Why I'm Here
It's Sunday evening. The kind of quiet where you can hear yourself think, and sometimes you wish you couldn't.
I lost the love of my life to cancer on my daughter's birthday in 2015. It was fast but felt like an eternity. Nine years later, every birthday carries both celebration and memorial in the same moment. That's the weight I'm learning to carry.
For a long time after she died, I was lost. Not lost like you can't find your way—lost like the ground beneath you disappeared and you're still falling. I have a daughter who needed me to stop falling. That's what got me back up.
Building as Staying Present
Being present for her—showing up, every single day—became non-negotiable. But presence without purpose is just going through motions. I needed something to do with my hands, my mind, something that said we're still here, we're still moving forward. So I built.
I reverse engineered hardware that was supposed to be dead. I brought back software that companies abandoned. I took things that were discarded and made them new again. Not new like replacing them—new like discovering what they could still become.
My daughter watches me do this. And I realized that's the real gift: showing her that you don't give up when things break. You learn why they broke. You figure out how to fix them. You keep going.
What Kept Me Afloat
During the darkest parts, I watched engineers and creators doing good things and sharing them—really sharing, not gatekeeping, not selling—while the rest of the world felt like it was falling apart. That mattered to me. A lot.
We need more of that. We need people building, thinking, creating, sharing. Not for clout or metrics. Because it's how we move forward as a society. Because it says I'm still here, and I'm still trying to make something good.
I'm self-taught, which means I don't ask for help when something breaks—I research it, I learn it, I solve it. And somewhere along the way, I realized that most things aren't actually broken. Their use has just changed. We're just not paying attention.
The Waste We Don't See
We throw away so much. Packaging, food, technology—all of it still useful to someone or some process. But the majority never gives it a second thought. It's gone and that's fine.
Except it's not fine. Not to me. Not anymore.
There's something sacred about taking what the world threw away and bringing it back. Not as nostalgia or hobby. As proof that things that matter deserve to stay in the world. That effort and care and engineering count. That people—the ones who loved these things—deserve to keep them alive.
My daughter deserves to grow up in a world where that matters.
Why Share Now
I've been building and creating for years in silence. Doing it for myself, for the process, for the learning. But silence felt like giving up. Like saying this doesn't matter enough to speak about.
It matters.
I want to share what I know. I want to help. Yeah, I want to be noticed—there's no point pretending otherwise. But more than that, I want to inspire my daughter. I want her to see that you can build your way through anything. That you keep moving, you keep learning, you bring people up with you.
And maybe—just maybe—I can do the same for someone else.
What Scares Me
My own head, sometimes. My demons. The battles I fight in silence. The addictions and bad decisions and moments where I think I'm failing her.
But I'm learning to sit with that and build anyway. Fear doesn't stop the work. It just means the work matters more.
What Excites Me
Everything. I know I'm capable of something special. I want to make a mark on this world—a good one. I want to share the things on my mind, whether they're cool projects or inner thoughts. If I can help, I will.
This is why I'm here. Not to build a brand. To do good, every day. To find my people—the ones who understand that nothing gets left behind.
A New Chapter
I need to be honest about something. I wrote everything above and meant every word. But I left out the part where I fell into a hole.
Grief doesn't move in a straight line. You think you're through it, you think the building and the making and the showing up is enough—and then one day you realise you've been punishing yourself for years without noticing. Being hard on yourself becomes background noise. You stop hearing it. You just feel heavy and you don't know why.
I fell into that hole. Deep. The kind where you stop believing the work matters, where you look at everything you've built and it feels like nothing. Where you're so busy surviving that you forget you're allowed to actually live.
It's my birthday today. And for the first time in a long time, I don't want to just get through it. I want to be here for it.
I'm not fixed. I'm not suddenly fine. But I've made a decision: I'm done being hard on myself for grieving. I'm done treating my own life like something I need to endure. I lost her. That will never stop being true. But I'm still here, my daughter is still here, and we deserve more than just getting by.
This is a new chapter. Not because everything is sorted—because I've decided to stop waiting for it to be. The work continues. The building continues. But now it's not just about staying present. It's about finding my place. Somewhere in all of this—the tools, the builds, the late nights, the journal—there's a version of me that isn't just surviving.
I want to meet him.
If you're reading this and you build things, create things, fix things—thank you. Keep going. The world needs you more than you know.
And if you're grieving, lost, or struggling to see the point: your work matters. You matter. Show up for the people who need you. That's enough. That's everything.
And if you've been in the hole—if you're in it right now—know that deciding to climb out doesn't mean you're over it. It means you're choosing to keep going anyway. That's not weakness. That's the hardest thing you'll ever do.