Dyslexic Voices: Living a Life of Inquiry ft. Justin McSweeny

Center yourself, ground yourself in the understanding that you are a perfectly capable, perfectly functional, and perfectly agential or independent person that has everything they need within them and integrally installed already there that can get you to wherever you want to be in your life. It's just going to take a different approach.

Yeah, I'm just curious, like, to take your journey a little further, and maybe you can just pick, because I mean, I know, of course, there's so many different things I'm sure that you could share, some particular aspects or moments or highlights, whatever it is you'd like to share then from that post-schooling onwards as an adult. It's like, what else would you like to share about how that's gone or how you've compensated anything around that?

Okay, okay. And you all did ask earlier, what were my compensating or compensatory practices? And so I will now zoom the lens out to a broader spectrum of my life period and say that my greatest compensational move that I, or compensatory or whatever move that I made was to teach myself myself a couple of saliable skills, a couple of vocations or trades. And so when I was in high school, I had a friend that got me a job at a restaurant. And so it was short order, it was pretty mindless. And but it got at me, it gave me a taste of what the culinary services, the food, food service industry was like. And so that, that, that resonated with me. And I thought, well, you know, it's a respectable job. And I even checked in with my father. And I said, what do you think about me being a cook or a chef? And he says, well,

you know, and I'm 17 or 16. And he's, yeah, yeah, that's fine. You know, and again, he's probably like, oh, you know, wiping the sweat off his brow going, yeah, all the crap we've been through. Yeah, that would be fine. If you could go and become a cook or a chef, that would be great. So then that gave me that self-esteem boost. And I thought, well, okay, so this is a somewhat honorable profession. Because again, I'd always hear these lectures, like you're going to be homeless, you're gonna be a bum living on the, you know, on the grates in the streets out there, you're gonna be a trash man.

So, cooking. And that, I applied myself to it. And I learned. And when I got out of high school, I went into a ski resort outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. And it was, there were several kitchens on the property. And the one that I started working at was a classical French restaurant. So I did that in Virginia for a number of years. And then I moved to Florida, which is where I am presently. I worked as a cook here for a while. And then I got with the, with Disney, I hope I can say that, not plugging them in any way, but I got a job with Disney in the early to mid 90s. And they taught me a lot. So I had that.

And while I was working as a cook in Florida, I kind of turned into a workaholic and I would work seven days a week. I also started a landscape business on the side from working, I would work five, six days a week as a cook in the evenings. I had time in the morning. So I bought a trailer and some lawn equipment. And I, because I fell in love with plants, because there's, you know, it's 365 down here, there's no winter season for things to shut down. So I started to really get into the local horticulture and the local plants and so forth.

So that was another outlet and avenue for me. And I really threw myself into it. And that was some of that obsessive, dogged determination that was probably a trauma response to my, to what I went through in my childhood. So I just would convergently focus on things and really just almost overdo it again, being a workaholic. So, so the, so where I'm heading with this, my thesis here is that if, you know, if you're, if you can, you can do doctor, lawyer, engineer, that's don't, you know, think you can't.

But what I did was I, I went to vocations. I went to, honorable traits, like being a cook. And then I, I eventually became a chef. When I worked for Disney, I moved up to chef and then I actually opened my own restaurant. And from that point on, I sort of jokingly referred to myself as being chronically self-employed. So I would be curious to know demo in, in, in the demographics of dyslexics, how many people who went on to become, either self-employed or entrepreneurs where they developed, a thriving, yeah, right. Right. So I'm dropping that in as, yeah, as a, as a hint and a lure that there is nothing wrong with being your own person. And, and, and it can involve.

Honorable trades like HVAC or plumbing or electrician. So, yeah. So that kind of brings this up to the present. Now to speak to, a couple of things that happened right after high school, I felt a terrible amount of guilt for not going to college. I want to share that too, that there was a dark period from about 18 to 22, where I just constantly, and I did take community college courses. I took a few, business courses and business math courses. I did want to end up being self-employed at some time. I guess I knew at that point in my life that I might be interested in entrepreneurship or self-employment.

