It's been a little bit since one of the week specific notes, but I wrote a couple of other posts in the meantime and they'd have probably overlapped quite a lot.

In between times we've had kid's birthday, which was very good and spread across many activities that she loved. We've also told her about the divorce, which was by far the hardest conversation I've ever had to start. It's so hard to judge how she's taken it, but I keep just letting her know I'm here to talk through feelings and she's asked a couple of questions so hopefully we'll be able to minimise the negative impact.

It's easily the most challenge I've had in terms of being an adult too, I'm rubbish at not just stating what I think at a specific moment, so when she told me that she'd like to be able to stay in our house I had to swallow back "yea, you and me both kiddo" and explain that it was difficult to know exactly how it's all going to play out right now. One funny moment though was her explaining that she wanted to stay here because it's where her toys are! Once I explained that if we move anything all our stuff will come with us, I think that helped ease some worry for her. It's so interesting to remember that the worries of an 8 year old are going to be very different to the ones I have 30 years older, but still very much as real and valid.

This week I've been making some inroads into the next Big Thing for us to release at work – I think I mentioned I'd sort out our Open Banking integration, but now we need to actually weave it into the product itself. Working through all the data models for that and how to have the biggest value impact has been an interesting challenge. I spent most of last week feeling pretty ill, so catching up this week and trying to get it into a good spot.

Between Hayley and I it's been a bit more strained this week. I'm worried that the whole "best divorce ever" thing might be another one of my fairytale wishes that can't possibly come true. If it was easy you'd hear about it more often. I'll keep fighting for that, but at the same time I'm feeling pretty minimised by the inaction that's happening now that has me feeling like I'm stuck in traffic. This divorce is going to happen, so any delays to me being able to work out what the rest of my life looks like feel like a kick in the teeth. Hayley's got a ridiculous amount of stuff going on in her life though – everything I have going on and then extra stuff around her family and a very ill friend. I'm trying to hold that stuff in the front of mind, be as unselfish as I can, and say nothing where I've got nothing nice to say, but all of that is tough when I can only feel my own feelings and not hers.