Sitting on the couch with the NFL Draft humming in the background should feel like a clean return to normal. A year ago, this would’ve been exactly the kind of night I’d want, nothing urgent, nothing heavy, just football, a couch, and the slow drift toward sleep.

But it doesn’t feel quite right.

If you asked most people what I’d want after everything from the past year, they’d probably say this, normal life again. And that makes sense on paper. It just doesn’t quite land that way in reality. I wouldn’t say I’m struggling, that would be way too dramatic, but there’s something off about just sliding back into the same life I had before the diagnosis, like nothing happened.

It feels incomplete.

There’s this quiet assumption that going through something big is supposed to lead to something equally big on the other side. Some kind of transformation. A dramatic shift. Like you’re supposed to come out of it with a brand new life plan and a completely different version of yourself.

And I don’t know if that’s actually true.

What I do know is that it feels like a waste of a second chance to just pick up exactly where I left off. To go right back to the same routines, the same habits, the same everything. And yet, here I am, doing exactly that, letting the TV drone on while I slowly fall asleep on the couch.

The problem is, I don’t know what “different” is supposed to look like.

It’s not like I have some burning desire to blow up my life and start over. I’m not about to sell everything, quit my job, and move to Montenegro with Tugboat to drink Aperol Spritz and paint questionable watercolors. That version of reinvention sounds fun for about a week, maybe two, and then it turns into something that feels more performative than meaningful.

So if not that, then what?

Right now, I don’t have an answer. I don’t even really know how to go about finding one. I just have this underlying sense that something should change, I just can’t tell you what, when, or how.

And patience, historically, has not exactly been my strength.

To be fair, it’s only been a few weeks since I could definitively say cancer is behind me. In the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing. Expecting clarity this quickly is probably unrealistic. Still, it’d be nice to have at least a hint of direction.

Until then, I’m trying to remind myself of something simpler.

Every day is still a gift, even if it looks exactly like the day before.

Even if it’s mundane. Even if it’s routine. Even if it’s just sitting on the couch with the draft on in the background and Tugboat snoring like he just worked a double shift.

Those things still count.

So maybe this post is less about figuring anything out and more about saying it out loud. Getting it out of my head. Because when I hear it, it does sound a little ungrateful, and I don’t think that’s what this is.

I think it’s just unfinished.

But for now, I’ll take the night for what it is. I’ll watch the rest of the draft, enjoy the soundtrack of Tugboat’s snoring, and let tomorrow show up however it’s going to show up.

I can say I’ve closed the cancer chapter of my life now. That feels like something I should pause on. Sit with it. Maybe even let it sound profound. But the truth is, the next chapter doesn’t exactly start clean. It starts at 2:30 in the morning, half asleep, trying to figure out if what just happened is gas… or a problem that requires a full shower, fresh clothes, and an immediate load of laundry.

This is the part nobody really writes about. Somewhere along the way, having my colon removed turned basic bodily functions into a nightly guessing game. And when you guess wrong, there’s no snooze button. There’s just the cold reality of being awake, annoyed, and very aware that you are not getting that hour of sleep back.

At one point, I briefly considered solving the problem by just throwing away every pair of boxer briefs involved. Maybe even investing in an incinerator. But that feels like a financially irresponsible response to a medical situation, so for now, laundry it is.

It’s frustrating. It’s inconvenient. It’s humbling in ways I wasn’t prepared for. And yet—somehow—it’s still better than the bag. So I remind myself of that. A lot. Because the bigger picture is that I’m healing. Slowly, but undeniably. Every day gets a little closer to normal, whatever that word even means now. This is what I prayed for. What a lot of people prayed for.

And now that I’m here, I didn’t expect this part: I’m as frustrated as I am grateful. Not because I’m not getting better—but because I am. Because “getting back to normal” comes with this quiet realization that I could very easily slide right back into the same life I had before. Same habits. Same routines. Same patterns. And that feels… like a missed opportunity.

You go through something like this, and you assume there will be clarity on the other side. Some obvious next step. A direction. A calling. Something. But mostly, it’s just you. Same as before. Just with a slightly different operating system and a much more complicated relationship with sleep.

