Hm, I’ve posted on the 1st, 2nd and 4th of this month so far. I really ought to post something today, even if it’s just this short ramble, just so that I keep up the exponential trend. Unfortunately, that’d only give me one more day this month to post, so I’ll probably end up posting on some date that’s not a power of 2 anyway.
…Yeah, I’m way too easily amused.
(Hey, this is sort of related to autism, in that we autistics often have an eye for patterns… 😛)
For those who hadn’t heard, today was designated the first ever Autism Awareness Day by the United Nations. And I really expected the worst from the media, being the cynical aspie that I am.
And to be fair, there were some bits of coverage that had me screaming at the TV. Like a certain evening talk show which covered the issue of vaccines and autism in what sounded to me more like a shouting match than a rational debate. And for that matter, I’m glad I don’t get the Sundance channel either, because they showed the extended version of a certain autism ‘awareness’ film that I’ve already criticized here in the past.
But yet, despite this, today was surprisingly not a total loss when it came to coverage of autism in the media.
You’ll probably notice a new button over on the sidebar. I figured, since I am planning on using this month to post about various autism-related topics, the least I can do is join the blog swarm that’s been created just for that purpose.
More to come later today, once I’ve gotten a bit more of a chance to digest all of today’s media coverage…
So I haven’t posted here in quite a while, a sad fact which, to be honest, I fully realize. I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t really had the time to think up any interesting material for posts, or even when I did have ideas, was just too tired to put them into words.
But that’s going to be changing this month.
Why? It’s not because I’m less stressed; far from it, in fact. It’s that time of the semester where everything starts building up all at once.
Rather, it’s because the month of April has been designated as Autism Awareness Month. And the whole reason I started this blog in the first place was to make people more aware of not just my experiences, but even my mere existence, as an autistic adult.
And that’s important. We autistic adults do exist— and for all this talk of awareness, there seems to be comparatively little awareness of this fact, and even less of an attempt at bringing awareness to it. When it is brought up by certain prominent autism organizations which make frequent appearances in media coverage of autism, autistic adults usually get a very minor mention, if any at all, in comparison to the very frequent focus on children with autism. Not that children aren’t worth our attention, but children do grow up, after all, and they don’t magically become un-autistic.
So yeah. It may be April Fool’s Day today, but I’m starting this month off here quite seriously— and I’m going to be putting my autistic perseveration skills to good use the rest of this month as well. 😉
I’ll admit it: in a typical social encounter, I probably don’t seem that unusual. Perhaps a bit quirky, but lots of people are a bit quirky. But what this slightly quirky appearance belies is just how much effort is involved in keeping it up.
I liken it to the so-called ‘spoon theory’ described by Christine Miserandino in this post at But You Don’t Look Sick. Although the situation described by the author is not identical to that which I experience— Miserandino has lupus, not an autism spectrum disorder— the general idea of having a limited amount of energy to use in one’s everyday life nonetheless mirrors my situation quite nicely.
Simply put, a good number of tasks which are effortless for most people take a good deal of exertion for me to accomplish.
What sorts of simple tasks, you ask?
So, I felt like starting something new around this place… but before I get into anything, let me introduce myself:
I’m Cody, and I’m autistic. Or more specifically, I have Asperger’s Syndrome, which is considered to be one variation of autism.
…
Go ahead and admit it. Some of you are probably saying something along the lines of, “Autistic? But you can talk, and you’re attending graduate school! How can you be autistic?”
And that is the reason I’m starting this blog.
Simply put, there’s a lot of misinformation, or at the very least, a lot of spin out there on the topic of autism and related diagnoses. There are those who want to paint a picture of life with autism as a never-ending scenario of doom and gloom, or even in some cases, to use rhetoric to the effect of a happy child having been ‘stolen’ and replaced with some sort of soulless husk.
Now I’m not going to say that autistic life is all hearts and rainbows. I’ve dealt with quite a good number of situations where I struggled, where I felt completely overwhelmed, where I nearly went into a breakdown—or, worse yet, did do so. And I’ll freely admit that I probably wasn’t the easiest child to raise.
But one thing I’ve always been able to count on was support. And that’s what I’d like to see more of in the autism community.
I’ll expound on all of this in some later posts, as well as offering some insights into how precisely I perceive things, why I sometimes behave the way I do, and so forth. And I should emphasize that in doing so, I’m not trying to speak for all autistics— such a claim would be as ridiculous as for one person to claim to have an insight on every single non-autistic person’s perspective. I’m just sharing my own experiences, with the hope that it may cause some people to reconsider their initial conceptions about autism, to realize that not everyone perceives or thinks about things in the same way.
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