Similar story here, but I am not as skilled at admin tasks as many/most on the fediverse. I used a local isp for email since before 2000, before the west coast tech bros were so big.. And then in 2021 my isp threw in the towel and announced they were closing the business. They gave everyone a year to find a new provider, it stretched into 2 years really. I didn't want to / don't have the skillset for / running my own server out of the house, and just wanted addresses for me and my wife. @nanook , I seriously considered getting Eskimo addresses, but wanted to use Texas local services if possible. Exploring my possibilities, I found that the Jollyville domain was available for .org and for .net. So I got the domains and went with Scala hosting out of Dallas for services. It has worked out OK, although most everyone I might want to write to is on one of the big tech bros networks. Scala has done a good job so far..