Autism Acceptance Month Week 1

On the second day I ate lunch with Mary, who told me how she was going to events with her friends from Alpha Omicron Pi for Greek Week.  She told me too that she had been invited to the organization like Emily had, though she couldn’t on account of the fact that THRIVE did not permit their students to join these organizations.  At the news that Mary was invited, I felt I had really been wrong to think someone who didn’t share my condition would never understand my struggle as I do.  As for my book report for my World Archaeology class, I decided to keep my notes on The Goddess and the Bull in my Sayings of the Buddha Journal and read twenty-five pages of each day to help me finish it and I read thirty-seven pages of it.  I put up a post on Facebook in honor of Autism Acceptance Month and Greek Week talking about how I had been invited to join Tau Kappa Epsilon, but chose not to as it would interfere with my responsibilities as the UCM Autism Spectrum Support Group leader, but, “I told my dad, “’That’s ok, because I live to serve the autistic community of UCM.  They are my brothers, and sisters.’  Our letters: whatever letters are necessary to raise our voice.”  I saw Dr. Downing commented on that post saying, “Proud of you, Ben!”  After drinking a beer at Crazy Dog’s to help relax me for my World Archaeology exam tomorrow, I learned of the Johnson County Sheltered Workshop, which takes glass and other recyclables.  I got lost on my way back in the dark and ended up missing my exercise and Late Night.  The next day I took my World Archaeology exam in the Testing Center.  The day after that I saw a post on my Facebook wall saying that it has been shown that spending two hours outdoors can greatly cut down on the hormones that cause stress.  I decided I would try and do that each day.

                True to my commitment that I had made two try and spend two hours outdoors each day, I sat outside by the Rec Center, reading twenty-five more pages of The Goddess and the Bull, and writing an Autist Dharma post.  In it I talked about how April is AutismAcceptance Month, in contrast to Autism Awareness Month, which uses the medical, rather than social model for autism, and each week I planned to post a forum on topics related to autism such as work, love, school, and independent living, as well as posts on what the world may be like if certain autistic individuals had not existed or been the way they were.   I also scheduled an appointment with the OAS Office for the next Monday at nine, and I went to the Office of Academic Advising and scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday at 9:30. 

                During brunch the next day I ate with Jai and Kim, who told me Sinho had drunken a lot at the TKE party last night, and I learned they all had to live at the fraternity house from Sunday to Wednesday.  After they left I read twenty-five more pages of The Goddess and the Bull near the table at the Rec Center.  I also found out that I had a Film Appreciation test this week, and rushed to the library to take it, hoping I wasn’t too late, and thankfully, it turned out it was due at midnight the next night.  I took it and got thirty-four out of forty questions right.  Then I checked out ten books from the library on Somalia (one on Djibouti for its connections to the conflict in Somalia) deciding to do my Modern Sub-Saharan Africa case study paper on the Somalian conflict, and found that for my thesis which we have to do on what this demonstrates for African politics as a whole, I thought I would talk about the negative ripple effects of the Cold War on Africa.  I texted my mom asking her to send my one of my books at home Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea by Robert D. Kaplan to help my write it, along with my bullet-ridden Styrofoam cowboy boy hat for my World Archaeology class.  Afterwards I walked down to Hasting’s and bought the new issue of Mindful and Do it Yourself, the latter of which I learned to do needlepoint in.  I also decided just to collect those two magazines from now on.  As I walked back to UCM, I ate at Crazy Dog’s where I had an Angry Orchid and some hot wings, which I enjoyed particularly tonight as I decided to eat them more mindfully, including waiting until they had cooled down, and they tasted delicious.  I got back and I gathered some more bottle caps for my wall fish.  Then I sorted some recycling in Ellis.  Then I went down to a gas station, thinking of getting some chocolates, but remembering Mindful’s words on choosing snacks carefully choose some liquorish, and bought some Smirnoffs.  On my way back I also managed to pick up some recyclables again.  When I got back I decided to quit keeping a regular meditation journal as it just was hard with all the demands in my life, and instead try to put that and my daily life in one journal.  I also started reading A Modern History of the Somali in the second floor lounge. 

                As Monday, the deadline for those weekly Autist Dharma posts for April came, I went to my appointment with Barbara, and we talked about how I planned to make an Autism Acceptance Month poster.  She also said she noticed I seemed troubled over the last few days and I said I was simply in grief over Hook and Reeder, who had helped the THRIVE program, whom I had met, and knew several of my friends.  She told me that was quite normal to be stricken by the deaths of young people, especially as a young person.  I did also tell her how I was sort of troubled because ever since my breakup with Emily I was wondering whether I would meet a girl I find mature enough to date, and had struggled with some prospects over that issue.  Eventually, after finding she had good advice on that issue, we got back to the issue of the poster, and she suggested it would be a good idea to have a quote from a famous person with autism related to living in the world with autism.  We also came up with the idea to send an e-mail out to the new-coming THRIVE and UCM students to give them some time to think about joining the group.  I got back to the Union and wrote my first Autist Dharma post for the day, a question forum called What are You Working for (not my best title) on employment.  I wrote my second post called Loss of Football Closure and OtherDiscomforts of an Alternative World talking about what the world might be like for us if Albert Einstein’s discoveries with electrons had not helped perfect television.  Then I wrote and posted a third post called Coming Out ofthe Autism Closet: The Joys and Benefits of Revealing One’s Condition.