The Ask
It can’t be all bad though, can it?
Even on my worst days, I’ll think “it beats the alternative…not being here at all.” When I had lost the court case, I grasped for some bit of hope, some redemption, and it was clear as day: I had kept my leg, and I had kept my life. What sprang forth from that is a desire to both do something physically demanding AND emotionally challenging.
This is my goal—I’m running the 2025 Chicago Marathon via a charity (World Vision), and making (finally finishing, actually) a book of poems, writings, photos. Included in that book is a really special photo series that specifically gives insight to the near-death experience that was my stabbing (more details below).
This is my vision—that both endeavors support each other. Instead of just selling a book, and instead of just asking for donations, I am asking that people contribute to my World Vision Chicago Marathon fundraiser goal and/or the Venmo link (to help with all costs associated to this entire project) in exchange for a copy of the book (or not—you can donate just to donate if you’d like).
If you've been encouraged or inspired by my story, if you appreciate my experience, if you want to be part of helping those in need, if you want to support my run and my art, this is the place to do it. There are two ways to donate:
Under the “Chicago Marathon 2025” (below) header, you’ll find a link to donate directly to World Vision via my profile towards my fundraising goal of $3,000. If this goal is already met, please consider donating via Venmo.
If you look under the “Sober - A Book of Poems, Writings, and Photos” (below), you’ll see a QR code or link to my Venmo. This link is to help facilitate all of the costs of developing, printing, shipping the books, along with any other donations you might be inclined to give (that will likely go to PT appointments, new running sneakers, a sleep study, and everything else I was hoping to address with a positive jury verdict).
If you’d like to receive a copy of the book, you can donate to World Vision and/or to the Venmo, and send me a copy of your receipt at book@littelbuddyguy.com (along with your address and additional info).
If you have other ways you’d like to donate or be a part of this project, if you want to get coffee together and just talk, or if you just need someone to listen, drop me a line - denis@littlebuddyguy.com
2025 Chicago Marathon x Book Release
Chicago Marathon 2025
I signed up for the 2025 Chicago Marathon via a charity, and will be fundraising to help support those in need of food and clean water.
I hate running (if it’s not chasing a ball or a disc), I’ve never run a marathon, I was late for signing up and most of the spots were closed - the reasons TO NOT run the marathon pile on. My achilles is nagging me, my lower back hurts, good sleep is still hard. But I’m alive, and my legs have been good to me. I’m gonna run, and feel every ounce of blood coursing through my veins, every ache and pain in my body, every muscle fiber twitch. We owe it to ourselves to do hard things, and laugh and cry through it all.
“Sober” - A Book of Poems, Writings, and Photos
I’m making an art book, and I’d love to share it with you. Please consider donating directly to my Venmo to further help support the creation of this project.
After my stabbing, life got messy. I moved to New York to continue the momentum of a growing career as a Commercial Film Producer…in February of 2020. In late 2020, as the world changed, a dear friend opened up his cottage to me, and I retreated from the world - from social media, from work, from hangouts, from every day life.
During that time, I simplified, got healthier, tried to heal. During that time, I wrote, a lot. I started to open up about things that had been on my mind for a long time, things that I had kept private or wrestled with myself. Eventually, I made a prototype of a book - it had poems, writings, photos I had taken.
The book is very special to me. Most of the writings are not actually about the stabbing, rather, about so much of what I started being honest about after I realized that we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. It’s an undoing of the very high guard I had built—it’s honest, it’s vulnerable, it’s heavy. It’s one of the few times I felt like I was being purely transparent about how I felt.
It also contains an extremely special photo series I had developed. Years in the making, inspired by some mix of “ESPN’s - The Body Issue”, a presentation I saw from Director Sam Cannon, and the style of photography that inspires me, and made possible with dear friends and industry peers Evan Bourcier and Dan Peck, I shot a nude photo series. You heard that correctly - nude. But not sexual, salacious, or grotesque.
The photo series was a cathartic attempt to put into the light what weighed so heavily on me - the fear, the shame, the burden, the 8 inch scar on the inside of my groin, intimately hidden from the world but seared into my mind.
The series aims to strip away everything we hold so tightfistedly, put so much emphasis and importance on, while in reality, they are little things that don’t mean much. It is an unburdening of the mind and the body, throwing off that which often artificially keeps us down from saying the things we mean to, doing the things we aspire to do.
It’s a reckoning, and a release. I hope it means something to you.
Though my near-death stabbing and the implications of it will forever be a part of me and my story, onward and upward in the continual hope in my heart. For my mom, who gave up so much to raise me, for my brother, who held my hand at what felt like the end, for my dear friends, some of who have suffered more and complained less, for the 2nd chance I was given that my friend Jackson wasn’t that same year. For a belief that things will one day be made right, and that we are made for a purpose, and that we can lead with love and hope in a broken world.
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”