And here I am, with a firstname@lastname.de address, running my own mail server.

• People sometimes act like this is pure magic
• Some providers only allow popular mail services on signup (fuck those), so I had to set up a GMail address that just redirects to my actual one
• My last name is really hard to spell, so it probably wasn't the best idea, since I always struggle communicating that address verbally

The pain of running this still beats having to deal with a free provider out there that either spams my inbox with their own BS or just skims through the data to serve me ads.