I got divorced in my local post office.
We needed a Justice of the Peace to sign the paperwork, and in Australia the easiest place to find one is the post office. We waited behind a bloke collecting a package. Signed in front of a JP we'd never met. Dropped the envelope in the mail slot. Walked out. The whole thing took about ten minutes.
That was a year after we'd actually separated. The separation itself was 22 July 2022. Early Friday morning. I remember because the next week I tried to open a new bank account and couldn't — every form of ID I had was tied to a life I no longer technically had. That was the first of about four hundred small moments where I realised separation isn't one decision. It's a year-long unspooling of every assumption you'd built about how your life was wired together.
We were lucky, by separation standards. My ex and I managed to do it without going to war. There was friction — there was insult, there were nights neither of us slept and texts neither of us should have sent — but we stayed mostly civil, kept the kids in front of us, and ground through the practical side of it together. Two households on one income each. Sold the family home. Sold the second property we'd owned together. Three years on, we've both got our own houses, new partners in our lives, and a co-parenting setup that, most weeks, actually works.
It was bloody difficult. I won't pretend it wasn't.
What surprised me wasn't the emotional side of it — plenty of people can talk about that — but the operational chaos underneath. The bank account I couldn't open. The shared finances that took months to untangle. The tax stuff I didn't know I'd need until it was already late. The kids' school logistics across two homes. The stuff Reddit could half-tell you, if you knew which subreddit to search and were willing to read two hundred comments to find one useful answer.
There was no single place to get the lowdown. So I started taking notes. The notes turned into a Google doc. The Google doc turned into a private dashboard I built for myself. The dashboard turned into Atlas.
My own story tracked the phase model almost exactly. Crisis — those first weeks where you're trying not to make a bad decision on no sleep. Stabilise — the slow build of the new operational reality. Rebuild — the year where you're actually moving forward instead of just patching. New chapter — where I am now, mostly, on the good days.
I'm not a counsellor. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a separated dad of two — Boy 10, and Girl 7 — who has them half the time and has spent four years working out how to make all of it actually function. Atlas is the tool I wish I'd had on day one.
I built it from the dad’s chair because that’s the version I lived. That’s the bias in the woodgrain. But the tool is for separated parents. The maths is the maths. The kids’ weeks are the kids’ weeks. The Tuesday morning problem is the same.
If any of this sounds familiar, try the tool. Use what helps. Skip what doesn't.
— Johnnie