Coming soon.

I lay on the hospital bed. Looking up at the ceiling, the doctors talked in hushed tones. One offered me a mask. With deep breaths, nitrous oxide filled my lungs as my mind floated to the week before.

Each year I spend one month abroad. Half of this time I work remotely and the other half holiday. The destination this year? The Grecian island of Kos. Sun, good food and beautiful scenery.

A leathery man on a beaten up motorbike rumbled by. From my laptop speakers, my team shared their updates. The waves caressed the shore. Ding.

I looked down at my phone. Two missed calls and a text from my doctor.

Hello George, I tried to call you and couldn't get through. We have some urgent news regarding the results of your xyz. Please be available in an hour. Thanks, xyz.

The day before my flight to Greece, I had gone to the GP with complaints of haemeroids. I did two tests and promptly forgot about them.

I closed my laptop and felt a wave of anxiety come over me. The phone rang. I picked it up.

I've made a referral for urgent cancer screening. You'll need to come back to the UK immediately.

For the next few days I oscillated between numbness and hysteria.

Arriving in Athens airport I began to feel normal. I sat, surrounded by a cross section of the world, and opened my laptop. 4 hours till my flight. In my headphones, Pieter Levels and Lex Friedman discussed building in public. I signed up for X and asked how I should spend this time.

Around a year ago I had a silly idea. A website to tell the world that you're having sex. Submit your name, and it'll be valid for 24 hours. Pay a small fee, and it'll stay for a week. A live record of who's currently getting some. After all, what's better than having sex? Telling people you're having sex.

npx @create-next-app-latest imhavingsex

On the flight from Athens to London I built the web app. No copilot, no chatgpt, raw. I landed and was met by my wonderful family. 72 hours later the site was finished. I posted on reddit, assuming it would get lost in the digital abyss. 800k views, 20k site visits and £12. I'd made my first internet money. All from one of my dumbest ideas. The response on x was wonderful, supportive, and kind.

My experience of building in public was a welcome distraction from the looming appointments.

On the night before my final appointment, I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling. There appeared two paths ahead of me. A future where I had cancer, and a future where I did not. What would tomorrow hold? What did I want to do? What would you do?

The doctor, placing one hand on my chest, gently removed my mask. In a haze I mumbled, “am I okay?”. “Yes”, he replied, “you're all okay”. For a moment I cried.

In the days following my appointment, my site began slowing down. I got a message on reddit. Someone had bypassed my stripe verification and content moderation, enabling them to submit their own premium names.

Once again I felt the rush of when I first released the site. I patched the vulnerability within a few hours and thanked the redditor for their help.

These experiences changed me. Not in any fundamental way. Just slightly. I'm less afraid now. Less afraid to express myself. Less afraid to do say what I feel. Less afraid to build things. After all, wouldn't you be?