Got Will?

I recently started reading Neil Gaiman's blog again. I had signed-up for the RSS feed in live journal shortly after I first started here. Except it was too much to read at the time. I hadn't yet discovered my comfort zone with posting, developed a pace for reading my friends' list and figured out how and where to fit the whole lj experience in with my life.

Clearly, I have moved on.

Neil has a link to an entry he wrote several months ago: My current crusade is to make sure creative people have wills .

Now, there are several of you creative types who priveledge me with reading my ramblings and gracing me with the occasional comment. So, I'm going to leverage off of Mr. Gaiman to show my gratitude and urge you to read his posting and get yourself a Will, if you don't already have one. And ignore the fact that the pdf template he offers is geared for writers. No matter your creative medium, you ought to have a Will to protect your work, both for sake of the work itself and for your loved ones you leave behind--which I hope isn't a worry for a long, long time to come.

And for those of you who consider yourself as a non-creative type, get yourself a Will too!

random thoughts about moving on

19 years and 5 kids later, I'm on the brink of getting divorced. Nearly all of the emotional, financial, practical, and legal issues have been resolved. Those that haven't will be soon as simply a matter of time or a matter of inevitability in the process of resolving the final legal matter of filing the divorce paperwork. The rest are mere details.

After such an investment of time, engery, blood, sweat, tears, laughter, and love, it's clear that the dissolution of a marriage is about so much more than a bad day or week or event. The destruction of our particular marriage wasn't the result of some instantaneous conflagration of events or emotions. It was a long, slow, degradation and errosion of morals, commitment, and respect. About a loss of love, dedication, and in my case, a significant portion of my sanity for several years.

True, there was more than one event, self-inflicted and otherwise, that contributed to this degradation. There was more than one bad day, more than one harsh word from one or both of us or a family member (well intended and otherwise) that pushed us along to where we are now.

And where we are now is an odd place. We are, without a doubt, better friends today than we were 5 years ago before I moved out. We are better off financially, despite maintaining two households, albeit very unequal ones in many respects. We are more cooperative and more effective doing for our children than we were 5 years ago. Which is not to say we still don't have our problems, our intense disagreements, and our financial difficulties, to which an uncomfortable amount of this journal is testament.

And now we are going to legally part ways. I'm still waiting for the conclusion of my court case, which isn't likely to happen until some time in April, but the timing of both events and finances dictates that we begin the process sooner than that. The mourning and mending of our relationship, such as both have been, is probably as done as it's going to get.