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This is one of those posts that no one ever wants to have to write, but my time to write it arrived. I’m not yet sure how thorough or comprehensive I’m going to make it tonight, and will probably return to it multiple times in the future.

The end of summer 2021 arrived with a devastating and unexpected surprise for me with the passing of my mom. I know that my dad is often not a late night person, so when he was calling shortly after 10pm on a Saturday, something was up. When he said to go get my brother because he had some bad news, he was not kidding. This was on Saturday the 28th.

I’ve never been a big griever for lost family, though I admit I hope to physically grieve just a bit more with this one as I have always been decently close with her. It just hasn’t happened yet still. That night was more some stunned silence and initially just resuming what I was doing at the time.

I did what I felt she’d want me to do the next day and the time since that night, which is keep moving forward, keep doing what I normally do, but at the same time, never forget her. So the day after I largely did what I typically did. Things like go out for some coffee and read from a book or two. Show up for work and do the best job that I could.

Given that my schedule was light to start the week, I did only do a half day that Monday, and I already had a partial day planned for Tuesday for some oral surgery. After that though, it’s largely been just doing my job.

The sympathy and outpouring and checking up on me, by everyone who’s offered anything, has been appreciated and not unnoticed.

It feels strange knowing that it’s been two weeks and a real solid breaking down and grieving still hasn’t really hit yet. However, with what discussion I’ve had with close friends, we’ve all agreed we all grieve in our own way and in our own time.

I’ve been suspecting that when I reach a moment where I think of something that I’d love to share with my mom, or if a question comes to mind that only she’d have the answer to, is when it’ll start to hit me a little bit harder and erode away whatever mental boundary I have on the topic.

In all of the goings on, I actually forgot about obituaries in general, and one day while at a gym session, my trainer mentioned a client of his and a friend of mine mentioned finding a copy of her obituary. The friend was curious, and I am not upset by her seeking one out. I mention this because in a sense, it never felt final or set in stone that she was gone, until I saw a screenshot of the obituary itself.

But, there it was, and yes it’s real.

I miss you mom.

I mostly just wanted to gather up all the domains I have as of late and describe their purposes or long term intended purposes or ideas for each

In no particular order

Michaelbox

Out of all of them, this is the one I’ve owned the longest and is probably my most career-orientated one too. Its long term intent is going to be my web development based postings with tutorials, articles, editorials, interviews and whatnot. Easily the one that I’d put the most “findability” work into regarding things like SEO and marketing.

A Pirate Life For Me

This domain here, is kind of a free-for-all of content, posting generally whatever I want. Perhaps an epitome of “personal blog” about me, myself, and I. It’s also the collection point of personal data like my reading habits and book tracking, for a while I was collecting coffee shop checkins, Tumblr archive import, music that I felt needed shared, eventually I’ll do more with my years of Fitbit data, and other “data ownership” things.

Achoo and the Sneezes

Achoo and the Sneezes as a name came as a joke in late college, in the form of a fictional band. It eventually made it onto all my mix CDs back when I could only listen to CD based music or radio in my car. Since then though, I turned it into my dedicated writing site, where I try to focus on discussion about what I’m reading, and more specifically creative works that I’d like to do more with. Has not panned out THAT much thus far, but I have the space available.

T-Rex The Pirate

This is likely the second oldest domain and the base domain is kind of a web development “playground” of sorts with more items available than actually listed. It hosts my link shortener, analytics, and some other things that don’t pertain to being public. Except for the item below

T-Rex The Pirate – Thin The Michael

Probably more accurately named “Fit The Michael” but I don’t want to bother with domain changes. This would be my fitness blog where I focus on related topics, discussion, and thingies all related to personal fitness. I haven’t gone TOO far into the topic there, but I also intend it to be where I go when talking about one’s mental health as well, not just physical.

Digital Garden

While “A Pirate Life For Me” is a general topic destination, Digital Garden is a “whatever I want” destination. There is no real rhyme or reason for what’s posted there, it’s just seedlings, and notes, and content, and thoughts and essays, and whatever. The idea is to groom and tend to them and grow them and plant more, and till, and everything with it all. There really are no rules, and it’s not a blog by any means even though it’s most definitely powered by WordPress.

Hot Wired

Hot Wired is my foray into a mixture of retro web and potentially satire. It’s thus far very heavily modeled after the mid 90s online magazine of the same name, from Wired Magazine. I’m not making it pretty, I’m not making it complex, it works quite well on mobile because of that as pointed out by someone last night. I’m very much trying to think 90s with it where possible, even though I didn’t get online until 1997. I say potentially satire because I’m eying making the content web development/technology/modern web based, but sarcastic/satire/not serious. A good chance to flex some creative muscle without delving into creative fiction necessarily. Also thinking about making it a routine thing where I have legitimate deadlines and treating it like it’s an actual annual magazine.

Tilde Club

This is a very basic 1-2 page website that is my entry into the Tilde Club, a webring. It’s never going to amount to much, but I had fun putting up the content that’s there, and maybe in the future I’ll keep evolving it little by little. I just wanted the participation ribbon.

Search By Ned

Ned is my personal trainer who I work with usually three times a week. One session we somehow got to joking around about websites and something, and somehow I went home with the idea of a custom frontend to a web search. I knew it was possible, so the real work was making it work, and branding the website. His training brand is “Body by Ned” so “Search by Ned” was a no brainer. Get a search field, ala google.com, type in a query, hit submit. It googles for you. Alternative version works for DuckDuckGo. Gif images around the fields added afterwards just for some gym humor

Spagnola

On the heels of the Search By Ned search page, I also ended up creating the same thing for internet personality Ali Spagnola. Same features of Google/DuckDuckGo variations, but she doesn’t get a bunch of gifs.

Amusement had by all

Carousel of Carousels

Really just a one off site that I blogged about at https://apiratelifefor.me/round-and-round/. I am not sure I’ll renew when it comes time to, but it amused me for a week

tw2113.blog

I signed up for micro.blog, an alternative of sorts to Twitter, though not, and more robust, and smaller community. It’s kind of hard to describe exactly what micro.blog is, but it’s tied in with the IndieWeb community, so I had to do something. I wanted a .blog domain, and tw2113 is almost never taken, so I got the domain itself, and tied them together. Sometimes I even post there.

Up All Night Movies

For a long time, I’ve been a fan of proverbial “bad” movies. Those movies that are very campy, very cult following, and just plain awful. I also have some generally fond memories of USA Network’s series “USA Up All Night in the early and mid 90s. Lastly, at some point in my life, I came across a blog named House of Self-Indulgence and was always kind of fascinated by it. Thus, “Up All Night Movies” became a thing. It’s my attempt to mash up my love of those movies of yesteryear, and combine it with my own takes of review and lambast and heckling and satire. Add in the fact that right from the start I decided to let readers choose the movies I cover, it should be an interesting time.