The cancer story, mortality, and why I live like this. This is the pillar that explains all the others.
In 2023 I survived throat cancer. 210 pounds down to 132 in six months. Four times the floor came up and I felt myself starting to go. I didn't go. I came back a different person — and the inbox didn't know.
Borrowed Time is the pillar that holds the others up. It's the reason I build software and furniture and a brand instead of coasting. It's the reason I stopped performing urgency for people who don't matter to my real life. Everything else on this site — the vibe coding, the freight, the workshop, the daily discipline — flows out of one fact: I know exactly how much the encore is worth, because I almost didn't get one.
People assume #IMALLIN is a hustle thing. It's the opposite. It's tattooed on my arm as a reminder that the choice in front of me — today, right now — is the encore. If I'm going to spend an hour, I'm going to spend it all in. If I'm not all in, I'm going to stop spending the hour.
Cancer didn't make me wiser. It made me intolerant — of wasted time, of polite lies in meetings, of "I'll do it someday." Someday is the saddest sentence in English, and I'd been saying it for years. The floor coming up four times cured me of it. (The full story lives in the blog — link the anchor article here once it's published.)
The four times the floor came up — and what each one took away.
The day I hit 132 lbs and realized something I can't un-know.
What you stop caring about after you almost die.
Why "I'll do it someday" is the saddest sentence in English.
How cancer made me a better operator — urgency without panic.
Anniversary notes — every year clean, what it still teaches me.
Borrowed Time is where it starts. Get the weekly note — story first, lesson second, the real version.
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