derg.rest is now deprecated, and the domain name will be fully sunset on January 1st, 2028.
I would like to thank you all, from the deepest recesses of my heart, for your bearing with me through all the many, many versions of that wild (and scaly -w-) experiment in web design.
Unfortunately, due to 3 weeks of abandonment by my father as well as other circumstances I was then unaware of, I was removed from my father’s home on October 11th, 2024. As of writing this, it has been just under a year since then, but already so much has changed. I am now estranged from my father, and have been living with my mother. Getting used to a new school after going to school in the same place all my life was not easy, and I was reluctant to adapt and even downright hostile in the beginning, going as far as to attempting to get myself expelled on one occasion, as well as running away from my mother’s home 4 separate times, desperately wanting my old life back. It didn’t help that I wasn’t allowed to bring my phone with me to my mother’s home, or that I eventually lost access to all of my accounts under my old alias of “tomxcd” because my father was paying for my Proton account with all my passwords in it.
However, over these long months, I feel I’ve grown in ways that will steadfast assist me later in life. I’ve learned to be more humble, considerate, and tolerant towards others, as well as how not to take advantage of people for my own selfish desires. Living without a phone for while has also been quite the blessing in disguise, as rediscovering my love for reading and writing simply would not have happened otherwise. I’m not saying I’m perfect now; far from it, in fact. But I’m graduated from high school, and have recently attained the age of 18. I have no choice but to look forward, rather than sulking and moping and hoping the past will auto-magically rewrite itself.
I have changed my online alias many, many times over the years. Identity has always been my “kryptonite” as it were; I want everyone to be happy, and to like me… but that’s just another thing I have to learn. A painful truth: not everyone is going to like me, and that’s okay.
Regardless, this is the first time I’ve undergone a name change out of necessity. And it really isn’t a “name change” so much as it’s being honest about who I am beyond pixels on a screen. I’ve had my aspirations of becoming a writer, and that motivated the whole “changing my legal name to Tom Darsonian” thing. Lately, I’ve begun to realize how embarrassingly and utterly pointless that is: changing my name cannot wash away 18 years of bad decisions like footprints in beach sand.
Which brings me to what I’m doing next. Much of the content I’ve posted online under various aliases will be collectified under a new domain name, exclusively for my personal use. I’ve been eyeing the micro.blog software for quite a while now, and I think it’s likely the best social media software for someone like me. “Yesterweb” didn’t work out, so maybe “indieweb” might, heh.
Aaaaaand… yeah, that’s really all I have to say. If you actually read through all of that instead of plugging it into ChatGPT or whatever, you have my respects.
I’ll see y’all over at tilde.green/~oak when it’s finally up.
Have a chill one,
Kaydan (oaky) Khatchadourian (previously known as “tomxcd”, “Tom Darsonian”, “Tom Fullan”)
Michigan, USA
oaky@tilde.green
P.S. I was originally going to use micro.blog when I wrote this, but later decided against it. I like the idea of a tildepage+hugo combo more, as you can use git to essentially copy it around to other tilde accounts, and I can easily import all of my past fediverse and longer-form blog posts by coding an import tool asking my smarter friends to code an import tool for me. TwT