So I took business theory and business mathematics and I did fairly good because what was interesting is now I'm paying for it out of my own pocket. So, but yeah, I, I didn't ever get a degree. I never got an associates or a bachelor's or anything like that. but then as I matured and I aged, I realized that I can teach myself, but not in the, kind of annoying way that you think you're a know-it-all.

And, and, and there was some compensation in there in that learning period where I, I would like horticulture and botany. I love it. But in the beginning I would try to onboard so much information and then just parrot it back out. And I thought, no, no, you're it. And I joked about Cliff Clavin earlier, who was a character on cheers. And he would always sit at the bar and he'd spout off trivial random information. And half of it was nonsense, but he thought he was a, you know, a scholar, you know? So I, I had those moments, but then I caught myself and I was like, dude, no, seriously, just, just focus on the true spirit of learning and the true spirit of, of, of having a depth of knowledge and an apprehension of what you're talking about. so I went through that maturation process and I'm still struggling with it. I, I, I, anything I take to, I try to check in with myself and say, okay, are you really learning this? Are you, is there a depth there? Or are you just, are you just regurgitating information or parroting things that you've heard?

So, I will cautiously say that I'm self-taught in a lot of ways, but nonetheless, I try to pack a humility into that and say, so my latest tangent, the latest thing that I've been on in the last five years is philosophy. And it's taught me a lot about how to, to ground yourself. And, and one thing I love is skepticism in philosophy and not the cynical kind of skepticism, like, Oh, everything's false and bogus. It's no, it's like a unending, ceaseless inquiry. And that just absolutely, opens me up because inquiry is essential and not knowing is essential. So the, it's that idea in skepticism that I can never have, I can never truly know anything, but I can hold ideas and beliefs so that I can have conversations and I can do useful things. So that's been a real big epiphany in the last few years. And I'm probably going beyond dyslexia at this point, but it speaks to this idea that the journey of learning and discovery is, is never ending, never ending. And, and I kind of paradoxically,

say I can never know anything because obviously I do onboard information and it is knowledge, but that I don't use that knowledge or misuse it in a way that I, they call it propositional tyranny. Like I'm right, you're wrong. There's a hard binary here and there's no space in between us. And, you know, I, I, I know you don't, you know, that kind of thing. I stay away from that. and part of it is, is from childhood and, and the difficulty of actually learning things and, and apprehending things is, it's taught me that humility to say, I don't know, I don't know, but, and, but, I do want to learn. And then whatever I learn, I'll use it as just a means or vehicle for asking more questions. So, I mean, there are so many aspects of, of what you've described about your sort of journey as, as an adult, that really resonate with, you know, what, what we've observed about, dyslexia in general and in children as well. I mean, it just really,

sort of reinforces, you know, a lot of the stuff that we talk about. Well, and not to mention that foundational piece, that lifelong learning piece, I think is what, you know, really is the crux of it. Right. What we really want for our kids is that they don't get so beaten down. If they have a difficult, challenging experience that they don't then associate that with the actual learning, like that it's to, you know, that it's, it really is distinct in a lot of ways, like sort of the paths that sometimes you have to take to get certain places and learning.

Yeah. And to really emphasize that, you know, for, for the, all the dyslexic kids out there now who are struggling with school, I mean, school is not the be all and end to end all of learning. And I think that's, that's really like a key point to get across here. And sometimes it's a really important means to an end, you know, if you have a specific goal. So, you know, it's a, obviously a tricky balance there, but it's not the same. It's not the, certainly not the same as learning.

Okay, everyone. So, Sonja actually had to step out, but we're going to continue this really interesting, or I'm going to continue this really interesting conversation with Justin. Yeah. Anything more that you want to add about your sort of life as a dyslexic adult and how, how you feel that dyslexia has impacted you or, or has not impacted you in sort of surprising ways? One thing I want to add is that in my, I guess mid, midlife since my probably late forties. Now I had a brain injury at 41. So I'll have to put that in there as a point of fact or whatever, a little marker in my history. But one thing I noticed that came out of that was I did get that classic transposition of words in, in my writing. When I'm typing away, I misspell words now where I never had done that before.

And I wasn't a huge typist in the, say the first decade of the two thousands or in the nineties. I didn't type as much, nearly as much as I do now. I do quite a bit of writing. and so I transpose letters. So instead of writing the word palm, I'll write plam, or instead of four, I'll write offer, OFR. And it's serial. Like I can't escape it. And I, and I kind of laugh now. I used to get mad at myself. And, but I'm like, Oh, you spell opera again or plam. You know, I use those as examples, but.

