I wrote 988 words that instantly got thrown away.

My goal was to speak about what the difference between an excuse, a reason, and something that’s part of who you are is. I presented this to my AI Agent and… well, read it for yourself.

AI:
One question to sit with.
What is the moment you knew the difference between your excuse, your reason, and the thing that is just part of how you move through the world… and what did it cost you to stop letting someone else name it?

ME:

There is a technique in postmortem reporting called the 5 Why’s. In this you ask why something happened and continue until you get to where you are. This is like the game 21 questions. The number seems like it means nothing, but, like the maximum amount of times paper can be folded, the 5 Why’s hold true. If you think you have the answer you invert the why’s to become “because” or “as a result.” When you reverse it and your “because” turns into a single sentence you have your answer.

This is what excuses are. They are the “why,” not the “because.” It’s easier to ask a question than it is to make a statement. Additionally, excuses have no consequence, but reasons do.

When it’s something that you live with, then you have a reason, but you are actively working on not allowing it to become an excuse.

AI:
This is the answer.
This is source material. Do not touch it yet.
What is the plan for it? Is this going in as a section of the existing draft, or is this becoming something else?

ME:
I was just answering your questions.

AI:
Good. That answer is better than anything in the draft.
Keep writing.

My AI Agent told me to keep writing, but that’s not a reality anymore. I cannot keep writing if I just walked away from almost one thousand words. I had to… I must start over.

In order to get past the excuse, I’d need to start with the worst case to understand the reason. I had to do the 5 Why’s on my intention, and because my mission is to help neurotypical minds understand other minds, I must share my process with you. Here it is.

---

5 Why’s to get beyond my excuses to understand the reason

Why did I write 988 words?

• Because I felt like my direct words would not make an impact.

Why do you feel like they wouldn’t make an impact?

• I felt like they wouldn’t be understood if I just put them out there without a filter.

Why do you need a filter?

• I need to have someone or something else tell me that they can understand me when I can communicate.

Why do you need an external source to confirm your ability to communicate?

• Because what makes sense in my head has come out of my mouth so wrong it’s harmed my intellectual credibility.

Why does it matter to you at all if you’re seen as intelligent?

• It matters because I’ve been told that my brain is abnormal and I need to understand that it’s not broken.

The reason

I’ve been told that my brain is abnormal, so I question my intelligence, and it leads me to want external validation, which means I filter my expressions to be understood, because I feel like my direct words will not make an impact or sense.

---

So, at the end of it all, writing about excuses wasn’t the topic. The topic is and may always be about the confidence of communicating in a conversational way. When there is a gap in confidence, we don’t say what we need to say as we need to say it. I may think direct words have too much jargon or may be too blunt.

When an uncommon word comes to mind, I may look for a synonym that derails the flow of the conversation. Doing that injects confusion, and we’ve all been that one person in a room who doesn’t understand something. We’ve all looked at other people nodding their heads in agreement, so we pushed our pen into the paper to make a note we’d research privately to avoid public humiliation.

When I’ve done this, I associated it to my learning issues, to having an abnormal brain, but the reality is that I am normal. The reality is that it’s normal to say something to someone in a way that sparks their curiosity. Curious minds question. Questions are what lead to understanding. Confused minds stay silent. Silence creates frustration and frustration prints labels.