Not a lot of people can tell you where they were on this day 20 years ago on this very day of July 19th, 2004. There was no historical moment to mark the day, but I can tell exactly where I was, what I was doing and how my eventual successor made herself known to me.

There was an unrelenting heat hanging in the air of the Seattle suburb of Renton, Washington. My face was sticky from the heat, and it was stuck to the pleather couch I was sleeping on. Around 3 am, my wife sauntered out from the bedroom and said she thought her water had broken. My first thought was how does water break? Then I rubbed my eyes and looked at the DVD clock and said, “I normally wake up at 5 am to go to work, so once I wake up for that alarm, we can call the doctor, and ask him why he told us she was going to born on the 24th.”

My wife was pretty patient, because she didn’t immediately whack me over the head with a statue bust. She certainly didn’t go back to bed like I did, but busied herself with paying some bills, taking a shower and preparing a go bag for the hospital. The moment my alarm went off, she slapped the off button. While I showered, she called the hospital and told them her water broke at 3 am. The lady on the other side of the phone frantically asked her why she didn’t call them at 3 am. My wife could have told them that her husband was being a nimrod and “needed his bittersleep” but she said something about wanting to prep before leaving.

Fast forward to Noon o’clock and I was in a small operating room, standing on the other side of a sheet looking at my wife being cut open, with her insides on her belly. They pulled out this tiny little girl, bloody and crying, wiped her off and put her in my hands. At the moment, my wife was still too shaky and weak from the drugs that numbed the bottom half of her body, so I was fully in charge of holding this little body in my arms. It was like I had never practiced holding a baby before, because I was really unsure how to hold a baby. She was small enough to fit between my elbow and my hand, but I’d never felt as heavy a burden in my life.

I looked at my wife, who by then, surely needed a nap, and asked, “What do we do now?”

We were now in charge of this tiny human and neither one of us had any idea what we were supposed to do. Eventually, we got enough practice of her being around, and by the next day, we told the doctors and nurses, “I guess we can bring her home with us and take care of her. At least for a few days or whatever.”

The day we went home, my wife, me and that girl, laid down on our bed, and slept for three hours. I don’t remember the three of us sleeping simultaneously for three hours since that day.

A lot of things have happened since that day, July 19th, 2004. 9-11 had happened, the internet was just as much of a baby as my daughter was, the Ipod was still fairly new, and the Spurs had only won 2 of their 5 championships. Micheal Phelps had only been in one of his 5 Olympics (and hadn’t medaled yet), and President Bush was still on his first term as President. Saddest of all, there was no trace of a blog that the bitter people of the world could turn to in their time of bitterness.

Since that day, the Spurs won 3 more championships, Micheal Phelps won 23 more gold medals, the Ipod became extinct and was replaced by the Iphone, the internet got an upgrade to a mainly social media platform, and a blog that changed bitterness forever was born.

A lot of things change in 20 years. I was only 31 years old, and I was still playing basketball, and walking around without every bone in my body sounding like a sidewalk in an earthquake. My shoulder didn’t hurt, my back was only 5% Scoliosis, and I could eat a whole pizza without gaining 5 pounds. At that point in my life, my career wasn’t anywhere near the marketing career I’m in now. In fact, in 2004, my career didn’t even exist. Google hadn’t even gone public until later that year, so doing Ads on Google wasn’t even a thing.

My career is secondary to my main purpose in life, which started on March 8, 2012, when I posted 4 new bitter blogs. That was the day I started the Bitter Empire. If this was the force, it wouldn’t be the Light Side or the Dark Side. It would be the Bitter Side. As you know, Empires last a long time. As you also know, people don’t last forever. You have a little bit of time in life to build your Empire, but eventually you age 20 years, and you aren’t in your prime anymore. And when you age, you start thinking about your legacy and mortality. You start understanding that you won’t be around forever. You realize you need a successor.

Someday, robots and AI will take over the world and enslave humanity. Someday, civilization will be much different, and my blog will be decimated into a thousand different parts. And I will get REALLY old, and die, and after my death, won’t be able to bring bitterness to the world like I have done my whole life.

Someone will have to be my successor. My daughter, whose 20th birthday is today, will someday take over as my successor as leader of the Bitter Empire. She doesn’t know it yet, and probably won’t know for some time. But someday, when I am no longer able to preside over this Empire, the mantle will be passed to her.

Twenty years ago, I was the first person to held her in my arms. When I held that tiny little girl in the space between my elbow and hand, I imprinted something upon her, and I noticed something in her eyes. She might love her mother more than anyone in the world, but she is more like ME than anyone else in the world. On the surface, she is the most beautiful and sweet and lovely person to be around. Her mother and her can talk for hours and they love each very much. But deep down, she is her father’s daughter, and she isn’t part of the Light Side or the Dark Side. She is the Bitter Side. And someday, when I’m gone, she will continue the Bitter Empire. It will probably be in some kind of different form, but it will live on.

It doesn’t matter if the robots, the AI, or the aliens are in charge, she will find a way to infect that leadership with bitterness, I know that for a fact. And I just want to say that I will be so proud of her for doing so. Even though she is very far away today, I want to wish her a very happy 20th birthday, and I know that however she gets to the Bitter Side, I know she will do it in her own special way.

Now, to celebrate my successor on her birthday, I will be placing lots of Bitter Friday Giftures on this blog…

20 years ago…

It was three in the morning…

She claimed…

I looked at her and said…

Luckily…

Luckily…

Fast Forward to Noon O’Clock…

And quickly handed her over…

The internet was still in its…

And the Ipod was the big tech…

But when I looked in her eyes…

She was the future…

Happy 20th Birthday, daughter

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Successor to the Empire Ben