A while back, I heard someone ask: If the version of you ten years from now could talk to you today, what would they say? I’ve always liked that question. You’d think that version of you would know. They’d have perspective. They’d point you somewhere. But if I’m being honest, I don’t hear some clear, life-altering instruction.

I hear Rusty. “Just aim to be 1% better in any one thing, and you’ll be good.” That was his thing. Simple. No drama. No overthinking. Rusty passed away last Tuesday.

And I can’t help but think if I had called him after my last surgery—told him I didn’t know what to do next, told him I felt like I was wasting whatever this second chance is—that’s exactly what he would’ve said. No big speech. No deep philosophy. Just: be a little better tomorrow.

I’ll be telling that story at his wake this Saturday. In front of a room full of people I’ve never met, trying to explain a guy who made things make sense by keeping them simple.

And maybe that’s the answer, at least for now. Not some massive life overhaul. Not some perfectly defined purpose. Just… 1% better. Maybe that honors him. Maybe that’s me listening to God. Maybe that’s exactly what the version of me ten years from now would hope I’d figure out. Or maybe it’s just the best I’ve got right now.

Either way, it feels like enough.

At this point, I’ve been up too long, spent too much time going back and forth between my bed and the bathroom, and Tugboat is officially concerned about my decision-making. So I’m calling it a night. And tomorrow, I’ll take a shot at being 1% better at something. Even if it’s just guessing right.

It’s been a week since the surgery. I needed to wait this long to write anything, because once they took the bag off and removed the chemo port, I wanted to make sure my insides actually worked — they do, sort of — before I let myself say out loud that this chapter of my life is coming to an end.

That realization first started to sink in the night I got home — last Saturday — when I sat in the shower for nearly fifty minutes, completely unbothered. No fear of the bag getting too wet and falling off. No fear of the ostomy discharging mid-shower and what that cleanup looks like after — and I’ll let you use your imagination there, but it involves a fair amount of bleach on the shower floor. For fifty minutes, I just sat there and enjoyed a shower in a way I’m not sure I ever truly had before.

It’s a strange thing, learning what you miss most when something simple is taken from you without warning.

What I don’t think I’d fully appreciated before the bag was how much of your life quietly reorganizes itself around it. What you wear — black, always black. Whether you go out, and for how long, and how far from a bathroom. Whether you let people get close enough to notice. Whether you stop at the sauna you used to love, or the restaurant with the long wait, or the friend’s house where you’d have to explain. You don’t make one big decision to shrink your life. You make about four hundred small ones, and one day you look up and realize how much smaller it got.

So yes. Fifty minutes in a shower. That’s what this year came down to, at least in the beginning.

If this were a movie, that shower would have been some kind of sweeping visual metaphor — washing away the memories of the last year, strings swelling in the background. But this isn’t a movie, and honestly, I don’t want it to be. I don’t have a clean takeaway from all of this yet. I’m not sure I’m supposed to. But I do think whatever I’m meant to carry forward will become clear with time.

What I have found myself returning to are four personal truths — things I probably already believed somewhere deep down, but that this last year somehow pressed into permanence for me. They’re going to sound like fortune cookies. Some of them probably are. I’m sure I absorbed pieces of them from people smarter than me. But that doesn’t make them any less mine.

1. You can’t live a great story and have an easy life.
2. It’s an amazing privilege to complain about the life you begged God for when you were younger.
3. Everything good in life lives on the other side of fear, embarrassment, or discomfort. Run to that side any chance you get.
4. Always drink the good bourbon when you can. There is no reason to save it for a perfect moment that will never come.

Take from those whatever you’d like — or nothing at all.

I still don’t have a clear answer to what now? — and honestly, that’s equal parts terrifying and kind of thrilling, and I’m finding I’m okay with not knowing. I figure if I hold loosely to those four ideas, whatever comes next should be some kind of adventure. For now, I’m going to enjoy all the small things I had to give up when the bag went on: wearing something other than black, getting back to the sauna, and taking as many showers as my water bill will reasonably allow.

This is where this chapter ends — mostly. There are scans ahead, and cancer could come back. But that’s true for all of us in one way or another, so there isn’t much point in borrowing that worry today.

For now, it’s on to the next adventure. Thank you for reading this long cancer chapter, its been a heck of a story so far…