Recently, one of my fans was worried about me.
She thinks my inner elBenbo is taking over and misses Ben.
As a result, she doesn’t reply to my daily emails.
Merely lurks.
And patiently awaits the day when normal Ben is the dominant personality up in this twisted and deranged ornament suspended in water called my brain.
Here is what I told her:
There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where captain Picard is wounded in his artificial heart and has a near death experience back to the days of his youth. When he was a young cadet at the academy he was reckless, a brawler, womanizer, and overall bad ass who bucked authority and got in a lot of trouble. One day he picks a fight with two aliens twice his size and one of them stabs him through the heart (which is why he now has an artificial heart).
Anyway, Q, the entity in his NDE, gives him a choice to change.
To not be that guy that got himself stabbed.
To be more responsible.
To not be so aggressive and get in that fight .
So Picard does things differently.
He is more mature, interacts with his friends differently, doesn’t even back up his friend in a fight wanting instead to seek peace, doesn’t hit on girls but instead tries to be friends with them, etc.
The result?
He ends up being a mere subordinate on the Enterprise, not its captain.
He’s now living a dreary and depressing life running tests, carrying out analysis, and bringing reports to his superiors. A mediocre man who never allowed his inner elBenbo to do what it had to do when it had to do it. The people he once commanded on the ship are now barely giving him the time of day and laugh at him when he says he wants more responsibility and even to command some day.
It was a story I’ve never forgotten.
And, now, you will never forget it.
The things you like about me are the things you think you despise.
So it is.
Anyway, if you want to start building an audience that actually cares enough about you to let you know their real thoughts, simply start mailing your list each day using my wicked ways.
To learn my ways go here:
Ben Settle
