My dad died when I was 15. Today is his birthday.

***A note before you read: this post talks about losing a parent to drug overdose, addiction, and some of the harder parts of growing up through that. If any of this hits close to home, take care of yourself first.***

This is personal, not ai related but feel its important to share.

Both

@Matthew Creamer

and I lost our fathers to drug overdoses.

I don't say that for sympathy. I say it because it's the kind of thing that rewires your entire life and I think some of you need to hear that the people building this thing with you know what it feels like to start from somewhere broken.

My dad was a good man. I need you to know that before anything else. He was loving, he was present, he was the kind of father who wanted his son to never have to grind through the kind of work he did.

He spent his life in construction, the kind that wears your body down year after year, and he always told me he wanted something different for me. He wanted to retire the whole family one day. He wanted to leave a mark on the world and he wanted me to do the same.

He just had his demons, and one night when I was 15 they took him from me. A month after my birthday so I was still basically 14 years old and I found him on the couch and that was it.

Everything after that moment I had to figure out on my own.

I learned how to trim my beard without him standing behind me in the mirror. I learned how to haggle with taxi drivers in countries he never got to see.

I broke my heart for the first time and had nobody to call who could tell me what that kind of pain actually means when you're young and don't know who you are yet.

I fell into addiction myself somehow escaped after a lot of battles.

I joined the Marine Corps and that brought its own tragedies, its own weight.

I climbed the tallest mountain in Europe.

I walked across the grand sands of the Middle East.

I have tasted war and peace, depression and anger, and so much more that I am still learning how to carry.

And through all of it, every step, I was building myself into a man without the one person I wanted watching.

But here is what he gave me that nobody could take. He gave me love. Real love. The kind that stays in your bones long after the person is gone.

And he gave me this fire to build something that matters, to not just survive but to actually reach for the thing he never got to finish.

I have been grinding every single year for over a decade now.

I am 29. I turn 30 this June.

And today, on his birthday, I get to look at this community and see thousands of people showing up and learning and building and helping each other and I know in every part of me that he would love this. He would love all of you.

He would be sitting somewhere in the back of the room just grinning because his kid actually did it, actually built something that matters to people.

So if you are in here and you are struggling, if you lost someone, if you are carrying something heavy, if you feel like nobody built the road for you and you are just out here paving it alone, I want you to know that I see you.

That is part of why this exists.

This community is not just about AI or technology or workflows. It is about giving people who are willing to show up a real shot at building something meaningful with their lives, the same way I have been trying to do every single day since I was 14 years old sitting on that couch next to my father for the last time.

I became the man that the 15-year-old needed, I became the man that my Father hoped I would become.

Happy birthday, Dad. I hope you can see this.

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