The diary of Dad

I’ve had one of those months. Actually that’s a lie, I’ve had a crazy kind of month like nothing I’ve experienced before.

I’ll try and keep a long story short here as nobody wants to hear me moan for too long but things have completely unravelled for me recently. From family health dramas and bereavements through to having my identity stolen and completely losing the plot at work, I have been left feeling like I am just sitting waiting for the next disaster to strike.

If truth be told I have not handled it the best either. I’m drinking more than ever and have even started smoking again after winning to the battle to quit around 4 years ago. I might even be grumpier than before, if that’s possible.

I didn’t come here just to feel sorry for myself though. Yes there have been a lot of blows to take recently but as the old saying goes, every grey cloud has a silver lining. Now is the time to find mine.

Before we get to that, here’s a little info that you never asked for about my latest game changing event. I got hacked. Like, really hacked.

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened but what appears to be a large and well organised group seem to have gained access to my e-mail address. From there they were able to hack through every account I own, changing the address and password of each along the way.

They seized control of my banks accounts, wallets, social media and PlayStation accounts. They even took my online gaming accounts and pretty much anything they could find in my life that needed a password they grabbed and changed details. I guess this was just for their own amusement as I can not even see how they could profit from such acts.

I was left feeling completely lost. Every button I pressed on my phone led to nothing and so many of my hobbies and interests completely vanished within the space of just a few hours. You never realise how often you mindlessly click on apps such as Facebook until the page leads to a message telling you that your account no longer exists.

Now let’s get to the positives. Aside from one company that I won’t name at this point as it’s a story for another day, everyone I had to deal with were both incredibly helpful and efficient. They were able to quickly cancel all transactions and refund everything that already gone through. Though the stress was incredibly high, the financial losses ended up pretty minor.

Mentally though, there is still a big old hole. I am still instinctively clicking buttons and doing things through habit that are no longer applicable to my life.

Let me give you an example. I used to enter anywhere between 100-150 fantasy sports teams across multiple sports each week. These would comprise of daily and weekly events each with separate deadlines day and night. I paid a pretty high amount of cash buying players to be able to enter these but loved the interest it gave me in every match. Yes, I realise that this is nuts but the craziest part is yet to come.

In order to enter these I had a pretty large amount of websites and social accounts that I would check in on multiple times daily for the latest team news and predictions. Alongside this, I have a similar amount of apps and sites that I used to follow the scores during the games.

I also had constant knowledge of competition deadlines and times of day when I would need to get lineups made.

As I’m sure you have gathered, this was a huge part of my existence and I can not escape it. I am still clicking on these sites but now there is simply no reason for me to be there. Obviously I realise this instantly and it is a constant reminder of what happened.

To make matters worse, algorithms are a powerful thing. Though now irrelevant to me, every advert, suggested accounts, news and all else you can imagine still point me in the direction of things that I have lost. It is not a pleasant feeling.

Now I can see how this doesn’t exactly sound all that positive but it’s up to me to make it that way. From what I can see, a big hole in life means the potential to fill it with whatever I want, right?

Everyone talks about cutting down the time spent on their phones and now I’m in a great position to do that! Joking aside, sometimes having to stay up until 2AM just to enter a team for a baseball match that you have no interest in is perhaps not the best use of my time anyway.

Putting the phone down and spending more time focusing on my wonderful family could end up being the greatest thing to ever happen to me, even if it does not feel that way right now. Cheers hackers.

Thanks for reading my self therapy. Truth be told, I wrote this with the aim of letting it out and trying to bring about closure from it all. I really hope that next time I post here it will be back to the usual level of sarcasm and bad humour that people have come to expect.

Oh and since this is supposed to be a Dad blog focused around my Son, the kids fine thanks.

Dad