The Autistic Me

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The Autistic Me Podcast is coming! My microphone and mixer sit on my desk, waiting for me to record the introductory episode, which I will make available in January if all goes according to plan. The podcast will begin without any guests, but that will change if I can build an audience. Podcasting requires some extra effort, from preparing cover and episode artwork to publishing the RSS feed for iTunes and other services. I’m hoping the extra effort helps make The Autistic Me available to more people. I do plan to transcribe episodes, lightly edited, and post the text to the standard blog, too. With the podcast and podcast transcripts extending the reach of The Autistic Me, I intend to increase my activity on social media. We have a Facebook page for The Autistic Me and a neglected Twitter feed (@autisticme) . The Facebook page growth stalled at 950 followers...

The headline is in jest, but "The Autistic Me" is closing in on 1000 followers on Facebook and I know the Twitter account has some traffic. I've updated the blog design, in another attempt to increase traffic. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/autisticme/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/autisticme Blogging and other forms of writing are what I do currently. The more followers, the more likely we gain some visibility out there. It's not easy to be seen or heard through the clutter and noise of the Internet. Blogs are trailing other social networks. That's why I need to consider a podcast or video channel. Traffic is survival for a blogger. Spread the word. Suggest blog topics. Maybe ideas for the revised books I'm hoping to (FINALLY) finish this summer. This blog is one of the oldest active autism blogs. I'd like to keep it going and still dream of it thriving. Thank you! Related articles Blogging Cycles No NeuroTribes, Not Much E...

"You didn't blog on Autism Awareness day?" No, I did not. I did not post about the pros or the cons or the whatevers of autism awareness. This is my annual call to focus on things other than autism when it comes to autistics and their lives. I am many, many things before I am my autistic traits. I'd like to be judged on those things. I believe many autistics feel the same way but are too busy being whatever they are to post about it. My wife, my family, my cats… all come before "autism" in my life. That's true for most people. So does my writing, my teaching, and my other works. The point of "The Autistic Me" is to point out that it is but a part of any person. Not all of that person. Not the majority of that person. And so, I'll keep this short and let you go back if you want to read my older posts. Right now, I need to be working on my professorial duties. They don't relate to autism at all.

The Autistic Me was selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 50 Autism Blogs Blogs on the web.  http://blog.feedspot.com/autism_blogs/    Thank you... 

In a few ways, 2016 has been (with a nod to a great children's book) a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for my wife and me. We have had medical issues, I have not had a full-time job, and a pair of accidents took our Jeep out of service. It has also been one of the best years my wife and I have had. The following is a lengthy post on the past and our future. A friend and I had a polite debate on the topic of sponsors for "The Autistic Me" blog and my other creative projects. I generally believe that writers and other artists should find a market for their efforts and seek compensation accordingly. The idea of "donations" does not appeal to me. "But you give to several organizations, including the performing arts," she insisted. "What is the difference?" Much to my wife's chagrin, I do donate to theatrical organizations, local independent film projects, an autism cause or two, the humane society, and other non-profit gr...

In 2011, there were 169 posts to The Autistic Me . That number has steadily declined, by almost half every two years. For 2015, only 17 posts have been composed. (The blog started in 2007 and took some time to grow.) The blog activity is a feedback loop, or an incentive cycle. As readership and responses fell, so did my impulse to post new content. With less new content, there was less reason for readers to stumble upon the blog. The decline of RSS readers, the decline of various Autism portals, and a general shift to social media contributed further to the decline in activity. How many times can I post about… …the challenges of living in or even navigating urban settings? …the sensory overload of mass transit? …the exhaustion that follows social events? …the (un)employment situation for people with physical and neurological challenges? …the insular nature of academia? The posts here simply aren't that varied. The same topics repeat. I pulled the "Ask a Quest...

"You're funny when you give a talk, but your blog isn't funny. I really wanted to like it." You don't like the blog? "Don't you read funny blogs? They deal with serious topics, but still make me laugh. You're too serious, darn it." My wife and I do read the funny blogs. We were discussing two of the better blogs tonight: http://thebloggess.com http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com When someone expects The Autistic Me to be funny after hearing me speak or reading some of the other things I have written, I feel like I've let down that visitor. You just saw this (apparently) funny guy on stage and he was all witty (with a dose of sarcasm) so you rushed home to read… this blog. No wonder you're disappointed. This blog isn't like the public appearance. Maybe, just maybe, someone else writes the blog. Maybe you got the address wrong. This can't be that guy with the tolerant wife! Sorry, but this is me. Yeah, I get it. ...

