Unworthy of the Title

I certainly said a mouthful in that last blog post. If you haven’t read it yet, go back and do so. It’s the one slightly lower on the page if you scroll down. I’m not saying it’s a matter of life and death, but this post is a continuation of what I said down there. The tone is different, for sure, and I’m no longer rambling in out-of-control run-on sentences to convey a jumbled, mixed up mind, but this post stands on the shoulders of its predecessor. Oddly enough, it was supposed to be the beginning of a daily onslaught of affirmations that never came to fruition. It was called “Day One,” after all. It was written on a Thursday with the intention that Friday would be Day Two, and then Saturday would be Day Three, and so on and so forth. That didn’t happen though. Sometimes things didn’t go according to plan, as they shouldn’t. I personally don’t deserve to have things go according to plan until I’m fully capable of dealing with the effects of when they don’t.

If things had gone as planned, today would be Day 16. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be something else if I was actually able to write and produce something for that many consecutive days? In that fictional scenario, I would be what you may call a writer. Wouldn’t it have been special if those theoretical consecutive days built little by little and step by step to something grand and poignant and beautiful? That was what I had hoped for, but hoping alone doesn’t get things done. Action is needed. I swear I tried to take action since “Day One” but nothing came from it. Several times over the last two weeks I attempted to write a second installation, however belatedly, and several times I failed. How exactly did I fail though? Is there any outcome of my writing that could be considered a success if all I do is post to a blog that no one reads because I don’t promote it to the world, or at the very least my friends and family? If there is no chance for success, how can there be failure?

Well, if you don’t mind me responding to a question no one cares to have answered: I suppose I failed because I liked “Day One,” quite simply, and I wasn’t going to follow it up with something I did not like. Each time I tried again – whether I wrote three paragraphs, one paragraph, or just one sentence – I eventually made the executive decision that I was producing pure and utter crap, so I stopped. I’m my own worst enemy and my own biggest critic. Nothing and no one has ever stood in my way that is a more formidable foe than myself. In the last two days I’ve been reading a lot of my old blog posts and short stories written circa the Kiel’s-going-through-a-major-life-crisis years of 2009-2010, and I have to say: I’m a good writer, or at least I have the potential to be when I’m writing on a consistent basis. I have earned the right to be confident in my abilities, but I am a self-conscious and insecure bastard who has ultimately accomplished nothing through my writing (i.e. write a book or sell a script) because I’ve stood in my way these last few years anytime I’ve picked up a pen or sat at a computer and tried to write again. When I did those things, it didn’t take long before what began as a whisper in the back of my mind telling me I wasn’t writing anything worth continuing grew to a full on scream of disapproval and I abandoned the project altogether. That is no one’s fault but my own.

To be frank about where this is all coming from: a friend of a friend is having her book published and I am extremely jealous. I wish I could be jealous because I have a book of my own I can be angry at Penguin for not choosing to print and disseminate to the world, but instead I’m jealous because I’m not disciplined enough to have even created something worthy of a major publishing company’s rejection. In these last few years where I’ve been writing-dormant (which have not-so-coincidentally been the last few years that I’ve been employed full-time), couldn’t I have devoted my time and energy to at least one project that could have been written and completed by now? Shouldn’t I at nearly twenty-seven years old – having considered myself a writer since I was a teenager – have written at least one book by now, even one not good enough to be published? If I could only be so lucky!

At what point do I lose the right to call myself a writer? I personally think I already have. The second this act no longer became habit is the second I was no longer able to consider myself a wordsmith, a bard or a scribe, even if I have been able to maintain my ability to list synonyms in groups of three. I need to flex my writing muscle regularly once again, which is why I originally set out to write Day One and Day Two and many more days subsequently until I reached a point where I was not only writing habitually like I used to but writing at a high level as well. My strategy failed, though, and it failed quickly. Operation Wake-Up-the-Inner-Vonnegut was a well-conceived and valiant attempt that utterly produced no benefits and many casualties. Here I am again, however, trying to jumpstart this machine and get the motor purring once more. If nothing else, the failure produced shame that brought me back for seconds.

