Life is rarely perfect, but it can be blandly normal. I admit that 2024 wasn’t easy. It ended badly. At least it wasn’t quite like how eventful 2023 was, with an ICU visit I’d rather not repeat. For now, I am attempting to accept the bland normalcy of life in…
Tag: normalcy
What does it mean to be autistic? Like many diagnosed later in life, I turned to books for some answers. The autistic label was applied to me during my first year in a doctoral program. That was also the academic year I started this blog. Among the books I read…
Our lives continue to be normal middle-class suburban lives. We sometimes feel that there’s too much happening, but then I listen to other couples and friends and realize how rather routine and uncomplicated our daily routines are. Many of my friends and neighbors are returning to school in their 30s…
Whether I consider my oddities “autistic” or “birth trauma” (I vote for “complex entry into life”), I am certainly not normal. My wife will attest to this. Parents of special education students ask if I would want to be “cured” of my oddities. This question is one with which I…
Some weekends are long, even when they technically aren’t that bad. They just seem to pass slowly, while I get nothing accomplished. We have a bathroom to finish. It’s tiled, almost. It is usable. But unfinished. I don’t know why I am so exhausted by the weekends, but I am.…
Many of the postings to blogs, bulletin boards, forums, and other forms of online expression I have read seem to reflect serious depression. Leaving aside the question of does online use cause depression or reflect it, I sense the postings do reveal a problem experienced by many HFA/AS (High-Functioning /…
As I compile my notes for essays and a book, I realize how much easier it is to be considered “different” your entire life versus a late-in-life diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) or High-Functioning Autism (HFA). The more I read about and communicate with AS students and adults, the more…