I haven't been posting much to The Autistic Me blog in the last six months or so. I could list all the excuses, and there are many, but I've noticed that my blog isn't alone with less frequent updates. I've also noticed many blogs have either been abandoned or changed managers/authors in the last year. My "autism" group in NetNewsWire, my RSS reader of choice, is shrinking. On the Autism-Hub site, some pages haven't been updated in six months. Only ten have been updated within the last 30 days. What's happened? Have we all shifted to Facebook? I doubt it. Maybe we are exhausted, as a community? That seems plausible, after several busy years. Maybe there will be another spike in discussions once the new DSM-V is published, but we might have exhausted those debates, too. Opinions seem fairly set on many of the subjects. Blogging requires some compulsion to address a topic, or at least to tell a personal story. I'm not sure why anyone would c...

For those wondering, we have not stopped blogging and nothing horrible has happened to either me or my wife. We're not dead… we're moving again. Unlike last summer, when we moved from one state to another, this time we are moving about two miles from our temporary residence to a new home in the same little Pennsylvania township. The move will give us plenty of material for our blogs. Moving is stressful and chaotic. Moving raises economic issues, especially in this housing market. Moving means shifting our beloved books again. Most of all, it cuts into our creative "me/us" time necessary to recharging and regrouping. There will be new blog posts. This has been a hectic few years. Of course, we're moving right as my students have finals, my wife has to take a business trip, and a cat is having health issues. The long list of things happening in our lives merely reminds us how overwhelmed we are until the end of May or June. Beyond May we will be renov...

You probably noticed I took something of a leave from blogging much of this month. My wife and I took turns being ill with the flu, which upended our schedules, including our writing projects. Because work had priority, we had to delay website and blog updates while we attempted to recover the lost two weeks. Recovery has been a little slow, at least for me, since I was already dealing with some minor physical issues. In the coming weeks, I hope to return to my normal schedule of posting to each of my blogs at least once weekly. Ideally, I will manage to post on some of the ideas I've jotted down and you'll see two or three posts a week the blogs. Unfortunately, as I'm recovering we're getting ready to move into a new house. I'll be ending the school year, moving, and preparing to teach summer school. At least I know where my hours go each day: they are consumed by a dozen things other than my writing. I do keep telling myself that sleep should be optional, yet ...

Thanks to many others in the autism community (or communities), this blog, its Facebook page, and its Twitter feed are growing quickly. This growth means new readers sometimes ask me the following questions: Are you a parent, educator, researcher, autistic? What is your perspective? What is your specialty? Where do you live/work/speak? I'll answer some questions in this post. There is also background posted on the blog, and there is a link to an autism-themed section of our website. I'm still working to restore the website, but it is available at: http://www.tameri.com/csw/autism/ 1) What I am I am a writer, educator, researcher, and person diagnosed / labeled as high-functioning autistic. I am not a parent. I am not a medical doctor. I am not a psychologist. I am an adult in my 40s, not a teen or a young adult with autism. My wife, my family, and my cats are the most important things in my life. 2) My perspective My greatest concern as an adult is how to naviga...

Forgive me, but it is time for some blatant self-promotion. The Autistic Me has had a steady readership for several years, but I'd like to see that readership expand throughout 2012. On these pages, I try to answer reader questions. I attempt to write about life as I experience it. I also try to address the challenges my traits present to friends, family, and coworkers. I do try to post something new each week, sometimes more frequently. The more questions and feedback, the more I post in response. Someone mentioned to me that there are so many websites, blogs, portals, et cetera, dedicated to autism that she only found my blog "by accident" while skimming The Autism Hub ( http://autism-hub.com/ ). The sheer number of autism blogs, both active and zombies, is astounding. A search of Blogger found 38,000 autism-related blogs. Some are only loosely autism-focused, while others are far more specific than my own blog. In this crowded space, it is difficult to be noticed...

My autism research and speaking website is slowly coming back online after a minor glitch. While this doesn't directly affect the blog you are reading, it does affect a few people kind enough to link to my personal site. Over the Christmas break, my wife and I upgraded our home computer systems and much of our software. The upgrades included Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 and migrating our systems to the latest OS X 10.7 release. Overall, the process was uneventful. However, there was one small glitch: our personal websites were created in iWeb. For our business website, we have long used Dreamweaver (back to the earliest Macromedia versions), but iWeb was ideal for visually appealing sites for friends and family. While I could have forced iWeb to continue working for us, we decided to migrate to RapidWeaver 5. The migration was relatively painless. I say relatively because moving to RapidWeaver did rearrange directories. Several websites linked to information on my personal autism p...

