It’s official: I made it through half a semester!

Luckily for me, that means it’s officially Spring Break. Not that I’m actually on a break; I have things to do. I’m hoping that I can take the week to plan things and such. Our Neurodiversity Club is doing things for Autism Acceptance Month, I’m still ironing out the details with one of the departments for our film screening of Deej at some point, and I’m trying to come up with events for the community center. I’ve gotten in touch with the local law enforcement and emergency services to come in and meet our kids and teens, let them see the trucks and the K-9 dogs, and let them get familiar with each other. That should be taking place in April, if all goes to plan. Luckily, our local department does autism and disability training with all the officers, so I’m thinking it will go okay.

Our Disability Day of Mourning event went somewhat okay. We didn’t have as big of a turnout as hoped; still, we played a slideshow of the victims and read out the names – the most important part of the vigil.

Some of our friends also spoke and shared some readings from ‘I Am Not A Burden‘ by Tuttle, ‘Remember‘ by Amy Sequenzia, and ‘On Our Backs We Will Carry Them‘ by Ari Ne’eman.
On a brighter note, it’s been confirmed that I’m officially scheduled to speak at two conferences this year!
I’ll be doing a session at the local Autism Society’s conference later next month, and another at the Southeast Adult Autism Symposium in July. The first will be over tips for handling meltdowns and making transitions easier, and the other will be on executive functioning and independent living. (I’m already working on the PowerPoint for the second one.)

I’ll try to write more as things come up. One of my goals is to write more, so we shall see.

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