Let’s be honest with each other: I’m in my late twenties – let’s call it “almost thirty years old” for the sake of magnifying the ticking time bomb – and if I can’t do this better than good, I should just stop now. I do this to be great. I want to write a book that, when fully read and consumed, makes a person walk slowly and hypnotically toward his or her bedroom window, look out on the world and see more beauty and hope than was seen before those pages were read. That can only be achieved if I write well, and I will only write well if I write often, and I will only write often if I once again am a writer.

Day One

I’m going to say something now and I’m not going to stop and rewrite or self-edit because at the moment I’m fully incapable of that luxury without scrapping my literary efforts altogether, so you’ll have to accept this half-assed stream-of-consciousness manifesto on what I know about life, or at least my own, as irrefutable fact and gospel:

Let’s start with the basics to determine what we know: I’m Kiel Servideo. I’m 26 years old, but I’m only a few weeks away from being 27. What do those numbers mean? Probably nothing. If anything, they mean that people who hear me say “I’m 27” will think or say “Oh, you’re getting close to 30” more often than when I’ve said “I’m 26” for these last 300 some-odd days. I live in Los Angeles, and I do so with my girlfriend of nearly two and a half years. Her name is Anne and she makes me happy. She is the best thing to happen to me since I was born into a family with a mother and father and brother and sister who love me unconditionally and fiercely and sometimes loudly and angrily, but regardless it’s always love unmistakably. Anne is now my family as well. She is a piece of the puzzle I’ve searched for for nearly all of my conscious life, the search beginning the first time I watched a movie or television show or whatever the hell it was that showed two characters (or possibly even real people) in love and I thought, “That looks nice, I’ll have some of that.” It took a while, but now I have love and a whole lot of it and it gets me through an otherwise confusing life that leaves me frustrated and occasionally helpless when I stop and think about where I’ve been and where I am and where I’m going.

I used to stop and think about that kind of stuff a lot more often, and the hours spent in contemplation as a little boy and then an adolescent and then a young adult and then (eventually) a man gave birth to who I considered at one time to be a good writer. Since thought gives way to writing, the time I devoted to nothing but thought proved very fruitful and useful for a developing writer who wanted to make sense of emotions that sometimes felt uncontainable. While I was never short of friends or family surrounding me, I would embrace the occasional solitude afforded to me – whether it was in my childhood bedroom, my college dorm room, in the middle of the silent and unoccupied woods near my house, in the car while driving alone for 10 minutes across town or an hour to the city, or while walking around Boston for such a long stretch of time that I’d sometimes lose track of exactly where I was or how long I’d been out there – and whatever was confusing or bothering me at that present time would be dissected and digested and considered from every possible angle, and I would explain to myself why where I’d been had led me to this specific moment and this specific problem, and I would explain to myself why where I was presently wasn’t as messed up and unfixable as I was allowing myself to believe, and I would look at a future where the problem would be resolved and part of a distant forgotten past and I would have learned from my mistake so that in the end, this problem was actually a good thing because a lesson had been learned. Finally, I’d wrap it all up with a nice little bow through two or three written pages laying it all out and explaining to the reader (but to myself really) why it would all be okay and why it was never really that bad to begin with. It was my gift to the world, as far as I was concerned, to create something out of pain – to be able to redirect the eye from something ugly and loud to something beautiful and peaceful.

However, for reasons I’m fully aware of even if I leave them buried in the cold and dark caves of my subconscious, I no longer have those stretches of time meant for thinking about what ails me and nothing else, and therefore I no longer write. Instead, I think about solvable things like how I’ll complete a task at work or what Anne and I can do next weekend or which guys I can ask to play soccer Sunday night if we come up short with the regular roster. I don’t think about how I still haven’t come to terms with my parents divorce or how a very real piece of me still believes I’m stuck in a bad dream on the night before I leave for LA on January 11, 2009 – the last night I slept under the same roof as both my parents simultaneously when everything seemed right and as it always had been before returning four months later to a fictional and upside-down version of the only place I’d ever known. I don’t think about my childhood house being boarded up 3,000 miles away in Methuen like the final, physical representation of the world telling me, “No, you can’t go back to the way things used to be, no matter how much you want to,” and I don’t think about creeping around the property that is no longer my own or my family’s and looking inside a gutted, empty shell of a once great vessel that played host to so many – in fact the majority – of my life’s beautiful and happy and good moments until these last few years. I don’t think about the sick feeling I’ve had gnawing at my insides when I’m back in that world the last few times because it’s a twisted, inverted version of what once felt like Home that spits in the face of the original. I don’t think about how different my familial relationships are becoming from what I always dreamed they would be, or how I will never bring my children to visit their grandparents together in their father’s childhood home and I may not even live within a close driving distance of them or my brother and his family or my sister and her family like I’d always planned because how can I expect to once again call a place my permanent home for the remainder of my life when visits of a few days overwhelm me with sadness and anxiety?

