A blog by any other name

It's been a minute. I've been noodling around on Facebook, sure, but I haven't really sat down and written a chunk of words. I've felt a little jammed up because of it, honestly.

Every month, I take all the random things I've shared about Ian and copy them over to a blog post as a separate archive. I have a Google reminder on the first of the month to do it. Last month, I noticed my blog wouldn't load with the domain name, but since I needed to log in anyways, I assumed my DNS was being dumb and ignored it. If there were a movie about all this, that would be the point you'd hear dramatic foreshadowing music.

I was about to archive Ian's September quips a few days ago when my friend (Hi Mary!) messaged me and asked if my blog was still up. Her RSS feed had switched to some wedding invitation site.

There would be more dramatic music here too — something from a Lifetime channel movie.

When I logged into GoDaddy, I discovered my domain name was gone. They had been trying to tell me for several months that my credit card was expired, but all those notifications were going to an email I never check. On September 3, they released my domain, and within the month, someone else bought it.

My stomach sank. My heart started pounding. No. No no no no no. This isn't happening. I took care of all this. I paid for five years when Rich was sick so that I wouldn't have to worry about it. Well, time flies.

I considered calling GoDaddy support, but I was too emotional. I was sobbing at my desk at work, so live chat was the way to go. The only option I had was to have GoDaddy notify the new owner and see if they would sell it back to me. But GoDaddy charges $69 for that service plus a 20% commission on whatever the selling price would be. I knew the wedding invitation people weren't going to feel sorry for me and give me my domain back for $17, so I decided to let that go.

Ok. This is fine. I can do this. It's a new era — a clean slate. I use Genie Alisa as my name everywhere, so it would make sense for that to be my new domain name. And geniealisa.com is available! Things are looking up.

The service rep told me that geniealisa.com is a "premium domain." That means it's a dot com address, the name is less than 15 characters, and it's unique, so it's more desirable. Adding to that, someone had already purchased that domain and was holding it with GoDaddy. So I would buy it from that person through them.

How much would that be? Oh, just $3795 to purchase it from the squatter plus $17.99/year for the premium domain.

As I later told her, that price quote was the only thing that stopped my sobbing and exchanged it for guffaws of laughter.

GenieAlisa.org is only $11.99/year. I'm more of a non-profit kind of gal anyway. I paid for five years, updated my contact information, updated my credit card information, added text notifications, and put my checking account as a backup payment method. I'm not going through this again.

Thankfully, all the content is safe. I just had to change my address.

It got me to thinking about why I have this space. Couldn't I use Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whatever? But when I write here, it feels different. And while I've been sharing up a storm, it hasn't been on this platform. Hence the feeling jammed up.

I lost a domain name that I've had for a very long time. I don't want to count the years precisely because it might make me cry again. But I didn't lose the content. And most importantly, I didn't lose my voice.