Hi guys! It's great to meet you all again. Today, I want to share a personal story about my domain, candraoctavianr.com. For those who might not know, a domain is the name or URL you enter to access a website. It is also the part of an email address that comes after the "@" symbol. If you’ve joined my newsletter, you might have noticed emails coming from @candraoctavianr.com. Now, here’s a fun fact: I first purchased this domain back in 2021. However, it wasn’t my primary domain at the time. Initially, I was using candraoctavian.com (without the "r"). The story behind this is quite amusing and a bit embarrassing, to be honest. I bought my first domain candraoctavianr.com from an unexpected place—Shopee! Yes, you read that right. I found it there because the prices were incredibly cheap. At first, everything seemed to go smoothly. I was able to activate the domain and change the nameservers just by chatting with the seller. But things took a turn when I decided to transfer the domain to another provider. I requested the EPP code and asked the seller to unlock the domain. I got the EPP code. I didn’t know at the time that the domain would automatically lock again after 60 days. It could only be transferred after that period, so I had to unlock it again on the 60th day. Unfortunately, on that day, the seller vanished. Not only did they stop responding, but their account was deleted, leaving me unable to manage my domain. While I could still use the domain for a year, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. The domain was targeted by a domain broker or backorder service, and I ultimately lost it. The broker sold it for a whopping $1,000, which I certainly wasn’t willing to pay. So, I decided to stick with candraoctavian.com. For years, I tried to get candraoctavianr.com back. I stayed up late waiting for it to expire, but that didn’t work out. I attempted backordering it, but that also failed. Fast forward to 2025, I created an alert system that would spam me with notifications whenever the domain became available. And guess what? After all those years of effort, I finally got it! You might wonder, why is candraoctavianr.com so important to me? Well, if you’ve noticed, all my social media usernames are candraoctavianr, and it’s my full name. It’s a point of pride for me to use this domain. It’s not just a name. It is a representation of my identity. As a funny twist to this story, the broker bought the domain. They actually emailed me at one point. They offered to sell it back to me. Little did they know that the domain had already expired and was back in my possession. It’s moments like these that remind me of the journey I’ve been on to reclaim my digital identity.

Finally, special thanks to the person who took my domain and later tried to sell it back to me for $500 (Though, by that time, the domain was already mine again—either purchased or quietly reclaimed after it expired without them even noticing.) If you hadn’t stolen it, I might never have learned just how hard it is to get something back once it's lost, I wouldn’t have built my own domain monitoring system, and I probably wouldn’t have learned such a valuable lesson about buying domains from the wrong place, so... really thank you. Thanks for reading my story! I hope it inspires you to pursue your own passions. Don't give up, no matter how challenging the journey may seem. If you have any questions or want to share your own experiences, feel free to reach out!