This morning I was journaling about the Hot Ones YouTube show, which interviews celebrities while having them eat progressively spicier chicken (or vegan) wings. It occurred to me that celebrity interviewers are akin to the remoras that attach themselves to sharks and other large marine animals. They’re tolerated by the larger fish because they often perform a useful “cleaning” service, cleaning up parasites and other bits of junk that collect on the larger animal.
In the celebrity world of Hollywood, interviews and interviewers are tolerated because they help the movie star sell seats in movies. It then occurred to me that I perform a similar function in the aerospace business. Here’s how I put it on Twitter, with a little added flourish from Scott Adams:
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing…each to his/her own ecological, professional, or social niche, I guess. It’s just that I used to have bigger dreams for myself. I was going to be a creator, an author, a dreamer of big dreams. For the past 20 years I’ve shifted to writing and editing the dreams of others–people with more creativity, more education in the sciences or engineering–to the point where I’ve doubted or just given up on my idea of being a “big fish” on my own one day.
Welcome to middle age.
The Real Bart Leahy 