Geek Pride Day was May 25. I wrote this post yesterday, and then forgot to hit “publish”. Whaddya want? I have ADD!
As I wrote at Well-Ordered Chaos yesterday, my blogging plans have been laid waste by the goddam flowering olive trees outside my house. They’re trying to kill me, I swear. So please forgive me if this post is a little incoherent.
I wanted to celebrate Geek Pride Day (May 25, which is the anniversary of Star Wars, “Towel Day” in honor of Douglas Adams, and the Glorious 25th in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld) by sending you all over to Wil Wheaton’s blog to check out his post “… A Sort of Homecoming“, in which he talks about his psychological journey from child star to grown-up actor and writer. I think it’s a story that many adults with LD, especially 2E’s, can relate to.
For those of you who aren’t giant nerds, Wil Wheaton played the teenaged Wesley Crusher on StarTrek: The Next Generation when he himself was still a young teenager. Also for those of you who aren’t giant nerds, I will tell you that Wesley was not a well-written character, and many people found him to be annoying. Since this is a science fiction community, there was a small group of fans who avidly and vocally hated the character, and were unable to separate Wil Wheaton as an actor and a person from Wesley Crusher the character he played.
These factors made his transition from child star to grown-up working actor more difficult than it had to be. He recalls his nervousness about reuniting with some of his TNG co-stars in 2001, the feeling that he hadn’t “done enough” with his life, that he still wasn’t an “adult” in relation to them. He relates a conversation amongst the voices in his head — in particular “The Voice of Self Doubt” and “Prove It to Everyone” — as he prepares to go to a convention, and then his feelings of deep inadequacy when he gets there and meets up with his former co-star, Jonathon Frakes.
It’s a familiar tale to adults with learning disabilities. How many of us hate to get our alumni newsletter, because we’re sick of seeing who is enjoying their great medical fellowship, who is working that prestigious law firm, and who landed a tenure-track position? How many of us dread running into people from our past, because we don’t want to talk about what we have failed to do with our lives?
When you seek an LD diagnosis as an adult, it’s because something has gone awry, somewhere. You keep getting fired because you can’t perform tasks others can do easily. Or you can’t land a job in the first place for the same reason. The dreams and ambitions you had as a kid are gone, because you fail at the most basic entry-level work. Then you get your diagnosis, and … nothing really changes. You have an answer, an explanation, but the underlying problems remain. You have to find the solution yourself.
Like Wheaton, our lives do get better. He is now at a point where he is confident and happy in his personal and professional life. His early fame made his life unusual. Our disability status makes our lives unusual. But our experiences intersect, I think, at the point where we find whatever toe-hold we can, and assert our right to happiness. We learn to set aside our voices of self doubt and defensiveness, and assert our right to live our own lives, regardless of what they look like by conventional standards.
Personally, I know I’ve come a long way since I was first diagnosed with ADD and my learning disabilities. Through agony and trial and error, I’ve learned how to manage my health, my depression, and my ADD; I am now struggling to enter the workforce in a way that uses my strengths, allows me to avoid those areas where my disabilities will come into play, and leaves me time to pursue my artistic passion. I hope that someday, like Wil Wheaton, I will enjoy professional success as well.
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2010/05/excerpted-from-just-a-geek-a-sort-of-homecoming.html
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