I think it’s safe to say these problems, or at least their manifestations in my mind, have grown out of my control, and I attribute this snowball rolling down the hill to the fact that at some point I made the conscious decision to not do what I’d always done to work through turmoil. Maybe I made that call because for the first time in my fortunate life I faced something that couldn’t be solved (or at the very least understood) through writing about it in a journal or blog post or working it into a short story. Maybe I made that call because I arrived in Los Angeles with nothing and slowly but surely accumulated everything I believe is needed for a content existence: a partner, friends, a home, a job. I didn’t want to think about the bad stuff anymore. I wanted to hold it underwater even though it’s buoyancy would carry it to the surface the second my attention slipped. I was happy. I am happy. That’s what drives me insane above all else; I have a good life right now and I know I’m heading to a future worth dreaming of and looking forward to, but when I stop and think again like I used to I can’t ignore the ways in which my future today differs from the future I wanted five years ago or the things today’s future won’t have despite all that it will.

Expression of Birthday Thankfulness

I feel like people may feel more inclined to read a blog post written on my birthday, so I think I need to make this one count.

It’s 6:25am as I start writing this, and 9:25am where it counts. In Boston, it’s currently sunny and in the 40’s. That’s just warm enough that you’re body temperature feels comfortably regulated as you head out into the world in your late fall/early winter clothing, but a wall of cool air still kisses your cheeks as you walk down the city’s beautiful streets. In Methuen, the schools are in full swing. The first batch of morning specials are approaching in the middle schools and the high schoolers are beginning to come awake after a sluggish first period and making their teachers’ lives a living hell.

Yep, life is pretty much the same on the east coast as it was when I left it. In fact, I’m fairly certain it’s exactly the same. Why wouldn’t it be?

I’ve been gone a little over four months now – 137 days, to be exact. This is the longest stretch of time I’ve ever been away from home. How does that feel? It feels (and tastes) like salty droplets falling down my cheeks.

But the tears are the good kind. A year ago at this time I was confused, depressed, and frustrated. Now I’m confident and focused on what I want to achieve for myself. As of Monday, I’ll officially be a full-time employee of one of Hollywood’s big studios. Things are finally being sorted out. Things are finally happening.

I could never have gone from Point A – a frustrated and miserable college graduate six months removed – to where I am without the same people making me feel oh-so-special today. I had given up on the idea that I had potential. They didn’t. Better yet, they reminded me over and over again that they thought so. Eventually, my stubborn and hard-headed brain believed what they had to say. Eventually I decided to believe in myself again, and I have them/you to thank for it.

A month ago I texted one of my former soccer players to check in, as I often do with most of them to see how they’re doing in high school or just starting college. I told him about the new job I had recently started. I told him how my boss was notoriously difficult and how hard it would be to master – even survive – working for him. His response was indicative of the role so many of you play in my life: “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”

In short, you all humble me completely and absolutely. I’d be nothing without you and everything I will be is because of you.

Life goes on without me back home, but because of you my life goes on here and it’s stronger than it’s ever been before.

I can never thank you enough for that gift.

A Learning Experience

There can be something to learn from failure.

Bros Talking Bro Stuff

An actual conversation so good, it needed to be performed by robots.

