Accountability & Responsibility: It's Not Merely Semantics

A judge recently granted me early release from a five-year probation. Now I’m reflecting on my past decisions and I recall a chapter from the book The Millionaire Fastlane by author MJ DeMarco that describes the importance of being both responsible and accountable.

We all know folks who read a book and say stuff like “It could’ve been shorter” or they hear advice and say “That’s just semantics”.

It’s these people who I believe fail to fully appreciate the gravity of the power of words.

You can make the argument that the Inuit people don’t need to have dozens of words for snow.

But until you live in below freezing conditions year-round and walk some hectares in their moccasins, I’d caution you from concluding something in any language came about without reason.

So, accountability and responsibility. Why do they matter?

I believe these words are two sides of the same silver dollar.

And, as such, they carry enormous consequences when acknowledged or unacknowledged in how we conduct ourselves daily.

In my case, I failed to take accountability in managing the tumultuous risks associated with my bipolar I disorder.

I was stubborn. Hard, f-ing headed. I thought I had it figured out.

I didn’t take meds for five years, traveled most of the Eastern and Central United States for work, held down multiple jobs in different industries, lived out of an unfinished 1996 Ford E-150 cargo van, maintained numerous freelance clients as a web dev and marketing consultant, earned an electricity certification, and became an IBEW apprentice and assistant project manager.

I was on a roll. Life was as Gucci as Lady Gaga.

And then it wasn’t.

I chased status and money and became discontent with my own progress. I wanted more.

I did the one thing I knew carried massive risk to my mental health: I reenrolled in university at Florida International University.

You see, over the years of my struggle with bipolar I disorder, I noticed that my brain chemistry would slip into the red zone, so to speak, only during times when I was enrolled in a university-level, four-year curricula.

In my case, I’d been pursuing a Bachelors degree in Marketing since 2011.

I had my first full blown bipolar manic episode in 2013 and had to medically withdraw from university.

Over the years it became more and more apparent that university life was something I had to manage more closely.

Everyone’s unique.

In my case, for some reason, my brain just doesn’t like the stressors of work-towards-diploma nonsense of university. It’s totally fine with vocational programs that have an end date within a year’s time.

It’s almost like my brain craves knowing the mission and the goal can be attained with a linear path and university with it’s ever-changing class lists and credit requirements just make it too much for my brain to process.

But I digress.

Anyway, after discovering all this about myself. I still decide that the BLS-reported salary for marketing managers of ~$130k per year is worth risking my sanity to pursue, despite my doing just fine without a college degree at this point.

My then girlfriend pays to help me unblock my latest transcripts from another university where I’d also had several manic episodes before having to withdraw yet again.

Then it was off to the races.

And by races, I mean four classes a semester, 12 credits, in my major.

Even with my past experience as a resident on campus years prior, this was admittedly academia overload.

But I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to afford tuition if I didn’t pack as many credits into my semesters as possible to take full advantage of my tuition waiver given to me by the State of Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) for my being in foster care.

Because these waivers expire when a former foster youth turns age 28, and me being 27 at the time, I was worried.

But I was also emboldened by my past five-year track record of success.

I figured I had “found the cure”. No meds needed!

Boy was I dead f-ing wrong.

By Spring 2020 I had flunked out of every single class, lost my girlfriend of two and a half years, gotten my van–my literal home–and all my possessions within locked in a tow yard, and thrown in county jail facing two criminal charges with no clear evidence that I’ll be getting out on bail any time soon.

I spent 11.5 months in Broward County Main jail on a $600 bond.

In my entire 27 years of living up to that point, I’d never once wanted to die.

I wanted to die, at this point I even begged God for it.

Until He gave me death, I was resolved to spend as much time as humanly possible with my eyes shut.

All I did was sleep and eat.

When I got out of jail my brother said I have to be the only man in the history of jail to gain weight inside.

I went from a lean 180 lbs at 6’ tall, to 235+ lbs of straight adipose.

Sluggish does not begin to describe the feeling of immobility I experienced.

Now, fast forward past the homelessness, the struggles to rebuild my finances, the sheer dejection and anxiety spurred on by the uncertainty of being sent to prison or getting probation, and the hard work of rebuilding my spirit and my faith in humanity, I write this today as a man fully on the other side of God’s grace.

I’m so damn glad I didn’t die as I begged and pleaded and prayed for all those years ago.

And this entire experience has boiled down to this very moment where I can write this wildly long story that most people with not read from the comfort of my own studio apartment in the uncharacteristically frigid 35° F weather of South Florida.

I’m my own man.

I will only maintain and build from this place in my life now by keeping ever in the forefront of my frontal lobe that I MUST always be mindful of what it means to be both responsible and accountable.

Just as you cannot split a silver dollar into head and tails, you cannot decouple responsibility and accountability.

Don’t fuck up your entire world like I did.

And take your meds. You know who you are.