I’ve mentioned there were a few big projects I needed to clear off the deck in October a few times now, and I’m pleased to report that one of the biggest is now over (and went swimmingly). On Sunday, Sarah and I snuck off with a couple of witnesses to make our partnership official, signing all the paperwork to become spouses at approximately 2:30 PM.

It was—intentionally—a very low-key affair. I’ve long been of the opinion that there is nothing like planning a wedding together to figure out if you’re really on the same page as your partner, and you learn a lot about your long-term capability and values.

Fortunately, Sarah and I were on the same page about pretty much everything: we were both more interested in being married than the ceremony itself, and we wanted to strip away as much of the bullshit (particularly the patriarchal bullshit) that surrounds weddings as possible. Our celebrant worked with us to boil the ceremony down to the bare necessities required to be legally married, and we only told the bare minimum of friends required to make things official and help us get ready.

At the same time, it’s amazing how much mental real-estate even low key wedding with only three people in attendance will take up in your week. Our celebrant was fantastic at figuring out what we wanted—and at accepting that certain decisions would be made on the fly—but gently asked questions that allowed her to pull off certain surprises like the sign out front and the very spooky booklet containing our vows. She even pulled off a brave-as-heck gamer joke halfway through the ceremony, despite not really knowing the context, simply because she’s picked up that everyone in our ceremony were folks who were gaming with Sarah and I when we first started dating.

And, now that it’s done and the new week begins…I started slotting into a new routine with considerable ease. Getting up at six to write for two hours before I head to work, leaning into the pen-and-paper notebook approach to prevent myself from doing Brain Jar Work instead; sneaking in a quick, forty-minute burst of Patreon writing at the cafe before heading into work; writing myself a list of Brain Jar stuff to do in the evenings.

We still have a month of disruption ahead of us — a huge part of November will be getting Sarah up to speed on Brain Jar’s systems and goals — but I’m feeling a lot more confident that the new normal is going to settle sooner rather than later. 

The post The Search For A New Routine: An Interlude appeared first on Peter M. Ball.