So it's still with me. It's still very much there. And it may have been exacerbated by whatever the heck it was. I dealt with 12 years ago or 11 years ago and took me several years to deal with and get through. But that's something. So I would say from my experience, it's a lifelong journey. I don't think. Now I ignored dyslexia probably in my thirties and forties until I had my, my brain injury. Okay. So this is probably another way to, to approach this. I didn't read a lot and I didn't go into the type of, modalities or whatever practices that, that would, that would, make it apparent to me that I'm dyslexic.

So very little in the way of reading or, or, or engaging with things that would, would, stimulate that process or whatever, whatever's going on. So, but again, on the, on the, posterior side of the injury and my wanting to read a lot more, I, I started, I went from not reading any books to pouring through about maybe seven or eight books a year that were pretty technical and pretty difficult. I don't like fiction. I can only read nonfiction for some reason. And so I read really philosophical books or books on, psychology or whatever. And it was mind numbing. It was very difficult, but I forced myself to try to read these things and, and understand what they were talking about. And in that I came back full circle to where I couldn't focus. I had to read sentences, especially if I was in an area with distraction.

So if I'm on a plane or, or somewhere out in public, it was terrible. I, I, I really have to confine myself to a, a quiet space. Then I can sit and read and basically onboard the information that's in the book. And again, with typing, I've noticed that that's become, sporadic, but, but nonetheless, noticeable, occurrence. So, so yeah, that's interesting that that happened, but yeah, yeah. And, but nonetheless, I am very forgiving of myself and I'm very pragmatic and I don't, I, so I don't judge, you know, I love myself and I care enough about who I am. Sometimes I get impatient. Like if I'm banging away on writing a few paragraphs and I keep making these, I thank goodness for the, for the spell check thing. Cause I'll just let them go. I'll just go back and hit the spell check. And that's kind of lazy. But, and sometimes I get mad at myself and I'll erase, you know, a whole sentence and I'll be like, spell that one word, right.

And this is your pun. Sometimes I'm, I, I, go back and forth on that. But anyway, not to, not to discourage anybody, you know, you, you be patient with yourself and do what you can. But I would say adult life with dyslexia is very much, much more manageable than when you're going through that 12 years of primary education and then into your collegiate career. you have your, you're, it's more on your terms and you can set the, the time and the space for when you're onboarding information.

I've also found that in the age of videos and YouTube and other streaming type services that audio is much easier for me. I, I sit and watch, I don't watch television anymore. I've gotten rid of the TV and I'll just sit and watch lectures on YouTube. And it's the stuff that I'm into or talks or dialogues between people. And I find that I will be able to absorb the information better that way than if I'm reading.

And I still enjoy reading, although I've, I've kind of paused on the reading recently, but, but yeah. So, so, so audio input might be, if you're struggling with written words, audio might be good. Yeah, that's good advice. and I think, I, I think the, you sort of younger generations who are, who are in school now, they just really take it for granted. All this, all this audio and video, material, this, this, just vast, I mean, for all intents and purposes, infinite, supply of audio and video, media, that I think is really beneficial for, for people with dyslexia because there are so many other ways to get information other than reading.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And, and one thing I'll put out there, and this is me speaking. So it's not that I would want to project this onto anybody, but for me, it's like they say, use it or lose it. And so constantly, if, if your childhood was experience is, or was discouraging that I, I would urge you to, muscle your way through the continuous onboarding of information. Even if it's, it doesn't seem like it's super intellectually astute or anything like that, just work, to the best of your ability to keep the cycle going of taking on new information and make it creative information. Don't make it, and this again, I don't want to make, I don't want to make this prescriptive or, or that I'm projecting myself onto anybody, but make it stimulating in a fun way. Make it creative. If you want, if you learn a language, learn music,