If I Actually Talked to the Women of My Dreams

The Boy Who Cried “The One”

I’ve been throwing around a new term lately. It’s a term to describe what happens to me on a daily basis on the bus to and from work and in grocery store aisles when all I’m really trying to do is determine the best tuna-for-my-dollar option and while I’m sitting in front of a computer at my friendly neighborhood coffee shop. I’ve described the problem in posts before, and if your personal knowledge of me extends beyond the realm of the blogosphere you’ve probably witnessed the problem firsthand.

If I’m going to have any addictions, I guess I should consider myself lucky that this is my only one. I’ve never done drugs and rarely drink. I’m not a shopaholic and certainly won’t be checking into any sex addiction clinics given my recent resume. No, my problem is a relatively harmless and, if you ask me, endearing one.

I’m addicted to falling in love, and I do so all the time. You have to understand, first off, that I’ve never actually been in love. I’ve loved, but never in reciprocated fashion. That’s certainly done it’s share of damage on my old thinking box, I assume. For this reason, I believe, I’m looking for a chance at love at every opportunity I can. When I see that “right girl” on the bus or in the grocery store or sitting across from me in the coffee shop, then, I’m eager to jump to the conclusion in my thinking box that this girl – who I’ve never even spoken to, mind you – is the most perfect angel in the world and was put on this world for me and me alone.

I call it a heart boner. The typical man’s men get your more traditional boner – deriving from the genital region – when they stumble across a pretty girl, and look to engage the girl in conversation with the intention of dragging her back to their love cave for a night of carnal passion. I, however, have the much more respectable and not-in-the-least-bit-crazy intention of introducing the girl to my grandmother after our first blissful week of knowing each other results in an engagement, wedding plans, and baby-naming possibilities.

Not in the least bit crazy, indeed.

I know my thinking is very flawed when I fall in “love” with these strangers. I understand most women (or at least I’m told) are secretive animals who don’t like to explicitly reveal any strong emotional attachment until a reasonable amount of time has elapsed and social norms finally give you the okay to say “I love you” without looking like a total nut. By these calculations, I must be out of my mind, right? There must be something seriously wrong with me if Wednesday night I was actually considering sitting next to the beautiful girl on the bus and telling her she’s the one I’ve been waiting for my entire life.

Like when genetics made the mean girls from high school get fat in college, however, science has my back. A study of falling-in-love brains has found that falling in love isn’t a slow process that occurs over the first few months of a relationship’s construction. Rather, the chemical reactions within the brain that cause us to feel love occur in less than a second…one-fifth of a second, to be exact. As we sang in Hello, Dolly in the high school musical my sophomore year, “It only takes a moment…”

That one-fifth-of-a-second chemical reaction could take place three weeks into a relationship, three months, or, for the severely emotionally detached, three years. I guess that I, on the other hand, am genetically pre-disposed to undergo the reaction at first glance. I believe in love at first sight because I experience it all the time. Some may not believe in it because their brains don’t reward them with lovey-dovey butterflies for a few months. To each his own.

I’m not trying to imply that I’m any better for my heart boner condition, either. I know I need to wait a little while and find proof that my initial gut reaction was an accurate one. I know I need to keep things under wraps for a little while once it’s confirmed before I go blurting out anything I may regret. The first time I ever said I love you, for instance, came 767 days after that initial one-fifth of a second realization. (But who’s counting?)

My heart boners, then, are perfectly harmless. They’ve been much more common lately, and sure I may be texting my friends a little too often saying, “I found the one!” these days, but what’s the harm in hoping each day that I may have actually found someone to be happy with?

I can answer that question in one-fifth of a second.

Nothing Really Mattress to Me

The night of July 4th, I went to sleep in my bed in Methuen knowing I’d be driving west in the morning and saying goodbye to my childhood bedroom for an indeterminable amount of time. I also knew I’d be saying goodbye to the simple comfort of a mattress on a regular basis for quite some time. In fact, since that night I’ve only spent a handful of nights on a real mattress.

