Trust & transparency
Evidence & disclosures
Evidence basis: Hands-on test. Colin personally used the product, process, aircraft, software, or location described.
I personally attended the rehab sessions, observed the finished porch, and verified the described site features live; recovery details are personal, not medical advice.
Sources checked: Aug 20, 2026
Linked references: 1 explicit source in the article.
TLDR
This was a quieter week: rehab continues and I believe I have eight sessions left, the Taylor Made Screens porch project is finished, home is settling down, and I have been making some major improvements to ColinMichaels.com.
I Believe I Have Eight Rehab Sessions Left
I am still going to cardiac rehab and, as I understand the schedule right now, I have eight sessions left.
I am saying “I believe” because I have learned not to hang a finish-line banner before somebody confirms where the finish line actually is. Schedules can change, counts can be off, and recovery has never been especially interested in following my preferred calendar.
Eight feels close, but I am trying not to rush ahead mentally. The job is still the same as it was when the number was much larger: show up, do the work, and let the final session arrive when it arrives.
The Porch Is Finally Finished
In the last update, the porch was almost done. This time I can finally say it is finished.
That feels good for more than one reason. It is one less unfinished project sitting in the back of my mind, and it gives me a completed part of the house that I can actually enjoy instead of walking past and thinking about what still needs to be done.
Taylor Made Screens handled the project, and the finished time-lapse is now on my Captain Colin YouTube channel. There is something satisfying about watching all that work collapse into a little over three minutes of visible progress—especially when I can now look at the real porch and enjoy the result.
Watch the Porch Project time-lapse on YouTube.
Finishing it also removed one of those background tasks that quietly takes up space in your head. With the project done and the house getting back in order, home is beginning to feel settled again.
The Website Has Changed a Lot
Most of my creative energy this week went into ColinMichaels.com. The improvements are no longer just ideas or code sitting on my computer. Readers can use them now.
The homepage has been rebuilt to feel more like a real place to discover things. It now has a rotating featured story, clearer topic areas, a section for recovery updates, the latest videos, and a small list of useful sites I would genuinely recommend.
I also added Daily Discovery, a five-question game built from articles on the site. Readers can answer questions, earn points, and build a streak. It gives older stories another life and makes exploring the site a little more interactive than endlessly scrolling through a list of posts.
The individual articles have improved too. There are now tables of contents, reading progress, favorites, read-later and offline-reading controls, polls, comments, and quick reactions such as “Useful,” “Surprising,” or “More like this.”
There are also new Contact and Write for Us pages. That gives people a clear way to send a question, report a correction, suggest a collaboration, or pitch an original article without everything disappearing into a random social-media message.
The goal is not to add features just so I can say the website has more buttons. I want it to feel like a useful place people can explore, participate in, and return to—not just a folder full of blog posts. Building toward that has been the most exciting part of an otherwise ordinary week.
What Comes Next
The plan is simple: keep going to rehab, keep working, finish putting the house back together, and improve the website based on how people actually use it. I also plan to enjoy the porch before immediately inventing another project for it.
No promises on that last part.
Final Thought
What I learned this week is that progress becomes easier to miss as life starts feeling more normal. The big milestones get our attention, but much of the real work happens in ordinary days when we keep showing up, finish what is in front of us, and make one corner of life a little better.
If you are rebuilding after an illness, a loss, a setback, or simply a difficult season, do not measure yourself only by the biggest finish line. Ask yourself three smaller questions: What did I keep showing up for? What did I finally finish? What feels a little easier than it did before?
The answers may not sound dramatic, but they still count. You do not have to transform your whole life in one week. Keep showing up, take care of what is in front of you, and give quiet progress the credit it deserves. That is what I am carrying into next week, and I hope it helps someone else recognize their own progress too.
I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. This is simply what I am learning through my own recovery. Anything medical should be discussed with your own care team.