Reflections on a Year of Blogging

This past weekend Singularity and I once again participated in the parade for our small town's street fair. Walking down the street with Singularity, I experienced a bit of of déjà vu. It was approximately one year ago that we last paraded with the Cub Scouts and wrote about the importance of Participation in the social life of our community. 

I have now been blogging for over a year. I published my first post, introducing my singular boy to the world, on September 9, 2013. At the time, I had been struck by the interesting installations Singularity left around the house. For some reason, he has not made as many of late, although here are a couple of recent ones I've noticed:

This photo shows the frame to the door to the closet in Klailklop's office, to which a blob of yellow Silly Putty has been affixed. Pressed into the Silly Putty is a plastic representation of a stone pickaxe, such as one would use for mining in Minecraft. A glass doorknob is shown for scale. 

This photo shows a laminated bookmark with the title "Celtic Art" at the top and an illuminated letter "A" (as in Amelia). The bookmark has been placed in the slot between the tines of a heavy chrome practice mute, such as would be used by a violinist or violist who needed to practice without disturbing anybody within earshot. 

Writing this blog has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. The act of writing has served to clarify my thoughts about many things, and it has changed me. As recently as last month, I wasn't sure how the "writer" identity fit. However something happened in the last few weeks to bring this into relief.

You see, I was asked to take down a post I had written. I had written about an autism-related matter that came up in a group that I belong to, and which I found disturbing. I had shared the post with someone in the group, because I wanted him/her to know I had reacted to the discussion. His/her initial response was to disagree with something someone else had said and to say that he/she was happy that I was writing and thinking about it. 

A few days later, however, I received a call from this person. He/she (and possibly other group members?) felt that my post revealed too much about the organization's deliberations and that the unnamed organization would be identifiable to readers who know me well. And I was quoted chapter and verse from the organization's bylaws. 

When I originally wrote the post, I had taken extra care to make it anonymous, but I can see how the identity of the organization and individuals might be discernible to people who know me well. As I didn't want to cause embarrassment to the organization or any of the parties involved, I immediately took the post down.

And then I began to obsess about it. It had been a piece of writing that felt incredibly personal to me, and it had a very important message that I wanted to convey. It felt devastating not to have that post out there in the world any more. 

After almost a week of thinking of little else, I have realized several things. 

One is that this blog is extremely important to me. I have invested a lot of time, energy and love in the posts I have written here. But the things that I am more attached to than my own writing are the messages I am trying to convey here about autism -- the amazing human beings autistic people are, the importance of building a society where they can flourish, the gifts autistic people can give us, the use of shared experiences in the community of autism parents to help us to get through the rough times.

Secondly, the content of the taken-down post remains too important to me to ignore. I am going to rework the material and put it out there again in a different form. 

Last, I feel wounded by the way I was asked to take the post down. The request was made in a matter-of-fact, bureaucratic way. The person who called me, whom I have known for many years and who knows about my family situation, failed to acknowledge the very deep personal significance the post had for me as an autism parent and as a human being. Also, he/she is another writer, and I respect his/her writing, but he/she failed to acknowledge me as a writer.  

If there was any question in my mind about assuming the writer identity, it is settled now. After perseverating over the loss of my blog post, my first action toward getting over it is to write about it on my blog! The act of writing has helped me to get unparalyzed. I already have some ideas about how to rewrite the lost posts. Stay tuned....

I'm fully aware that putting stuff out there in a publicly-accessible form exposes me to potential comments and criticism. It is probably a testament to my extremely small number of readers that I have never had a negative experience with blogging before! (According to Blogger, this blog has had approximately 1900 pageviews since it launched in September 2013.) However, I really do invite dialogue with my readers via the comments section of the blog. Please feel free to disagree with me (respectfully) in the comments, so that we can talk about our differences of opinion. 

And to close things out here, I would like to simply thank my readers for coming along on this journey with me.