Jericho: "Being Jericho" Redux

I guess we're pretty much out of the closet about this: Steph and I are getting divorced. Most of the six readers of this blog already know that. Heck, a third of those readers are the ones getting divorced!

I don't feel like going into the details - too close to the subject matter right now. Let's just say that it's amicable and a fact of my life.

So, a whole lot of stuff is going to change. Steph and I already have separate apartments that we'll soon be moving into. Neither of us have lived alone in nearly a decade. We're in the process of moving money and loans and debt. The good news is since we don't own anything or have any kids, there's nothing to divide up, other than our considerable debt.

There was a dust up over who got the William Hung CD. I bought it for her as a joke. She didn't want it. I told her I'll mail it back to her with an envelope of anthrax if it ended up in my stuff. We compromised. Each of us is burdened with half of the disc. We ran it through the food processor so it could be evenly divided.

So, we're packing and doing all the things that need to get done. Once all the practical matters are out of the way and we're in our own places, we'll worry about the paperwork. It took one signature on one piece of paper to get married. Looks like it takes a lot more than that to get un-married.

The big things are important and need to get done, it's the little things that drive the message home. I don't wear much jewelery, so what the hell am I going to do with my wedding ring? I have reminders on all my email accounts that have calendars for important dates like birthdays, anniversaries and Valentines day - I bet those are going to come back to haunt me for years until I get around to deleting them all.

And, last and most certainly least ... Being Jericho.

For those of you that don't know (and judging by the hit counter, no one knows) there is a link on the left over there somewhere marked "Being Jericho". It's something I started up seven or so years ago. I was feeling some nostalgia for the old "Make Your Own Adventure" books and had recently seen "Being John Malkovich". I put the two ideas together and tried to come up with a funny choose-your-own-path concept that distilled my life. Of course I took license here and there, but, in 2005 when I put it up, it was pretty close to what it's like to be me.

My plan was to expand it and add all kinds of funny and weird stuff to it. Yeah - I have no follow through. I added one little bit to it in 2007 and that's been it.

I looked at it today. Wow. If I were to write this thing today to reflect my life, it would be completely different. I thought maybe I could just rewrite all the stuff that would change because of the divorce, but there's so much of it I might as well just begin fresh. Hell, one of the driving factors to the story, if you can call it that, is Steph:

Stephanie, your wife, is already up and around. You can hear her playing with the cats in the other room. She is much more of a morning person than you will ever be. Half the reason that you actually go to work is that you love your wife and you don't want to disappoint her.

Lots of other stuff has changed as well. One spot mentioned four cats, we haven't had four cats in years. Further, I won't have any cats in a few weeks and they are the catalyst in several spots early on. My job has degraded so much that the later parts of the "story" ring fairly false as well.

I realize that "Being Jericho" is a meaningless, worthless waste of time - but when I wrote it I set out to have a fun if fictional, fairly accurate distillation of my life. In a few weeks, "Being Jericho" will be a very different game.