For me, the crashing grief came in unpredictable waves for the first year, although they got gradually more spaced out. Now there's only an occasional crash. Each time I'd think I was "getting better," and then be submerged for a while. The good news is that the reverse is true, too - when you're underwater, you have enough experience now to know that you will come out. You just have to use the tools you have (distract, breathe, walk, soothe, lift, whatever) to get through the wave, knowing it will pass. It won't feel like it when you're in it- you'll still feel like you're drowning, but it will pass.
You can't build anything while the waves are coming hard and fast. Keep to a routine, be kind to yourself, and don't try to rebuild anything until you're a little farther inland, away from so many waves. My best friend's husband died suddenly five years ago, and she received excellent advice, which I appropriated: no big decisions for the first year. Just don't try - too much is changing and resorting.
As for meaning in the meantime, a metric I've used is "do the thing the person I want to be would do," even if I don't feel like it. I feel like sleeping all day, but the person I want to be is someone who walks trails with her dog, so that's what I do. I feel like eating all the ice cream, but the kind of person I admire makes nourishing soups and sourdough bread. I feel like vanishing down a youtube hole, but the kind of person I admire reads actual chapters of actual books. The routine you keep will make you the person you become - since you're starting nearly from scratch in terms of identity, you may as well develop a routine that makes you who you want to be. This decision framework, applied over and over for a year when big meaning is missing, will get you very far, and will help you be ready to go and disciplined when it is time to undertake something new.
Hi Steve, this will seem trite: Just pick something to focus on and get after it. It could be improving a neighborhood park, or praying for random people on the street. Pick a goal and go! You can always figure out a better and more important one. Just don't mull it over in sadness.
You have described the experience of divorce quite well. Two become one flesh, and tearing that one in two is, emotionally and spiritually, what tearing a human body in half is like physically. It’s a death, and we grieve. There is PTSD. For me, focusing on my kids, making a life for them kept me moving forward. I don’t know if it’s different for men, but your kids still need you, now more than ever, because their lives have been torn apart too. When our own problems seem insurmountable, it’s a godsend to be able to help someone else.
People who haven’t gone through it think they can imagine it, but I don’t think they can. The attachment wound is so deep. It’s like everything you thought was real is gone and you have to re-learn how reality works while you’re looking for the connection that felt like it was a part of you and it’s just turned to ash.
It really is a death. Your nervous system can’t tell the difference. And When you’re the one who has to leave, there’s not even material familiarity to console you. You might as well have been shipped to a Mars colony while the people you loved stayed behind.
I won’t pretend to know how meaning works. Sometimes it feels like a wind, appearing and disappearing without predictable signals.
All I can say is that I know the experience of existentially treading water, that I was doing so this time last year, and that therapy has really given me a place to discover meaningful patterns in my history and forge some new connections. I’ve come out the other side of my meaning crisis, at least for now.
I describe it briefly in my latest post.
I am convinced it has something to do with relationships. I think Aristotle was right in identifying man as a social and political creature.
I’ve found T.S. Eliot a reliable companion in the meaning fog, especially his Four Quartets. I also love The Cocktail Party, with its unlikely protagonist. The concept of having an experience but missing the meaning certainly tracks with my experience. It also seems like the pattern of revelation all over the pages of the Old Testament, and also some of the New.
Keep writing. I don’t know anything about your new podcast project with Kale, but I look forward to seeing that emerge.
You need to start content creating about a somewhat niche subject that you can expound on for days and stick to it, even if it doesn’t remain the whole income stream as you continue to get back on your feet and grow into Steve 2.0.
I need to figure out the future of this Substack. I'm all in on just continuing to be eclectic, but IDK if my audience will be.
I am planning to launch the podcast with Kale soon. I'm just putting all the infrastructure together right now. That will help. It'll keep me directionally focused. I am just annoyed that I can't get excited about it...or anything.
I believe people when they say this is a transitional phase, but it's hard to know how that works when you're in the middle of it.
That is all good and I am totally supportive of the Skojec File remaining eclectic, as it is a reflection of segments of your overall life and the big picture.
The podcast with Kale should satisfy the need for a new focus in many aspects. However, depending on the subject matter, it might be quite taxing emotionally.
I am thinking of hearing your regular or semi-thoughts about something in a technical or physical field. I would enjoy your automotive takes, for example, and you’re more than qualified to write on that given a previous work position. Some of the guys at certain car blogs would have killed to have the kind of inside access you once had. This doesn’t mean you have to be a reviewer or be riding the press fleet gamut (unless you wanted to). Maybe it could be big picture stuff.
Did you ever get a certain thrill out of building a website that wasn’t about you personally, but was about something you were entirely or mostly knowledgeable about?
My point is we live in a world where there are content creators who make revenue streams about coffee/coffee makers, DoorDashing, car deal negotiating, and any other sundry thing.
We have people who make YouTube channels dedicated to just commenting on other YouTube channels.
