We've reached our cruising altitude. It's late evening on a Friday before Christmas and I'm finally on my way home from a quick business trip to Jacksonville, FL. The weather forecast is calling for a winter storm in the North East, but the flight is on-time and we have a good tailwind. Who knows? We may even land early in Philadelphia. That would be such a perfect ending to what (with a little luck) will have been the last trip of this year. But .. let's not jinx it!

From my window seat I can barely make out a few lights on the ground through breaks in the cloud cover. The night sky is pitch black outside. The overhead lights in the cabin have been dimmed. I'm tired and can barely keep my eyes open. Actually, "worn out" is probably more accurate. This has been a very long week closing out a series of long weeks. Come to think of it: it has been a crazy year! So much work. So much travel. So many changes in my life. So much of everything — enough to fill several years.

The year started on a serious down-note: the first holidays without my girls, followed by the final court dates in a long divorce process, a lingering cold and fever that just wouldn't go away, tons of work, more travel, and more stress. I was completely tapped out financially. All reserves were long gone, and I had no idea how even the near future would shape up. Everyday was full of surprises, but none of them were ever good. I could feel my anxiety levels jump significantly every day when I checked my mail and email, and I had long since stopped answering calls from phone numbers that I didn't recognize.

With the end of February came the final divorce agreement, but no relief. I felt as if my life had been chopped up into small pieces and thrown away bit by bit. Nothing turned out the way I thought it would be when the divorce process had started an eternity earlier. I now lived in an apartment in Danbury, CT. How I hated this town. How I hated my life in that apartment in that town! My lease would end mid-April and I had decided to move away from Danbury, and away from Connecticut. I chose Philadelphia. The city would be perfect for me. I knew it fairly well as I had lived there before in a previous life, and I had visited the city many times over the years.

March and April were busy months (and admittedly a bit of a blur). I found an apartment smack in the middle of Old City, and with a little help from friends and U-Haul I was able to start a new life in Philadelphia. It felt as if I had hit bottom and things were now finally going to turn around. Of course, there was still lots of work and travel, and I now had to drive 3 hours to Connecticut to see my girls. The visits were not easy, and logistics were just one part of the problem. Then there was the issue with the house in Connecticut: we still had to sell it, and that meant working with an ex who refused to cooperate on even the most trivial tasks.

Spring in the city was great. So much to see. So much to do. I was hell-bent on meeting lots of new people, and after nearly 15 years in suburbia, I was ready for a "life in the city." I walked everywhere — day and night — all-over Philadelphia. I was full of energy .. actually, I couldn't really sleep. For years I had worked until the early morning hours, because that was the time when everything was quiet. I had become so conditioned to staying up well after midnight, often past 3am, and the tumultuous time during the divorce had made things even worse. However, that chapter of my life was now behind me. Little by little things had started to settle down, but I still found it difficult to sleep. I have to confess that there were quite a few nights when I ended up drinking a bit. Usually it was just enough to be comfortably numb, but sometimes it was a little more.

May came and went. My finances were (and still are) a complete mess. Events that I had counted on (and even planned for) did not happen, while other things that weren't supposed to happen, of course, did. On the other hand, the rest of my personal life was slowly coming around. I started to work out several days per week at a nearby gym, ate healthier foods, and walked everywhere. I met (and continue to meet) new friends, both online and (more importantly) in real life. But I still found sleep to quite often be rather elusive.

Visiting my girls in Connecticut became much more difficult. Our house was still unsold, and my ex went out of her way to be difficult and uncompromising whenever she could. She had decided to move to Greensboro, NC, with our girls, but she kept this to herself until the very last minute. The final decision wasn't really a surprise — it had been one of only a few viable options, and therefore something that I had already considered. Of course, my visits with the girls would now require air travel, hotel, rental car, and a lot more planning.

In June I met Denise. We hit it off right away on every level, and, virtually over night, my life changed completely. Our life experiences, points of view, interests, even taste in music was so similar that it felt as if we had known each other forever. Denise showed me a whole new side of Philadelphia — a Philadelphia that's run-down, poor, and dangerous, but also full of opportunity, hope, and community spirit. Denise is one of the few people I know that can comfortably live in many different worlds: whether it is Zurich, London, New York, or North Philadelphia does not matter. Not only is she true a cosmopolitan, but also a chameleon, effortlessly moving between different worlds and blending in or standing out at will.

We spent the summer visiting art museums and galleries, rummaging through vintage stores, grilling in the backyard of her house in the 'hood, walking around Old City on warm summer evenings, with her dog in Fairmount Park, and around the neighborhoods in North Philadelphia. It was a great summer, and I could feel that this was the beginning of a new life.

In a parallel universe, however, I still had to deal with my previous life. There was a house in Connecticut that needed to be sold, a car that I had to get rid of, an ex that was hell-bent on being as difficult as possible, abysmal finances, and much more. It was frustrating and infuriating.

In early July my ex moved to Greensboro, NC, with my girls, and I visited them there for the first time a few weeks later. It was a strange, awkward, and difficult weekend visit. I thought I had come prepared, but this was the first time that I visited them in a place where I had never been before, and I felt like a fish out of the water. Greensboro was a disappointment on so many levels. It's a small city with very little to do, and the place is essentially closed on weekends.

I'm now visiting my girls every few weeks, and little by little each visit is getting easier and less stressful. There is still not much to do on weekends in Greensboro, but we — my girls and I — are slowly settling into a comfortable routine. We also speak on the phone several times per week between visits, and I send or bring "care packages" and gifts for birthdays and holidays. In short, I'm trying to stay as close to them and involved in their lives as circumstances allow.

Labor Day marked beginning of an incredibly busy travel schedule. I was on the road almost every week, criss-crossing the States and jumping across the big pond to Germany. Meetings after meetings, hotel rooms, conference rooms, airports, delayed flights and missed connections, late nights and early mornings. The fall is basically a blur of events, and it didn't end until today. Today I'm going home, and there won't be any travel for several weeks.

I'm sitting here in seat 2A, staring out into the night as we're zooming towards Philadelphia. It's close to the end of an incredibly year — and incredible decade! During this decade I won it all, and lost it all, literally! And while there are still a few unresolved issues from my previous life, I'm now well on my way to build a new and better life from scratch. I think I've reached cruising altitude.