About Me — Benjamin H

“I’m just trying to leave the world in a better place than how I found it.”

"Not Without My Daughter" image owned by author

If you had asked me who I was two years ago—when I was 30—I wouldn’t have had an answer. I was a ghost in my own life, a specter, a phantom—moving through the days, surviving, sleepwalking, but not really living. Some of it was my own doing; some of it was the result of a world that doesn’t deal fair hands.

There's a naive melody playing somewhere. image owned by author

But I play the game anyway.

Texas Hold ’Em rules—Jokers wild. And as the Ace of Spades, I play with a different deck. Life is a gamble, and I’ve gone all-in more times than I can count. Sometimes, I’ve cashed out big. Other times, I’ve gone bust. I’ve been in the trenches, and I’ve been at the top. I’ve made money. I’ve lost money. I’ve managed multi-million-dollar communities and flipped struggling operations into successes. I’ve also been in situations where donating plasma was my best option. You don’t need to tell me what it’s like to struggle—I already know.

I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, raised myself, and earned my GED the same year my class graduated. No safety nets, no trust funds—just sheer willpower and the ability to…