• The first night of the road trip was spent in a bed at a Red Roof Inn in Akron (three nights before Lebron James would spark riots in its streets).
• A few nights later (the night of Lebron’s “Decision,” to be exact) I slept in a bed at a Fairfield Inn in Oklahoma City. For the next month I was either sleeping on a couch, the floor, the ground (at the Grand Canyon) or on an air mattress, prompting me to exclaim in moments of high stress, “I haven’t slept in a bed since Oklahoma City!” The most depressing phrase ever uttered.
• In August, on a trip down the coast with two friends from back east, I spent one night on a tiny guest room bed (breaking the Curse of Oklahoma City) and the next sleeping head-to-toe in a hotel bed in San Diego, which I don’t think should count.
• When one of my roommates (or should I say “When one of the people who lets me live in her house…”) went home for a weekend for a wedding, I slept two nights in her bed.
• Last Saturday night after a marathon night of video games (because I am among the very young at heart)  my friend Kyle opted to let me sleep in his king-size bed and take the couch instead of drive me home at 3 am.

And there you have it – all of my nights on a real mattress since moving exactly three months ago. In the meantime, I rest my head on a little air mattress donated to the “Kiel’s a Freeloading Piece of Shit Relief Fund.” It gets the job done. It’s like bottom shelf vodka – distilled enough. On one hand, I don’t have to sleep on the floor or a couch that isn’t long enough for my gangly legs or wide enough for my large torso every night. On the other hand, I’m developing chronic back problems. You win some, you lose some.

Six (and a half, counting San Diego) nights in three months on a real mattress. Do I get any kind of reward for this besides a hunchback when I’m an old man? I expect to have a full-time occupation very soon, and this mattress problem is presenting me with quite the quandary: When I finally begin to accrue some monetary value, what do I devote money to first? A car? How long can I last on Los Angeles’ bus system before two homeless people murder me with their scents? New clothes? God knows I can’t keep cycling through the same Methuen soccer tees once I’m going to a job consistently. A new cell phone? My Walmart Go-phone isn’t exactly a business line. A woman? Certainly a lack of funds has been a convenient excuse the last couple of years for not pursuing any potential female companions, and God knows some girls – especially in this city – won’t hesitate to burn a huge hole in a man’s wallet. Or do I bump all of these necessities down the list and make a fine posture-pedic the first white whale I need to hunt down? Imagine the wonderful thing my life will become once I’m actually comfortable enough to enter R.E.M. sleep!

We’ll see. These are all just crazy pipe dreams for now. A guy can dream, can’t he?

No seriously. I’m really asking you. It’s been a long time for me.

So I Write: The End of My First Blogging Year

One year ago, I sat in front of my dilapidated laptop at my large oak desk  in my childhood bedroom and stared out my dirty back window. The window overlooks the pool which had always been the jewel of the Servideo family – the venue of Fourth of July barbecues, graduation parties, and other miscellaneous events. Fourteen months earlier, I’d recorded one of those cookouts on America’s birthday with my cheap little video camera. In one long, Tarantino-eqsue shot at twilight, I captured everything going on at the party from the front of the house to the pool area: one group playing basketball in the street, my little cousins playing horseshoes on the side of the house, a collection of people stuffing their faces with the food that continues to fly off the grill in the backyard, uncles, aunts, my grandmother, and parents sitting around the fire by the pool and cracking the jokes that befit their characters perfectly, and finally my brother, sister, and our friends playing cards at the patio tables. It’s everyone I could ever hope to spend my time with. It’s everyone I love. It’s my American Dream. The camera cuts to an hour or so later when the stars are out and the Tiki torches are lit. The little kids and big kids alike are lighting their sparklers and waving their glowing wands in the air. To punctuate the moment, a chorus of people begin to cheer, “Happy Fourth of July! Happy Fourth of July!” God bless America.

Sitting in front of my laptop at my desk in my room looking out my back window, I see this zenith of my life playing out as if it’s that perfect summer day all over again. But it isn’t. It’s late September and the red leaves on the giant tree that towers over the pool has already begun to shed. Mom is in San Jose tending to her sick mother, Dad has been living in Malden for seven months, Zach has just finished his first full year of living on his own in Somerville, and Steph is at college in Westfield. I am very much alone. One year earlier, the diaspora had begun. When the summer of 2008 finished, the Servideo’s said goodbye to the classic nuclear family that had existed in its current capacity for 18 years. Zach moved out, Steph started college, and I went back to Boston to finish college. Four months later, I went to Los Angeles for my first stint in Hollywood. One month after that, Dad moved out. The poor dog – talk about abandonment issues!

