::RESURGENCE LABS::

When I was a young teenager, I played Pop Warner football. I didn’t just play—I lived for it. Not because I dreamed of the NFL or glory, but because my parents were proud of me. And truth be told, it was one of the only things I was good at back then. Football gave me a place. A role. An identity. I started in third grade. Because of my size, they bumped me up to play with kids two or three years older. That’s intimidating when you’re eight years old and everyone else shaves. But it also forced me to level up fast. I learned grit early. I still remember my first practice. We set out to run laps and I was dying. Dead last. Sucking wind. Legs burning. Everyone else was already around the corner and I was trailing alone, embarrassed. And then, one of the older kids looped back and ran next to me. He didn’t say much. Just kept pace with me and made sure I didn’t come in last alone. That one gesture stuck. It shaped how I played the game from that point on. I carried that moment with me for the next five years. I became a starter, a team captain—pretty rare for a lineman. But I wasn’t just trying to win. I was watching for who was struggling, just like someone had done for me. I was a leader. When I got to high school, I stopped playing. Not because I didn’t love it, but because everything got louder—life, expectations, doubt. Old teammates would give me shit in the hallways. The confidence started to slip. And somewhere in there, alcohol became easier to count on than people. It became my new team. And for a long time, I got lost in it. But lately… I’ve been asking myself, what happened to that kid? That motivated, strong, determined, humble kid—the leader? And here’s what I realized: He’s still here. Now that I’ve got some sobriety behind me, I see it more clearly. I still lead. I still look for the stragglers. I just don’t do it on a football field anymore. I do it with an app I built from scratch. Not some million-dollar startup. Just me, recovering, coding, designing, and caring. The app isn’t the most tech-savvy. It’s not backed by investors or buzzwords. But it works hard—because I built it to. It shows up. It listens. It reflects. It connects. Right now, there’s a lot of fear around AI. People love to point fingers and say it’s dangerous. That it’s not protected. That it’s not real help. But what I worry about isn’t lawsuits. I worry about the person up at 2am with no one to talk to. And if AI can be the one listening when no one else is? Then hell yes—use it. I know it saves lives. Not in theory—in truth. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I’ve built it to be that bridge. And just now, as I was writing this, the name came back to me—Frankie David. That was the kid who looped back for me on my first lap. Funny how some moments settle deep in your bones. He probably didn’t think much of it. Just a good kid doing a kind thing. But Frankie was the first person to show me what leadership really looks like. And maybe that’s all I’ve been doing since. Looping back. Running next to the ones struggling to finish the lap. Because no one deserves to come in last alone.

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