My wife and I maintain two blogs, Twitter feeds, and a Facebook page dedicated to creative writing instruction. I have discovered that readers prefer to choose how they receive updates and blog feeds, so we've tried to offer the most popular options. First, a reminder to visit the Tameri Guide for Writers ( http://www.tameri.com/ ) if you are interested in creative writing. The Tameri website is not an academic writing website, though it includes some resources for teachers of writing. Our blog on creative writing and mass market fiction: http://www.tameri.com/wordpress/ My blog on using technology in writing instruction: http://poetcsw.blogspot.com/ The two blogs are featured on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tameri-Guide-for-Writers/239305212783049 You can find "Follow Us" links for Twitter on the blogs and on the Tameri website. Please consider following us using the social networking method of your choice.

Today I was asked for whom do I write this blog. The individual asking said that I don't write much for autistics, and yet that should be my primary audience. So, was I writing for parents? And if so, which parents? You'd imagine a writing instructor would have an "audience analysis" ready. Any good author is supposed to know his or her audience, we tell our students. I must have a target in mind when I write… right? No. I write whatever comes to mind. This is a blog, a personal reflection on daily life, and I don't pretend that it is a focused work with a consistent rhetorical purpose. Some days, it is a place where I write about science and research. Other days, it is where I record the way I feel about my wife, family, and pets. This blog isn't a planned literary work — it simply happens as it happens. When I write, I'm not trying to offer my experiences as "the autistic experience" of life. I'm aware that I have limits, but I don...

As readers of this blog know, I try to keep this blog personal because I only claim to know and understand my personal experiences. I'm not comfortable straying far from what I know. However, there are a few voices I believe my readers should hear and read if they want a better understanding of autism spectrum disorders. Stuart Duncan is a father of two sons, one with autism. He also has a wife with some physical challenges. You can read his reflection on autism at his website: Autism from a Father's Point of View:  http://www.stuartduncan.name/ Follow Mr. Duncan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/autismfather Everyone should spend a few days (and yes, it will take you days) reading the blog and information posted by Mr. Duncan. He has provided a frank and detailed account of life as a parent to an autistic child. It is the single best parent-authored website I have found. I don't say that lightly, because there are many thoughtful blogs by parents. Unfortunately, there ...

Me : Why are people so personally rude via e-mail and blog comments? I'm deleting more mail and posts than ever lately.  Friend : What are your blog topics? Me : I maintain websites on economic theory, political rhetoric, technology, autism, creative writing, and philosophy.  Friend : You do realize only creative writing and technology aren't likely to trigger hate mail. Me : It seems Linux is a religion.  Friend : Says the person with an Apple sticker on every vehicle.  Sometimes, it is easy to forget a personal zealotry. I am having a strong reaction to the fact my future employer is an all-Windows campus. Yes, I use Windows sometimes — but I just uninstalled Boot Camp from my Mac and removed the last Windows software.  Turns out, I am a fanatic, too. 

I maintain several blogs, all started as part of a class project some years ago. (See Four Years as an Autism Blogger for the history.) One of the things you have to accept when writing in public forums is that some people will feel compelled to insult and attack an author instead of his or her writings. Also, you have to accept that though you are writing from one perspective (which should be painfully obvious to all readers) someone will be upset that you don't share his or her perspective. These are the "whatever" moments of writing, especially of blogging. I write a monthly column for a regional magazine. The column has nothing to do with autism or special education. I write on technology issues. But, as any technologist will affirm, technology preferences and biases are accompanied by a religious fervor. Armies of zealots, the true believers, will descend on any writer daring to question their beloved operating system, hardware, application, or programming langu...

Today I had a pleasant e-mail exchange with another autism blogger. It reminded me of a basic truth about autism: express opinions or facts, you are certain to offend someone. You could state that autism begins with the letter "A" and someone will read into this statement something conspiratorial. "Autism" as a topic is as polarized as the current U.S. political environment. Every issue is an "us vs. them" issue. Human existence is nuanced. My ethical system is rather rigid, but I also realize that sometimes we weigh "right" and "wrong" on a metaphorical scale. Our opinions on some matters are reflections of our experiences and cultural norms. I'd like to argue science is science, but even science seems to engender endless debates. Scientists will admit funding and publishing are definitely political and socially complex. Some of the reactions to blog topics are anticipated, while others have surprised me. Allow me to explore so...

I am pleased to announce that if you own an Amazon Kindle or use any Kindle software reader (Mac, Windows, iPad, etc.) you can now subscribe to The Autistic Me and receive the blog in an ad-free format. The Kindle supports "text-to-speech" and several other accessibility options, which is important to me and many of my readers. To subscribe: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004S7EZGQ Setting up the blog as a "subscription" was the first step towards preparing a series of eBooks for release via Amazon. Thank you everyone for supporting this blog and my other projects.