learn for me again philosophy and i love botany and horticulture so those are the things i nerd on and i find that if if i can continually apply myself that my ability to recall information stays fluid and that my ability to think is fluid and i'm not giving i'm not this is not set out of arrogance or hubris or anything you want that brain muscle of yours metaphorically speaking to stay healthy and stay exercised and i think that'll make a big difference too and that can be hard again if you come if your story resonates or it has similar tones as mine did that it can be off-putting to you know learning can become it can be a negative reinforcement you know you're just like why i'm sick of it i'm tired of it so it's it's it's not easy but it's not impossible and it's i don't even think it's difficult it's just different and and so the ease

can you can facilitate ease by understanding that it's different and that you have to be novel in your curiosity about well how do i as an individual learn you know everybody else in the room might learn their way how do i learn how do i take on information and that that okay so circling back to to childhood you've given i think a lot of of really good advice and and pearls of wisdom for both parents of dyslexic kids and for dyslexic kids themselves what is there anything specifically that you can think of that you really would have wanted to know as a dyslexic kid so in other words if i could go back and coach myself as an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old the best thing i could do for me i think is to just reassure my my younger self that as as ugly as things can get and as

frustrating as things can get and as much as you feel misunderstood and you are genuinely misunderstood that you you will be you everything will come out fine and i'm speaking to myself so i would then broaden that perhaps for others if i'm speaking to somebody who's young right now to say much as i said earlier that no matter what happens center yourself ground yourself in the understanding that you are a perfectly capable perfectly functional and perfectly agential or independent person that has everything they need within them and in integrally installed already there that can get you to wherever you want to be in your life it's just going to take a different approach and so i may not have been that technical to my child self but i'm saying this now to others and probably to myself that you know you're just going to have to come up with novel means of navigation for the next 10 years

of your life and also don't listen to the hype coming from your parents about how important it is because both my folks went to college both of my folks had high ideals for me they wanted you know they were very set they set the bar up to be you know you need to go to to college and get that you know masters and whatever and and achieve and accomplish and i appreciate that and i want that for everyone but given my route my path that i was on it just wasn't in the cards i certainly was not due to lack of intelligence but i just know given the trajectory that i was on all the way into high school years that college would have been just as much of a nightmare for me because i just don't think that way or i just don't process in a way that they would expect of me because it gets it never gets easier it's just the

more you the higher you rank the higher the harder it gets and i knew that and that was part of the sort of again that period of remorse so again going back to the child self i would say listen take that pressure off yourself there are multiple diverse ways to become a young adult with regard to whatever it is you choose to be your vocation your career your educational path there are there are ways to to to navigate that and just know that so that's probably the piece i would try to instill upon myself is to say what you what you're going through and what is being said to you now is being said with good intentions it there's there's no malice it's just that that's what they want for you and they and ultimately they want good for you they want you to be a successful person and so we have to define

success sometimes and say well you know is it is it that mba is it the six-figure job and all the material gain that comes from it okay you know but but part of that having to be scrappy and be inventive is i have i'm not a very materialistic person and i don't aspire to high ideals with with material gain and so forth i don't need a fancy car i i have a driveway full of pickup trucks because of the landscaping i used to do i like trucks they're fine and they get me around so so you know and it's not settling it's just it's a it's perspectival it's like well this is what i like and this is what i do so so be yourself be be scrappy be be inventive be creative because inside of you is a is a genius is somebody who is capable of expressing in their own way and and to get on a

soapbox for a minute i think gen a and gen z if i if i could bullhorn to them i'd say listen buck the system break it open re and you know reconfigure re reformation you know all these radical words and and and and we don't have to destroy anything it's just let's reconfigure how we do it and and let's get creative and figure out what really is important to your generation and what means now you have to feed yourself you have to provide for yourself you want to you want to make a good life for yourself but but think outside of the box to use that really kind of tired cliche just think differently and that i would say to the dyslexic as well is is that just be novel be creative be stubborn and inventive and all these things and you'll probably surprise yourself with what you come

up with so i would say it to an entire generation and i would say it to a dyslexic person is that maybe we can relends how what success means and what achievement is and and so again it's not to say that going to college isn't part of that but also you know what what defines your success is up to you and you know always aspire for the best for yourself but don't feel under any egregious or or overbearing pressure to fit somebody else's idea of what success is you you do your best in relation with those who trust who you trust and you love come out the best you can with that so one one final question before we wrap up here so if you could tell the general public one thing about dyslexia that that you think everyone should know what would it be i would say to the to the public at large that america seems to be

