I use these analogies too, it’s like becoming a digital gardener.

100%

I do find it funny that I offer so many friends and family access to these services, and they generally just take the accounts and never use them.

Is there? Mind sharing the link?

but now Alberta allegedly wants to secede…

Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted