Today is my birthday.
I woke up sick, in the dark, somewhere between 26 and whatever comes next.
I found out about the 27 Club when I was 19.
It wasn’t a dramatic moment. My ex had an eating disorder. Depression too. Her friend had the same. We drove out to visit that friend one afternoon, went on a small hike, and somewhere along the trail the conversation turned — the way conversations do between people who are all carrying something — to famous people who’d killed themselves. Amy Winehouse. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Kurt Cobain. Jim Morrison. All of them had made it to 27 and not a day further.
I went home and searched about it on the internet.
In my friend group, it became a joke. Dark humor is how you survive being young and confused and surrounded by people who are hurting.
But quietly, not as a joke, it became something else for me.
I told myself I would join the club at 27. But until then — I had things to do.
I was already struggling with depression then. Had been for a while, before I had a name for it or the language to explain it to anyone, including myself. The suicidal thoughts weren’t new. They’d been there, underneath everything, for years.
The 27 Club gave them a shape. A container. A deal I made with myself: not yet. First, build something. First, prove something. First, live enough to have something worth leaving behind.
Most people dream without urgency. I had a number. A date. A countdown that no one else in the room could see.
I had until 27.
I was 21 when I left for Nepal.
Two years in tech. More than most people my age, and still empty in a way I couldn’t explain. So I did what you do when you don’t know what else to do — I bought a ticket, took two months off, and went to walk the Annapurna Circuit.
The first weeks were hard. I wasn’t good at being alone with myself. I’d spent years running fast enough that I didn’t have to be.
But something shifted.
We reached Yak Kharka on an evening that felt like the world had slowed down on purpose.
Everyone showered. We sat down for dinner at one long table — Israelis and strangers we’d just met on the trail, people who didn’t share our language or our history. I don’t remember what we ate. I remember the table. I remember the way the conversation opened up.
I told some riddles. People laughed. And then I started talking about what I wanted.
I was the odd one there. Not straight out of the army like most of them. Not yet confident in the way that military service tends to make Israelis. Quieter. Watching more than speaking. But when I talked about where I was going — when I said it out loud, at altitude, to strangers who owed me nothing — something happened in the room.
They felt me.
And I listed, for the first time in one place, what I was building toward:
By 27, I would have a startup or sold one.
By 27, I would have enough money that my entire family would never need to worry again.
By 27, I would be mentoring people and helping them reach their full potential.
By 27, I would have started working on a plan to reach outer space. To actually advance humanity.
I said these things with a certainty I’d never felt before and haven’t quite felt since.
Years passed.
I built things. I failed at things. I burned out and came back. I hired and was hired and was let go and walked away and tried again. I mentored people — junior developers, people starting out, people who reminded me of who I was when no one saw potential in me yet.
And somewhere in all of that, the deal I’d made with myself quietly changed.
Not in one moment. Not because of one thing. Just — life kept happening, and I kept finding reasons to stay in it. The thoughts never fully went away. I still battle them. Every single day, I fight for myself. But somewhere along the way I stopped thinking of 27 as the exit and started thinking of it as a dividing line.
Before 27. After 27. Two different lives. Two different versions of whoever I was becoming.
The question stopped being whether I’d make it. It became: what would I have built by then?
I turned 27 today.
I woke up sick. Not just physically.
I’m not happy with where I am. After what happened at Anchor — the manipulation I didn’t fully see coming, the confidence it took from me, the questions it left behind about who I actually am — I’m not the same person who walked into that office with something burning in his chest.
I’m not happy in my relationships. My career. Myself on most days.
I ran the count on the four goals.
One out of four.
The mentoring. That one I hit, and I hit it hard. Every person I’ve invested in, every developer I’ve helped grow, every conversation that actually went somewhere — that’s real. That happened. I did that.
The rest? No startup sold. No financial freedom for the people I love. No plan for outer space.
That should feel like failure.
Part of it does.
But here’s what I know at 27 that I didn’t know at 19: the goals were never really the point. They were a way of giving a kid who was barely holding on something to run toward. A reason for 27 to be a destination instead of an ending.
I made it to the destination.
And I’m still fighting to stay here. Every day. That part hasn’t changed. The thoughts are still there — quieter some days, louder others. What’s changed is that I know how to fight them now. I’m in therapy. I have people. I choose, over and over, not today.
That’s not a small thing. That might be the biggest thing.
The “after 27” doesn’t come with a new list.
I thought about making one. I couldn’t. Not because I have no ambitions — I have more than I can hold. But because I’m done measuring who I am by what I’ve shipped. I’m done treating my life like a series of deliverables.
What I have instead is simpler than that.
Ambition. And the choice, made fresh every morning, to still be here.
For a better life. For better relationships. For a career that doesn’t hollow me out. For a version of myself I can look at without flinching. For proof — to myself, mostly — that the deal I made at 19 was worth making.
That’s the after 27. Not a plan. Not a list.
Just the fire. And the daily act of keeping it lit.
I’m still here. Still building. Still going.
And I’m going harder than I ever have before.