Sitting in front of my laptop at my desk in my room looking out my back window, I see the 2008 barbecue fade away and give way to another scene of a nondescript date. It’s not a one-time occurrence but a situation in which my family frequently found itself late on Sunday afternoons throughout the summer months. If you’ve read me in the past you may have seen it before:

There’s a raft floating in the pool, and Zach is laying on it. His leisure consists of both tanning and drinking an iced beverage of some alcoholic variety. Sitting on fold-out chairs beside the pool are my mother and Steph. They both have their eyes closed, but they aren’t sleeping. They’re just peaceful. To their right, under the shady cover of a giant spruce that was no taller than my infant self when we first moved into the house, my father cooks on the grill. The grill is covered with a feast that includes pork ribs and steak tips and salmon and balsamic-glazed asparagus. It will feed us all after a long day in the sun. Beside the grill, a radio broadcasts the airwaves of one of Boston’s several classic rock stations. Perhaps The Eagles’ “Take It Easy” is playing. That would certainly fit. All the while observing this situation, I slowly sway back-and-f0rth on a swing on the opposite end of the pool area. The swing has an umbrella to block the sun and seats three. No one regularly uses the swing besides me, however, and when I’m on it alone, I’m able to lay across it on my back, using my feet against the swing’s legs to push myself back-and-forth, back-and-forth. A book rests on my chest, though I don’t read it. If I was really in the mood to read, I would sneak off to the Tenney Castle in the center of town or to Barnes & Noble just over the border in Salem like I have since I’ve been able to drive. There’s no reason to read for entertainment purposes because the conversation amongst my family is more entertaining than anything Vonnegut or Goethe or Dostoevsky has to offer at the moment. Why would I want to leave when I can clearly see this is a moment worth clinging to for as long as I can? While my brother is floating and my mother and sister are tanning and my father is grilling, I’m swaying back-and-forth and staring up at a beautiful blue sky. There isn’t a cloud in sight.

Sitting in front of my laptop at my desk in my room doo doo doo looking out my back window, this scene too fades and gives way to nothing but pain. I cry a little. It’s okay because no one is around to see it. I’m alone. I try to think of something worth devoting my time to. It feels like I’ve exhausted the internet’s potential for distraction. A sliver of an idea hits me. If I, a man who has told people he is or is going to be a writer for several years now, wants to do anything useful with all this emotion, he sure as hell better write about it. Maybe a book will be an outlet. Maybe chronicling this experience could be useful to someone else who sees fit to read about it. One chapter in, several times over, the naivete disappears and I realize anything I write will be driveling, sentimental garbage.

Sitting in front of my laptop at my desk in my room looking out my back window, I don’t know what to do next. If only I could hit a fast forward button and see the good moments that lay ahead. I could see everything that would reveal this lowly moment for the small blip on my life’s radar that it is and marvel at the beautiful moments not too far up the road.

Like taking time out of my day as a substitute teacher to visit my friend’s third grade class, seeing their excited faces when I walk in the room, and hearing them call beg “Mr. Smiley” to read them a story like I’m stuck in a cliche movie.

Like watching my team of resilient teenagers spit in the face of a 6-2 second half deficit and score to make it 6-3, then 6-4, then 6-5…and looking each one in the eyes after the game and seeing strong men spawned out of a group of broken boys who had suffered through a 1-17 fall season only months before.

Like sleeping under a ledge in the middle of the Grand Canyon, where no sound can be heard but the sound of the wind against the mountain side, and feeling like a mighty king who just might be able to conquer this daunting world despite the odds and logic against it.

But I can’t see the future. All I can see is whatever lies beyond the windowpane of my back window from behind my desk in front of my computer in the same bedroom I’ve slept in for 22 years, and until all that other good stuff reveals itself to remind me I have a life worth a damn, there’s really nothing I can do about anything.

So I write, and since this is the twenty-first and not the nineteenth century, I write a blog.

In case you were wondering why.

Excuse Me

Global warming.

The economy.

ADD.

ADHD, for that matter.

