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I’m turning 50 this year and instead of whining about it, I’m trying to do something positive by donating $50 to 50 different charities before I’m 50 years old.

Four years ago today, I wrote a post called 21 Words, which I still think is the best piece of writing I’ve ever done. It came from a pretty dark place – I was heading in the next day for a huge, life-threatening, life-changing surgery to battle esophageal cancer, and it does a good job of summarizing my life up to that point, I think. It also offers a lot of advice to the future me about how to live a better life should I actually, you know, live. To sum them up they would be: don’t be so afraid, take more chances, and be passionate about things.

I may not have totally lived up to that in the last four years. I’m still a creature of habit and inherently lazy when it comes to making change, but in the last four years I have traveled more, written more (published a novel and on my sixth movie), opened myself up a little more, and gotten involved more so I think I’m doing pretty good.

To mark the anniversary of my four years post-surgery and a little more than three years in remission, I am going to be making all of my 50x50x50 donations this week to various cancer charities.

The first one is Stupid Cancer. Founded in 2007 by Matthew Zachary, a young adult brain cancer survivor, Stupid Cancer has become the largest US-based charity that comprehensively addresses young adult cancer through advocacy, research, support, outreach, awareness, mobile health and social media. The organization has proudly emerged as the dominant support community and social influencer for this underserved population and now serves as a bullhorn for the young adult cancer movement.

Stupid Cancer proudly supports a global network of patients, survivors, caregivers, providers and advocates to ensure that no one affected by young adult cancer go unaware of the age-appropriate resources they are entitled to so they can get busy living. Our innovative and multi-award-winning programs—such as CancerCon, Instapeer, The OMG! Cancer Summit for Young Adults, The Stupid Cancer Road Trip, The Stupid Cancer Store and many others—have brought the cause of ‘cancer under 40’ to the national spotlight and rallied a brand new generation of activists to give a much needed voice to our forgotten population.

To learn more visit stupidcancer.org.

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