When Life Hits Hard, I Still Commit

Hello — it’s been a while since I’ve added anything to the blog, so I guess this is me catching you up.

There’s something I don’t usually talk about. Mostly because I don’t want my life to read like an episode of Maury. But here it is anyway.

My kids’ grandmother is attempting to take custody of my daughter.

Just my daughter. Not my son. I feel the need to say that explicitly so there’s no misunderstanding or implication that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing as a parent. I am. And the situation itself is deeply hurtful.

Shanda — their mother — passed away in 2023. I haven’t really given myself the space or time to properly grieve that loss. Life didn’t pause, and neither could I. But as you can probably imagine, having someone come after your children has a way of ripping open wounds you never had the chance to close.

It’s heavy. It’s exhausting. And some days it feels unreal that this is even something I have to fight.

Still, when the dust settles and the smoke clears, I’ll be standing where I started — with my head held high, knowing that I’m doing exactly what I need to do for my family. That part has never been negotiable.

Now here’s where the TechGod part kicks in.

While dealing with the court case and trying to keep my apps moving forward, I randomly had a friend reach out and ask if she could commission me to build an app for her. I jumped on it immediately.

I broke the project down into phases and went absolutely nuts on the foundation. Laser-sharp focus. The kind of momentum you don’t question — you just ride it.

Then my laptop decided to throw a tantrum and stop working altogether.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll take it to uBreakiFix and be back up in a few days.”

Twenty-four hours later they call me: motherboard fried. Repair cost? Basically the price of buying the same exact computer. So now I’m without a PC during crunch time.

Luckily, I always have a backup plan. I told my son that dad was going to have to time-share his computer until I could get a new one.

Of course, because I’m me, I realized it had been a while since I committed my work to GitHub. So now I had to rebuild everything I hadn’t pushed yet.

Needless to say, I was annoyed — especially since I mostly use Kelan’s computer after he goes to sleep, which naturally limits how much progress I can make.

Still… I caught up. And this was happening while holiday family stuff was in full swing — Thanksgiving, Christmas, all of it.

Not only did I catch up, I stayed on my original schedule.

That’s a major flex.

Around this same time, my mom had a few doctor’s appointments. That’s when we found out she has both skin cancer and breast cancer.

All I could think while the doctor was explaining everything was: So not only does she have a knucklehead for a son, dementia, but now two different cancers? How much more does she need to go through?

It breaks my heart. My mother is one of those people who looks out for everybody else, and it hurts knowing how much she’s carrying right now.

Meanwhile — because I genuinely don’t know how to stop moving forward — I’m still building the app for my client, and I’ve decided to start preparing for the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. I’ve been studying consistently, and my goal is to be test-ready by February 1st.

I know most people would use everything going on as a reason to slow down. And I get that. But let me be clear — I’m built different.

I don’t like sitting still, and I don’t think it would do me, my kids, or my mom any good to sit around dwelling on things I can’t control.

In fact, I’m confident that my kids seeing me keep moving forward helps them feel secure. It shows them that even when life hits hard, momentum doesn’t just disappear.

I haven’t stopped. And I don’t plan to.

Life is trying to throw me exceptions from every direction — grief, court, health scares, broken hardware — but the process is still running.

Because the TechGod rule is simple:

We don't quit. We refactor.