I never had anything else I was singularly passionate about outside Catholicism. It's one of the things that has slowed my transition from what I used to do to whatever is next.
So I'm interested in all the things I was writing about here before my life took this recent turn, but not any one of them all the time. Believe me, I have been trying to find a niche I could just go all in on.
Become "outer directed." Try to help your children, for instance, and your spouse, in some way, each day. It may be: I'll do some errand-running for the family. Or, I'll go over homework with them. I'll volunteer to teach them to drive. If they play sports, go to their sporting events. If they are in the school concert (singing, playing an instrument), go for that. I think for women it's easier--we're trained from childhood to "take care of others," throw a blanket on a sibling that's fallen asleep on the couch, take care of the animals, do laundry, shop, cook, clean house.
Scott's passing has left a huge hole for many people (incuding me). I think you and Kale could help fill that gap. Of course, you two will be different, but just hang out and discuss your thoughts on current events. Have a little white board like Scott did sometimes. Comment on twitter comments or essays you've read or current events or substacks you've read.
You have a solid fan base (Kale too) and we'll immediately subscribe and watch. I occasionally binge-watch youtube (to keep scrubbing or doing paperwork), it creates an office atmosphere for a lot of work-from-homers. Do not be a perfectionist. Just start. My bet: 1,000 subscribers in one week.
I don’t get to see them that much. Maybe once a week, and nobody knows how they’re supposed to act when I’m at the old house. Because the sheer normalcy of it raises the question, at least for me, of why I had to leave.
Although, the more I come to understand who I am separately from anyone else, the more I see that leaving was best for me too. I wasn’t doing well there. For reasons I can’t appropriately get into any detail about. I’m not doing well now, but in a different way. I’m in a transitional state and I can’t afford to stay in it. I keep hearing I need to give myself time. But I can’t risk continued dysfunction.
So it’s a razor’s edge.
There’s a lot more to all of it but I think I’m going to skip all that for now.
You are right, nobody can possibly imagine what it is like...and that could be a huge frustration - writing about what possibly can't be described. God bless you. (He has, He is and He will) You have a treasure chest of knowlege and experiences. Don't throw it to the wind.
From my parish priest's homily, quoting St. John Vianney ... One day the Cure de Ars was in the courtyard watching birds fly overhead--and sighed--Lord you made the birds to fly and they do. You made man to love you and we do not.
p.s. Depression in men and women is different I'm sure. I was prescribed Prozac YEARS ago and still take it.
For me, the crashing grief came in unpredictable waves for the first year, although they got gradually more spaced out. Now there's only an occasional crash. Each time I'd think I was "getting better," and then be submerged for a while. The good news is that the reverse is true, too - when you're underwater, you have enough experience now to know that you will come out. You just have to use the tools you have (distract, breathe, walk, soothe, lift, whatever) to get through the wave, knowing it will pass. It won't feel like it when you're in it- you'll still feel like you're drowning, but it will pass.
You can't build anything while the waves are coming hard and fast. Keep to a routine, be kind to yourself, and don't try to rebuild anything until you're a little farther inland, away from so many waves. My best friend's husband died suddenly five years ago, and she received excellent advice, which I appropriated: no big decisions for the first year. Just don't try - too much is changing and resorting.
As for meaning in the meantime, a metric I've used is "do the thing the person I want to be would do," even if I don't feel like it. I feel like sleeping all day, but the person I want to be is someone who walks trails with her dog, so that's what I do. I feel like eating all the ice cream, but the kind of person I admire makes nourishing soups and sourdough bread. I feel like vanishing down a youtube hole, but the kind of person I admire reads actual chapters of actual books. The routine you keep will make you the person you become - since you're starting nearly from scratch in terms of identity, you may as well develop a routine that makes you who you want to be. This decision framework, applied over and over for a year when big meaning is missing, will get you very far, and will help you be ready to go and disciplined when it is time to undertake something new.
This is good, thank you.
Hi Steve, this will seem trite: Just pick something to focus on and get after it. It could be improving a neighborhood park, or praying for random people on the street. Pick a goal and go! You can always figure out a better and more important one. Just don't mull it over in sadness.
You have described the experience of divorce quite well. Two become one flesh, and tearing that one in two is, emotionally and spiritually, what tearing a human body in half is like physically. It’s a death, and we grieve. There is PTSD. For me, focusing on my kids, making a life for them kept me moving forward. I don’t know if it’s different for men, but your kids still need you, now more than ever, because their lives have been torn apart too. When our own problems seem insurmountable, it’s a godsend to be able to help someone else.
People who haven’t gone through it think they can imagine it, but I don’t think they can. The attachment wound is so deep. It’s like everything you thought was real is gone and you have to re-learn how reality works while you’re looking for the connection that felt like it was a part of you and it’s just turned to ash.
It really is a death. Your nervous system can’t tell the difference. And When you’re the one who has to leave, there’s not even material familiarity to console you. You might as well have been shipped to a Mars colony while the people you loved stayed behind.
