2020 – WTF?

It’s been quite a long time since I posted anything to this site. It popped into my head a few days ago as I was driving to work, considering the possibility of writing things down helping me deal with the utter sh**show that has been this year. Yesterday, I received the domain renewal notice, so I took that as a sign to log back in. After spending 15 minutes trying to guess what my old password might have been, I was finally able to log in and begin cleaning up the crazy amount of spam comments waiting approval. I’m also moving domain registrars, so this site will probably be down for a bit during that process, but I doubt anyone (including myself) will actually notice.

I don’t even know where to begin. Beyond the pandemic and government-related garbage everyone has been dealing with this year, I’ve lost a step-brother, had my hometown destroyed by a flood, and have had some recent family issues that nearly pushed me past my breaking point. Perhaps I’ll talk more about those later, but for now, I just can’t.

After going through old posts here, I found my earliest one from 2008, where I had mentioned that my old hosting provider royally screwed up a backup/restore and lost everyone’s data and that I was starting over. That pushed me over to the Wayback Machine to see what was stored there. I purchased this domain back in January of 2003, and the first snapshot taken by the WBM was in August of 2003, where my earliest posts revolved around our trip to Texas to visit the in-laws and to celebrate our three year wedding anniversary. Just seeing the old site made me smile. It was my first experience with PHP and MySQL (and apparently scrolling marquees). I remember spending countless hours on it, getting programming help from friends, and adding fun things like the “Unobtainable Goals for the Week” section. I’m really considering bringing that one back. Reading though some of the old posts really brought back some great memories. In one post, I told the shortened version of how my wife and I got together, and how on December 21st, 1995, I finally worked up the nerve to call her and ask her out, with some goading from a friend staying over of course. Then on December 5th, 1998, I asked her to marry me.

With everything going on right now, it was nice to read, in my own words, stories about what was going on in my life and how I was feeling back then, both the good and the bad. It provided some much needed perspective. It provided the motivation to come back here and begin writing again. Though given my track record on things like this, it will most likely be short-lived, but so be it. Perhaps when I’m on the back side of whatever crises I’m currently going through, it will provide the same temporary relief I’m feeling now. At the very least, it allowed me to put off adulting for an hour or so.  🙂