopt.

I met a new woman after a few shorter relationships, she is amazing, we dated like a whirlwind and moved in after only about 4 months, she's got 3 children, much older than the little girls were, but they were welcomed with open arms and hearts. I gained a few pounds.  The only thing worse for your waistline than misery, is contentedness!

I got to go to San Diego Comic Con in 2017 and 2018 thanks to Andy from The Flash Podcast! An amazing opportunity from and amazing guy! I proposed to Brooke while in San Diego in 2017 and in the February of 2018 we got married! Twice actually.  On Valentines day at the courthouse and on the 24th with all our peeps.

I took a new position with Compass - co-Leading the entire Peterborough School Age division! That happened in Mid-April 2018.

We moved from a small town into the small-ish city that summer, and then the bus of life hit me again when my ex decided that I'd never be seeing those three little girls again.  They had literally just spent a week at our house and the day we moved into town and I dropped them off at the ex's house was the last time I would see them in my home.  Now there has been all sorts of hate and vitriol about that back then all that time ago.  Not undeserved, but I'm not really interested in reliving that moment any more than I have to on an ongoing basis.

Christmas 2018 came, another incident with the ex as we attempted to surreptitiously drop off gifts, intending to not be seen, to not create an event.  Of course we were spotted, by the middle little one, and my ex flipped, some back and forth ensued...  not at all a great time.

To try to forget all that we went off to Punta Cana, we took pictures at the beach and I was wholly embarrassed at myself.  Where had the guy that is standing on the left of this blog gone?

Life can really run you over sometimes!

So we came back and I hit the gym, hard..  sometimes multiple times in a day, and then I got a concussion in a fantastically unglamorous way and was benched for at least a month from doing anything remotely strenuous.

Shortly after I bonked my head we discovered that Brooke was pregnant, and while the pregnancy has not been easy, it's moving along (I felt the baby moving last night even!)

Mid April 2019 I was hired for yet another new position - with a whole different company, this time going back to my tech roots and fixing tech stuff for children who need assistance with communication.  A lot could be said about the year where I was in a leadership position at Compass.  If you were to talk to the people I was leading they would say I was a great guy, and a good boss, and there to help and listen and support as needed while also giving the space to sort out their own problems.  If you talked to my superiors I was on a learning curve and not as good as my co-program lead and...  well, basically, I didn't drink enough of the Kool-Aide.  Since leaving I've had a few people wonder to me if I would please come back.

Short Answer - No. My new job is great, they see me as competent and capable, they pay me well and I have a pension now!  Why would I go back to a place where most people did not see my value.

As we've approached summer we made summer bingo cards for the kids, mostly fun stuff to cross off, go for a bike ride, catch fireflies, a few chore type things - help mom 10 times etc...  I made my own card taking written responsibility for my fitness situation on it basically..  may card has things like run 3 times in a week, bike 2 times in a week go to the gym at least 2 times in a week...  we are mid 3rd week into this now.  I believe I'm down 5 pounds at least, didn't really get an accurate look at the scale yesterday at the gym.

And that brings us to here.

Am I (was I) as out of shape as I was back in March 2010? No, definitely not.  Am I the superhero I was when I took 2nd place in a Zombie run out of 3500 survivors? Also no.  But today I'm 2.5 weeks closer to the later than the former.

A lot of things try to suck the Power out of your life - situations, people, events.  It takes Wisdom to recognize what's happening and then Courage to make things right, even if it means admitting where you are at and rebooting the franchise!

1 comment:

  1. Ok I could have written most of the first part of your post...except my marriage ended 5.5 years ago instead of 4....and I did write the dating stories....people that read the book laugh and say that I have to have made some of it up...nope! But like you...I gained. Contentment in my new relationship. I am working hard to turn this ship around!!!

    So welcome back!!!

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