I won’t pretend to know how meaning works. Sometimes it feels like a wind, appearing and disappearing without predictable signals.
All I can say is that I know the experience of existentially treading water, that I was doing so this time last year, and that therapy has really given me a place to discover meaningful patterns in my history and forge some new connections. I’ve come out the other side of my meaning crisis, at least for now.
I describe it briefly in my latest post.
I am convinced it has something to do with relationships. I think Aristotle was right in identifying man as a social and political creature.
I’ve found T.S. Eliot a reliable companion in the meaning fog, especially his Four Quartets. I also love The Cocktail Party, with its unlikely protagonist. The concept of having an experience but missing the meaning certainly tracks with my experience. It also seems like the pattern of revelation all over the pages of the Old Testament, and also some of the New.
Keep writing. I don’t know anything about your new podcast project with Kale, but I look forward to seeing that emerge.
You need to start content creating about a somewhat niche subject that you can expound on for days and stick to it, even if it doesn’t remain the whole income stream as you continue to get back on your feet and grow into Steve 2.0.
I need to figure out the future of this Substack. I'm all in on just continuing to be eclectic, but IDK if my audience will be.
I am planning to launch the podcast with Kale soon. I'm just putting all the infrastructure together right now. That will help. It'll keep me directionally focused. I am just annoyed that I can't get excited about it...or anything.
I believe people when they say this is a transitional phase, but it's hard to know how that works when you're in the middle of it.
That is all good and I am totally supportive of the Skojec File remaining eclectic, as it is a reflection of segments of your overall life and the big picture.
The podcast with Kale should satisfy the need for a new focus in many aspects. However, depending on the subject matter, it might be quite taxing emotionally.
I am thinking of hearing your regular or semi-thoughts about something in a technical or physical field. I would enjoy your automotive takes, for example, and you’re more than qualified to write on that given a previous work position. Some of the guys at certain car blogs would have killed to have the kind of inside access you once had. This doesn’t mean you have to be a reviewer or be riding the press fleet gamut (unless you wanted to). Maybe it could be big picture stuff.
Did you ever get a certain thrill out of building a website that wasn’t about you personally, but was about something you were entirely or mostly knowledgeable about?
My point is we live in a world where there are content creators who make revenue streams about coffee/coffee makers, DoorDashing, car deal negotiating, and any other sundry thing.
We have people who make YouTube channels dedicated to just commenting on other YouTube channels.
There’s gotta be something.
Oh, and by the way, looking forward to the new project with Kale!
Yeah, but that was 1P5.
I never had anything else I was singularly passionate about outside Catholicism. It's one of the things that has slowed my transition from what I used to do to whatever is next.
So I'm interested in all the things I was writing about here before my life took this recent turn, but not any one of them all the time. Believe me, I have been trying to find a niche I could just go all in on.
Become "outer directed." Try to help your children, for instance, and your spouse, in some way, each day. It may be: I'll do some errand-running for the family. Or, I'll go over homework with them. I'll volunteer to teach them to drive. If they play sports, go to their sporting events. If they are in the school concert (singing, playing an instrument), go for that. I think for women it's easier--we're trained from childhood to "take care of others," throw a blanket on a sibling that's fallen asleep on the couch, take care of the animals, do laundry, shop, cook, clean house.
Scott's passing has left a huge hole for many people (incuding me). I think you and Kale could help fill that gap. Of course, you two will be different, but just hang out and discuss your thoughts on current events. Have a little white board like Scott did sometimes. Comment on twitter comments or essays you've read or current events or substacks you've read.
You have a solid fan base (Kale too) and we'll immediately subscribe and watch. I occasionally binge-watch youtube (to keep scrubbing or doing paperwork), it creates an office atmosphere for a lot of work-from-homers. Do not be a perfectionist. Just start. My bet: 1,000 subscribers in one week.
I don’t get to see them that much. Maybe once a week, and nobody knows how they’re supposed to act when I’m at the old house. Because the sheer normalcy of it raises the question, at least for me, of why I had to leave.
Although, the more I come to understand who I am separately from anyone else, the more I see that leaving was best for me too. I wasn’t doing well there. For reasons I can’t appropriately get into any detail about. I’m not doing well now, but in a different way. I’m in a transitional state and I can’t afford to stay in it. I keep hearing I need to give myself time. But I can’t risk continued dysfunction.
So it’s a razor’s edge.
There’s a lot more to all of it but I think I’m going to skip all that for now.
You are right, nobody can possibly imagine what it is like...and that could be a huge frustration - writing about what possibly can't be described. God bless you. (He has, He is and He will) You have a treasure chest of knowlege and experiences. Don't throw it to the wind.
From my parish priest's homily, quoting St. John Vianney ... One day the Cure de Ars was in the courtyard watching birds fly overhead--and sighed--Lord you made the birds to fly and they do. You made man to love you and we do not.
p.s. Depression in men and women is different I'm sure. I was prescribed Prozac YEARS ago and still take it.