It was a whole different world on the internet back in 1996. We had so many personal “homepages”. There was Geocities and other sites that let anyone create homepages for free. There were so many people I met who had created pages to honor their loved ones who had Alzheimer’s, and so much support in chats and mailing lists. There were so many creative people doing pages to showcase and offer to others their backgrounds, graphics, animations, and music. And there were awards for personal homepages. There were a few big ones, but mostly it was just awards created by one person to give to another, to show appreciation, and to help bring traffic. My site made it to the top ten most awarded personal homepages.

Then life took me away from the Web. Work, a divorce, relationships, marrying my 1st again, then his divorcing me again, then all my siblings passing away over a few years, and five cats passing away as well. My aim has been to go back and update my site as soon as I retired. But retirement kept getting postponed, and the fact that both my brothers passed away at 74 made me stop in my tracks and realize that I might not make it to retirement and even if I did, probably wouldn’t be much beyond.

So I have begun, and I will continue, and I will keep being amazed and saddened by how much the Web has changed, though I know technology has advanced. And my site, though I try to do it professionally as I can, will still always be a personal site, with my caregiving journal, my poetry, and my photos of my mother and my family through the years.