Yesterday, unlike most of my days at work, I spent most of the day trying to help balance a 13-story building of bottles to spell two words. It was a promotional video for Prime Day, and our social media team decided that we were going to build a wall of bottles and then smash through it with a 4-wheel drive ATV.

I’m much more of a builder than I am a destroyer, but man, was it frustrating to try to build and balance 13 stories of bottles. First, the SM team had to spell out the words Minecraft style just to see how it would work. Then, we had to tape dozens of bottles with blue pieces of paper to spell out the words. It was most frustrating part when we got to level 9 or 10 and the bottles just weren’t doing their job of balancing. Some bottles got tired, some got too hot, and others just decided to check their phones.

I think before we started stacking them, someone should’ve prepared a TED talk for the bottles. None of the bottles were properly prepared before we started putting them in such a precarious position. Maybe we should have talked about their role in the organization and how if we don’t perform our role correctly, the whole company suffers, and their stock options would be affected. The supply chain broke and the pyramid scheme failed because the organization was out of balance. Because of that, we had to lay some of the bottles off, and restructured into a smaller organization of bottles that were useful and actually wanted to be there.

Someone should have given my body that same TED talk. At some point in my youth, my legs decided that they didn’t want to grow at the same rate. It was similar to this show I saw about a set of identical twins that were really different. They decided to be in different friend groups and do their own thing. My legs were like a set of identical twins that wanted to do their own thing, and they grew differently. All I know is that it seemed like they were having a competition about which one could give me the best growing pains. One side definitely won and the other was a bit of a quitter. They decided that he didn’t want to work together and be best friends.

So now, I’m a 6 foot and 1/2-inch-tall (somewhere between 6’0 and 6’1) because one leg is 6 foot tall and the other is 6’1 and they couldn’t make up their minds how tall I could be. Because my legs are so off-balance, I didn’t make it into the NBA.

If it wasn’t for my weirdly unbalanced legs, I would be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of retirement from the NBA right now. I would be diving in my vault of Gold Doubloon’s, $100 bills, and losing a $100,000 in cryptocurrency. I would be earning money by leasing out my name to a number of Bitter Ben Used Car Lots, so I could vacation on my private island in the Carribean somewhere.

Instead, I’m spending a good portion of my day trying to motivate bottles to hold steady for just a few minutes so an ATV can drive through it for a 15 second spot on Instagram.

Maintaining balance is important. You spend your whole life trying to find something in the middle, and when you are slightly off, you are always trying to calibrate toward the middle. For me, it’s always been trying to find the right balance between working hard enough to make money for the family, but also being around enough for my family to remember who I am when I come home.

For others, it might be about saving enough for the future, while also spending money on experiences while they are young enough to enjoy it. For some people it’s about climbing a corporate ladder so they can have a nice house, but being able to enjoy the time in the house that they built.

Because of the fight my stupid legs had back in my teen years, I constantly have to recalibrate running, shooting a basketball, how I lay on the couch, and how my body distributes my pizza intake to one side more than the other. It’s frustrating, exhausting and makes me bitter all the time. I tried to balance my legs with a pair of New Balance shoes, because I thought they might balance my legs, but they just made me look like I was 50. I should have sued them into the phantom zone, but I couldn’t find a good lawyer that would take my case. Bums. Almost as much as it bums me out, that this post is way out of balance and needs some Bitter Friday Giftures to put it back in order…

We probably should have tried humans…

Plus, humans are better at being motivated…

I can’t imagine why the bottles didn’t want to unite in a 13-story wall…

It just goes to show them…

And by flames…

When your legs are off balance like mine…

It also makes it hard…

Although, if I was a star in the NBA…

My legs were like a set of identical twins…

Or money…

When growth happens differently…

Or you’ll always be…