January 7, 2006 5:26 pm
Looking Back and Ahead
I’m encouraged by the large number of upbeat posts that my fellow bloggers have written over the holidays. My New Year’s post, like my Christmas cards, is late. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me and my focus has pretty much been ‘one day at a time’. As things have been calming down and I find myself reflecting a bit on my participation in the blogosphere ( Ugly word! Maybe for my next rant I’ll take on words from the internet).
It took me way too long to start blogging. I decided to start a blog this spring. At the time, I could only find one other person blogging regularly on autism (Props to Kev for blogging since June 2003!) Maybe there were more, but I don’t recall finding them. By the time I picked a name, evaluated blogging applications, made some graphics, hacked someone else’s layout, got a host, and started posting, a spectrum of other bloggers were already on-line. It took me a while to catch up and get to know other people’s stories. Actually, I’m still catching up. Meanwhile others continue to join the conversation.
I have certainly learned a few things. When I started putting together a blog, the term neurodiversity was new to me and I had never heard anyone describe an intervention as bio-medical. I had no idea that the disagreement between views on interventions could be so strong. I’ve been impressed with the desire to rise above disagreements for the purpose of continuing dialogue.
I thought that I had some worthwhile things to contribute. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many other people sharing valuable thoughts and ideas. I quickly realized that I need to spend more time paying attention to others if I was to make my contribution meaningful.
I thought it would be easier to keep up with the on-line dialogue. Setting up some RSS feeds helped, but it still seems like it should be easier. I just tried the combination of Firefox and Sage this afternoon. It looks promising. Maybe I’ll be able to keep up. If you haven’t ditched IE for Firefox, I suggest doing so. As my youngest told his first grade teacher last year, “The blue ‘e’ lets bad things on your computer”. He may often struggle communicating, but not about the computer.
I relearned an old lesson that good writing takes a lot more work than just having a good idea. My inability to find spelling and grammatical errors while proofreading became obvious after my first post.
I learned that, even though my wife and I talk about autism constantly, writing a blog is another way to share ideas. She gets a little more insight into me with each post she reads. I’m still waiting for her to leave a comment!
The best part has been the sense of support that I both observe and experience. I’ve certainly found this type of support with other parents in person, but I didn’t expect the on-line connections to feel as real. The connections are real enough that when I passed a car with an Autism Awarness magnet in New Jersey on Monday I had to turn to see if Kristina or Eileen were driving. They weren’t but I realized that you’re never to far from autismland.
I’m looking forward to both reading and blogging through the year. I’ve got a few posts that have been rolling around in my head for weeks now. Some are simple, and some are going to take some work to write clearly. Some are very personal, and some may be viewed as controversial. I’m looking forward to putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and clicking on the publish button.
Happy New Year!
And I’m looking forward to reading them! Happy New Year and happy posting!
January 8th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Keep clicking on the publish button! I have my Autism Awareness magnet on the back left end of the “black car.”
I skip the evil E entirely–I’m a Mac acolyte, of the Safari persuasion.
Cheers in the new year!
January 9th, 2006 at 12:42 am
We’re all looking forward to your posts in this new year. By the way, I couldn’t agree more about Firefox, which — by the way Kristina — works on Mac even better than Safari.
January 9th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Kristina and Wade, I unashamedly confess to having serious Mac envy!
January 10th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
I do learn more about your view of ASD and the world from reading your entries. Since I am pretty tech-illiterate, I am just proud of myself that I got this comment posted.
January 11th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
My wife left a comment! My wife left a comment!
January 11th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Well, maybe IE7 will be better ;o)
Sage is good but by far the best way I’ve come across for managing RSS feeds is http://www.rojo.com it contains so many options for managing and reading that even a big fan of Sage like myself made the switch.
Keep up the blogging Shawn – the more the merrier!
January 12th, 2006 at 6:50 am
BTW – if anyone does join Rojo then after you join, click the ‘contacts’ button, search by Rojo ID for ‘kevleitch’ and we can share feeds, stories etc.
January 12th, 2006 at 6:52 am
You are right, there weren’t a lot of autism blogs around (I’ve been here since January 2004) and it was very lonely!
And all of a sudden – poof! Tons of us. I had been able to keep track relatively easily up until last spring – which is probably when the boom started – so that’s why I started the Ring.
BTW – you are welcome to join, too!
January 12th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Thanks for sharing…I agree sharing all this information between us is helping, maybe even a little cathartic!
Thanks again,
Estee http://joyofautism.blogspot.com
January 16th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
[...] A few weeks ago Iwrote about my intent to more closely follow the writings of other bloggers. Fortunately, the combination of Firefox and Sage that I tried is working wonderfully for me to make my blog reading easier. I click a button and can tell when any of 20 blogs have been updated. Two or three clicks let me add another blog to the list. It’s simple and it works. [...]
February 7th, 2006 at 11:34 pm