What do these things have in common? No, I’m seriously asking you. I don’t what to give you the answer so think hard for a second. Take a sip of coffee if it helps wake up your brain a little bit. I’ll even give you a hint: This post’s title. Eh? Anything yet?

Fine. You’re stupid. I get it.

They’re all blanket excuses. I’ve used some of them and I’m sure you’ve used some of them. They’re convenient explanations for problems when reasoning won’t do.

The Aughts were the heyday of the global warming excuse. Every time a snow flake appeared in April or it rained for an entire month or New England had an easy winter, intelligent conversations regarding meteorological studies all went the same way.

“Can you believe all this rain kid?”

“Nah, dude. Freakin’ global warming, bro.”

In the last couple years, the economy has similarly been the scapegoat of anyone’s financial issues. I don’t have a job because of the economy. I have debt because of the economy. I can’t sell my toe nail collection on eBay because of the economy.

With ADD and ADHD, I saw firsthand as a substitute teacher how many kids will frequently put forth no effort in class because of their “disorders”.

“I need to check your homework. Do you have it?”

“No I didn’t do it. I have ADD.” Great aspirations for this sixth grader.

With global warming, the excuse is relatively harmless. If anything, it’s helpful. If more people think crazy weather patterns are a part of a man-made problem like global warming that we’re in control of, we’ll take the necessary steps to correct the problem because we don’t want things to get worse. (In truth, I believe a lot of this stuff can just be attributed to the fact that weather is unpredictable, especially in the region in which I grew up, New England.)

When it comes to the economy or learning disorders, however, falling back on these excuses can become a serious crutch. Let’s first examine my own situation as it relates to my tendency to attribute the economy to my woes.

“I don’t have a job because of the economy.”

Not true.

While the trickle-down effect of the recession certainly made finding temporary work in the Boston area difficult while I was still living at home, the truth is I earned my college degree in Film & Television. First mistake. I earned that degree at a university in a city that, while it sees Hollywood productions on a frequent basis, is not the place to be for someone who needs to be exposed to the development and writing aspects of the industry for his career aspirations. Second mistake. Finally, upon graduation I didn’t move to the one city where I could sell my skills in exchange for employment. Third mistake. As a result, it wasn’t easy finding work, and understandably so. The 2008 crash has made it easy for me to lament, “The economy is really screwing me,” but the truth is I brought this on myself and would have had difficulty even if Wall Street was steady.

“I have debt because of the economy.”

Kiel, you silly boy.

I have debt because I went to a private school worth more in one year than I’ll make from my first two years of salary rather than attend a perfectly suitable state school. I have debt because I came to Los Angeles for a semester, where a car was needed to get around to my internships, and charged the rental to a credit card for four months. These decisions weren’t financially crippling because the economy tanked. Sure, getting a job right out of college would have helped, but the debt would still be there. It would just be more in control.

I think these blanket excuses can be dangerous. They’re an easy way to avoid responsibility, and no where is it more dangerous than regarding the diagnosis of child learning disorders.. It broke my heart when kids simply wouldn’t try because they knew they had ADD or ADHD and that could get them off the hook. I understand there are some real issues there and I’m not fully educated on the topic, but this disease has become so over-identified that I question its validity. It gives kids who need to be challenged a simple way out.

I couldn’t sit still or keep me mouth until the latter years of high school. Ask anyone who went to school with me growing up. I probably had ADD/ADHD. I was constantly in trouble and challenged by teachers to keep myself in line and focus on my work. Had I been diagnosed with a learning disorder (and by today’s standards I believe I absolutely would have), how would I have responded to that convenient excuse for all my actions? Let’s say I was diagnosed in 7th grade. By the end of that year, my straight As may have become straight Bs. By the end of 8th grade, Cs would have been commonplace.

Maybe I would have worked hard despite the label. I don’t know. There’s no point arguing either way for something speculative. My main issue is allowing people to get out of taking personal responsibility because they’re too lazy to consider the problem for what it might really be. Don’t follow the pattern of blanket excuses that others rely on. You can do more for myself if you understand your contribution to your own problems because that’s what you can fix.

Okay. I’m sorry I became so preachy.

But it’s not my fault. This damn economy makes me cranky.