The Comeback Is Always Greater Than the Setback
For the last six years I've been carrying this survivor thing. It changed me. I'm never gonna be the same guy I was before and I'm good with that. But I can tell you this - I'm a lot stronger now than I was back then. I'm not 100% back to my old self and I probably never will be, but I'm so much better than where I started. That's the truth.
I'm down 300 pounds. I've got my health and my head in order. I've got MS on top of everything else and I'm still standing. I love proving to myself and to the world that nothing's gonna stop me. You can try as hard as you want, but if I haven't died yet, it's probably not gonna happen. That's just how I look at it.
The Last 18 Months
The last 18 months have been a weird flip for me.
For the first 15 years of my career I was on the computer all day doing web work, running teams, building things. Then at night I'd go do trades work - woodworking mostly - because I just love working with my hands. That was my balance.
Now it's flipped.
Early last year I started going after my master plumber's license here in Florida. I've been in the field during the day and then at night I've been back on the computer doing web and AI work. I love the trade. I love working with the trades. There's something about doing the work most people don't want to do that has always pulled me in. Plumbing is one of those professions. People don't want to do it, which is probably why I'm attracted to it. It's an awesome trade and I'm glad I went after it.
At the same time, I got back into the digital space and started working with an agency again. And this time around, AI has completely changed the game for me.
I know how to run teams. I know how to orchestrate work. I know how systems actually flow and how things get built. But for years the bottleneck was always the same - I think and speak way faster than I can type. Now with tools like Wispr Flow and everything else that's out there, I don't have to type 100 words a minute anymore. I can just talk and build. The jump from being a 1x or 2x engineer to a 10x engineer is real when you stop fighting the tools and start using them properly. I've been at the front of this stuff for a long time and it's proven true again over the last year.
Between plumbing during the day and building at night, I've been running hard in both worlds. And I'll be honest - there just wasn't enough time left for everything else.
The physical side of plumbing is no joke. You're on your feet, in attics, under houses, hauling tools and materials. It demands a different kind of presence than sitting behind a screen. At the same time, the digital work has gotten more complex with AI orchestration, client strategy, and building autonomous systems. Both sides are rewarding, but together they leave very little margin for anything else. Something had to give, and I didn't want it to be the quality of either.
I've also noticed how much my body and mind respond differently to the two types of work. Plumbing forces me to be present in a physical way that coding never did. Digital work lets me move fast and think in systems. Trying to do both at full intensity every day was burning through reserves I didn't even realize I had.
Taking a Break
That's why I'm taking a break from the podcast and regular content here.
It wasn't some big dramatic decision. I just didn't have the motivation and I was trying to do too many things in my free time. There's only so many hours in a day, even when you work at the pace I do. Something had to give. I love doing the podcast. I've always loved putting stuff out. But right now I can't keep up the pace I used to and I'm not gonna half-ass it. So I'm stepping back for a bit.
The truth is, I was starting to feel the weight of trying to be everywhere at once. Between the physical demands of plumbing work, the mental load of running complex digital projects, and trying to show up consistently for the community here, I was spreading myself too thin. I didn't want to become the guy who just phones it in. If I'm going to do something, I want to do it right or not do it at all.
Closing the Community
I'm also closing down the community at community.survivorscience.com.
That one wasn't easy either. I still care about helping other survivors and I'm still part of other survivor communities. I'm just not as active as I'd like to be right now. Once a survivor, always a survivor. But my energy is going somewhere else and I have to be honest about that. I'm not disappearing from the survivor world - I'm just not running a community on Heartbeat anymore.
Running a community takes real energy. It takes showing up, responding to people, creating content, and holding space. I wasn't able to give it what it deserved anymore, and I didn't want it to slowly fade out under my name. Better to close it cleanly and let people know where things stand.
Moving Forward
I'm not trying to be part of the AI hype cycle. I've got 20 years in this game. I just want to use what I know to actually push things forward in a real way. Agents and these new tools let me stop fucking around with all the small stuff so I can focus on the work that actually matters. That's the part that excites me.
I don't have the whole next chapter figured out yet. I'm still figuring out how to balance the trades with the digital work and where I want to put my time. But I know this - the comeback is always greater than the setback. I'm not the same as I was six years ago. I'm stronger. And I'm looking forward to seeing what we actually build from here.
The last six years taught me something important: setbacks don't get the final word. They change you, they slow you down, they force you to rebuild from the ground up. But every time I've come back, I've come back more focused, more capable, and more clear about what actually matters. That's the real win.
Right now the focus is on getting stronger in the field, getting sharper with these new AI systems, and figuring out what kind of life actually feels sustainable. Not everything has to happen at once. Some seasons are for building quietly. This feels like one of those seasons. The work will still be there when I'm ready to turn the volume back up.
Thanks for being around through all of it.