trending in a direction of sensitivity and responsibility for those who i would call neuro are neurodiverse and we're seeing a lot of neurodiversity and some people call it neurodivergence and that's fine i choose neuro diversity versus divergence and i would say that continue with the sensitivity and don't don't go overboard don't don't don't go into the performative stage but also we're moving away from that period of time or or the the the continuity of time where people who with with learning disabilities were ridiculed they were terrible things were said and and it's not just dyslexia but anybody who's challenged i would say let's continue as a community and as a culture to support and and autism awareness is an excellent example of this where we are nobody is making fun of like god forbid nobody's making fun of autistic people or people on the spectrum people

with osperters and that is a model for what we should do for all and that no one should have to bear the stigma of a learning disability you know being taunted for it or being ridiculed for it so if we could continue on that curve and continue to improve our way of being supportive regardless unconditionally supportive that is my aspiration for the society at large is to is to understand that where there's a will there's a way and when there's a will to make sure that everybody has the best opportunity they can given whatever challenges they're dealing with and they can be the best expression of themselves that they can be then we're doing the right thing we're on the right track and that to to shame or make fun of anyone for any kind of either physical or or psychoemotional or learning challenge or mental challenge any however however you want to phrase it if we can just keep

going in that in that direction i think that's a huge huge step is to be a community of support and encouragement and also diversity it's it's it's a two-way street so i was you know it's challenging gen a and gen z to say you know think think differently think creatively and so we adults are the ones who are sort of passing the baton to them and if we can help encourage that novel exploration of what does it what does a reformed or or more diverse expression of culture look like that we can be there for them and not resist now obviously we have to help young people stay within bounds so that they you know that there's obvious caveats to all of this but that if we can be encouraging as the elders to to bring our gen the next generation up with all the support and care that

they can get to get them through any any hurdles or challenges again and i'll do my best to to you know make sure i'm part of that because i did i have a history and so i'm empathetic to to anyone struggling and going through the challenge and and i don't make a big deal about it in my regular again i'm so glad to be on this show again to just finally speak about it because i really don't ever i joke about it sometimes like if i do something silly or you know weird i'm like oh it's just my dyslexia it's just you know i i joke about it but but this is a great opportunity you know nicholas to to to talk with you and and again i'm deeply grateful for that so yeah that would be it just let's let's all be there for those who could benefit from our our compassion yeah that's that's great justin

thank you so much for for coming on today and sharing your story so where for our our listeners and viewers where can they find you on the internet okay and i appreciate you asking me that i launched a website years ago back in 2018 it's it's about five years old and i've really not done a lot with it but i'm starting to finally promote it and talk about it and it's it's kind of a mindfulness practice but what i do with people in there is it's adjacent to what we've been talking about it it deals with who we are our identity our our beliefs and our perceptions of the world things like that and just asking us to put things on the table and then and this goes to the skepticism that i was speaking of earlier is to launch an inquiry into your relation with the world your relationship

with other people and your relationship with your identity and the layers of the identity that you have and and so my my intention with this and my aspiration for this is to help people who are struggling with perhaps some clinical anxiety or or being depressive sometimes because life is just overwhelming and it's challenging and people are looking for a way to sort of manage themselves and and what i do none of it is prescriptive none of none of it is dictatorial it is more that inquiry process that i talked about so i just want to pass that along to people and it's in this website and it's free and i i'm available by email if somebody's using the website and they have questions i'm always there to to answer the questions what happens so so that's what i do and it's free again and it's called illuminelife.org

and you're welcome to visit that you're welcome to go to my idea cast interview series on youtube and check that out i interview a lot of amazing folks on there and they inspire me and they're people from academia they're just everyday folks but everything is grounded in sense making meaning making and purpose discovery again just to help with human flourishing and and allowing people to to relieve themselves of some of the burdens that we have in our modern in our modern world thank you again justin for coming on Dyslexia Journey and and sharing your your story and your journey nicholas again much gratitude to you and Sonja for doing this this project and myself and all the other guests that you have i just hope that that lives are touched and and hope is there and and people people can feel good by some of the stories they hear on your

show so thank you for letting me be a little part of that i appreciate it thank you absolutely