Today is a pretty important day. It was August 15th, 2007, when I was told I likely had "three to six months of good health left." Today is six months from that day. Just to prove I'm still alive, here I am, holding today's New York Times! I rode my bike today; the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy are hurting my stamina some, but I bet I can still run a quarter mile faster than most Americans. The doctors weren't wrong; they always said that if the palliative chemo worked, I'd buy more time, but that it was a long shot. And the doctors have done a brilliant job of tweaking my regimen to help my odds. How much longer this will work is hard to know, but I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left, no matter how many or how few of them I get.

In 2006, I went fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way back, one of the engines caught fire and then we had one engine for 70 miles. Slowly but surely, we got to Baton Rouge in the darkness but then got very close to a very large passing ship – they didn’t see us and we didn’t see them.

The motorcycle crash, but also when a neon sign fell on my head in Soho in the 90s.

When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.

My last dance with Jowita, my dance partner. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster; she’s taught me so much about myself and I grew as a result. I’m more confident, more understanding, more respectful, more attuned with myself and others, more mentally strong.

Heights, and not getting along with people.

Finding a partner.

There’s a tweet somewhere saying, “If you like Africa so much, why don’t you go back there.” It was because I dedicated one of my dances to my three mothers – Mother Africa, Mother Nature and my mother.

Not being honest.

That life is tough and unfair; that life is beautiful.