530 pounds. Drinking and smoking for nearly 20 years. I showed up to work. I did my job. I held all my responsibilities. I’m just a massive human being, and for the longest time, things didn’t seem to affect me the same way they affected other people.
Looking back, if I’d just drunk water the way I drink it now (4 to 6 gallons a day), things probably would have turned out different. But that’s a story for another day.
This story is about what happened at the prime of my life. At the peak, or getting toward the top of the mountain career-wise. When I found out quickly: there’s no magic pill.
The reality set in. No doctor could save me. No pill could save me.
Two months after the stroke, I thought I was having another one. Got diagnosed with MS. Still in the wheelchair. Spent 18 months in that wheelchair. It was a grind.
I went back to work by April 2020, just after the pandemic kicked off. It was a wild ride.
The Thing Nobody Talks About
Stroke can affect anybody at any age for any number of reasons. You have no idea what I’ve learned since having one.
But here’s the truth: the large majority of stroke victims are over 65. There’s not a lot of tools, systems, resources for younger people who are potentially going to have to live with life-altering, life-changing deficits that they may or may not figure out.
And there’s no magic pill.
That’s why I’m probably such a big proponent of AI. It opens up doors for people that might not have been able to otherwise get through the doors. I think people often overlook that.
Sure, humans by nature are typically lazy. Some people want to use AI to work less. Some people want to use AI to work more. I don’t think AI changes a lot about humans except we have to do things differently.
But when you boil it down: some people will continue to thrive and excel, and some people will continue to make excuses.
What I Actually Hate
I really, genuinely hate excuses.
I hate working with people who can’t just simply do their fucking job.
Life is hard. Work is hard. Things are confusing. Ask questions. Be communicative. There’s no excuse not to do your job.
If you’re overloaded, just say you’re overloaded. Ask for help.
I’ve never understood this my entire career: people bitch, whine, complain. They think they’re awesome but won’t actually put in the work, effort, or any of that to be awesome.
I’m not saying I’m awesome, but I show up. I do what I say I’m going to do. And that’s why clients love me.
I talk fast. I talk strong. I am the king of using bad words. I don’t even recognize it. My parents worked in New York. I grew up in New York. If you’re from New York, you know we just use words — words that other people don’t like — but actually in the friendliest ways.
Words have meaning. Words are important. But sometimes they’re not always that important. Sometimes when you stub your toe on the corner of a bed walking in the dark, the most appropriate word is not “oh gosh, darn it.”
The Real Problem
Everybody has a bad day. I think we all, even the best of us, sometimes make excuses for any number of reasons.
It’s not necessarily when you make an excuse. It’s the people that do it habitually — without a thought or care in the world about other people or how things affect them. They pretend to be blissfully unaware, but meanwhile they’re fucking snakes and they know exactly what they’re doing.
They’re lazy and they try to pass the buck.
I fucking hate it. And you should too.
I demand excellence out of myself, my kids, my wife, my family. It just never occurs to me why people are the way they are. But I guess that’s just called being human.
But I think I could safely say: truly successful people — in any aspect of life, and I don’t just mean financially — rarely make excuses. If ever.
I mean, you could take that all the way to the bank.
Why This Matters
When you’ve spent 18 months in a wheelchair learning how to walk again, you develop a pretty low tolerance for people who won’t even try.
When you’ve had to rebuild your entire life from scratch — relearn how to use your right side, navigate MS on top of stroke recovery, figure out how to work again when most people in your situation never do — you stop accepting “I’m too busy” or “it’s too hard” as reasonable responses.
I’m not asking anyone to go through what I went through. I’m asking you to do your job. To show up. To stop making excuses and start making progress.
Because here’s what I know: if I can go from 530 pounds in a wheelchair to running a business, raising three kids, working full-time at another agency, and going through a plumbing apprenticeship, you can handle whatever’s on your plate.
Not perfectly. Not without struggle. But you can handle it.
And if you can’t, ask for help. That’s not an excuse. That’s communication.
The AI Angle
AI doesn’t fix lazy. It doesn’t fix excuse-makers. It doesn’t make people who don’t want to work suddenly productive.
But for people who show up and do the work? AI opens doors.
For someone like me, who has deficits from a stroke and MS that make certain tasks harder than they used to be? AI levels the playing field. It lets me work faster, think clearer, execute at a level that would have been impossible a few years ago.
That’s not replacing human work. That’s augmenting human capability.
But you have to show up first. You have to want it. You have to stop making excuses and start building.
The Bottom Line
I hate excuses because I’ve lived through circumstances where excuses would have been completely justified, and I made the choice not to make them.
Nobody would have blamed me for not going back to work. Nobody would have questioned it if I’d called it quits. But I didn’t. Because that’s not who I am.
And when I see people with every advantage in the world — no wheelchair, no MS, no stroke — making excuses for why they can’t do basic shit? It pisses me off.
You want to know the secret to success? Show up. Do your job. Stop making excuses.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
More at survivorscience.com — where I write about stroke recovery, resilience, and what it actually takes to rebuild your life when everything falls apart.
