No more Google ads

I turned off Google ads. At some point it became the worst goddamn experience to just even browse my own site. The popups, the page take overs, the whatever intrusive and disruptive mechanism they had, they employed them all and I was getting sick of it. At one point long ago, it made sense to monetize but site traffic has died down and it no longer makes any sense. It certainly wasn’t paying a whole lot and the annoyance it served me with was not worth it. So away they go. Not sure what I’ll do. I still have my affiliate accounts but even that isn’t ideal. I just feel slimy trying to hype up a sale on products I may or may not believe in. I still take donations but because I haven’t been very active as of late, I’d feel disingenuous linking to the PayPal account. Someday though, when I get into a regular groove again, I might mention it, but for now I’ll keep paying for things out of pocket. For everyone who still has an active subscription, it has not gone unnoticed and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

***

I suppose this post is as good as any to go into my long break. I did mention breast cancer previously. The Wife’s doctor found a questionable lump from a routine mammogram (PSA: ladies, get your mammograms as early as you can) and confirmed it was a cancerous growth back in mid December of last year. After that it felt like things.. accelerated. Not the cancer mind you, but just how quickly things would change. Many appointments were made, new doctors were met, schedules updated. I forget the exact wording, but she had infiltrative ductal carcinoma. We were assured that it was the most common type of breast cancer and was highly treatable. It was slightly reassuring but The Wife was still very scared. Her family didn’t have much of a history of cancer: one aunt who had breast cancer and her dad passed away from liver cancer when he was 49. And that fact right there was why she was so convinced she would never make it to 50. The cancer, to her, felt like a death sentence.

My approach was a bit of the opposite, to not focus on the bad stuff. That stuff would be a constant for the foreseeable future. I tried to focus on the positive as much as possible, the small wins, celebrating the kids small achievements in their classes and in their sports. The Wife needed as much love and positivity as possible, to course correct when she was spiraling downward.

It didn’t come from just me either. See, back in the day when we had our daughter and we were shopping around the different elementary schools to enroll her in, there was one school in particular that followed the parent participation model. I, like any other Gen X’er, would say the thing we always say, “I went to a school without parent participation and I came out just fine.” But The Wife thought it was perfect! It allowed her more time to spend with our kids as they grew up. I wasn’t a fan and dismissed the idea of participating. I was working outside of the house at the time and it was more or less impossible for me to devote any time for a shift. I may have been a bit narrow minded in my view of the school participation policy because one of the best benefits of it was, and this may sound like a joke, the friendships that were made along the way. After eight years and three kids going through the system, The Wife has made a really tight knit circle of friends. And like any good friend, they all came through in ways that I was not expecting. Ubering our kids around, dropping off meals, I honestly couldn’t have done it without their generosity and love. It has taught me what true friendship is and how to react to another person going through any sort of crisis. We’ve never been the kind to lean on others or ask for a lot of favors. We believe in doing whatever it takes to overcome any obstacle on our own. But once the breast cancer diagnosis came out, they were so insistent on helping we really didn’t have much of a choice. Their show of force has touched us and especially me on a deeper level than I knew was possible, and we will forever be grateful. I know that if any of my friends or The Wife’s friends ever has a crisis, we will be the first to show up at their door with a meal in our hands.

To be continued…