Posts

Dietary Changes Part: 2

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  When I was in high school, during my second year, I found myself eating more fried foods and drinking more milk than usual. I thought it was okay, not the healthiest, but what school provides healthy food? They love promoting it, but they don’t necessarily enforce it. Everyone was fine eating it, so what could go wrong? I was eating spicy fried chicken sandwiches and cheese-stuffed pizza, and I learned that dipping them in ranch or blue cheese tasted good. I drink chocolate milk, and on Fridays, I treat myself to ice cream. The year before was exciting, my grades were great, and everything seemed new and exciting. Sophomore year became the opposite. I didn’t understand why, but it was like flipping a coin. Everything was exciting, but everything was boring; topics were not interesting, the teachers were even pissy and annoyingly difficult. On top of everything I was dragging. I felt so fogged up. As if I could sleep all day. My case manager saw what was going on with my cla...
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My Dear Freind

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  Originally, I had planned to share stories about my trip. My trip was amazing, and it was wonderful to reunite with my family. I hope I don't have to wait another seven years to visit. Who knows how much time we have on this planet. This post does not directly discuss autism. If you're interested in learning about autism, please refer to my previous posts or find a reputable book on the subject. You can find a book recommendation in my previous post. Instead, I will discuss a close friend of mine. His name is Morgan Griffin. I met him during a shift, either during closing or opening... He worked overnight, so I would see him in the morning at 6 am as I arrived and he departed. This would also occur whenever I worked the closing shift in my department. Initially, we were aware of each other's presence but occupied with our individual tasks. As time passed, our responsibilities started to overlap, leading to increased communication between us. He stocked products on the...
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The Blog's 1 Year Anniversary!

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This month is the Blog's 1 year anniversary, so I decided to open up a TikTok account and posted a video (see below), which will hopefully be the first of many yet to come! This will be a short post; we're going to Germany this month. Funny enough,  the flight leaves the same day that our flight to Baltimore left last year! https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8e37VV1/ I'm really Excited for this trip! I'm going to finally see family that I haven't been able to see since 2017. Germany is home to me, and I've been homesick for a long time.  The United States is also home to me of course. When you have two countries to call home you become homesick regardless. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to go back and forward between the two countries more often. I think that might help. I do promise pictures! I'm not leaving my camera behind! Can't wait to show you all that I find.
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Scattered and Routineless

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  These past few weeks have been a roller coaster for me. Work has been crazy to where I have had no time to write. I had a wedding shower to host for my sister and brother-in-law, which was fun, and would love to host another party again sometime. I got overstimulated for the first time in forever while grocery shopping. Don't know why, but it happened. During my free time, I listened to the audiobook version of  But You Don’t Look Autistic At All by Bianca Toeps. I have to admit I learned a lot from her book. On top of running Naturally Nature Photography LLC, writing my book, and blog; I also work in retail at Home Depot in paint and garden. Right now it's the busy season and thankfully I've been getting a lot of hours. Unfortunately, because I work part-time, my schedule is all over the place and never constant. I'll open one day and then close the next. Plus some days I'm in the garden, and others I'm in paint. I'm used to that by now because in t...
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Book Recommendations

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  Hello Everyone! I hope everyone is doing well. To be honest with you, my schedule has been all over the place lately so this time I'm providing you with recommendations for books that I have found written by people on the spectrum. As a writer, I wanted to see who else on the spectrum is writing about autism. I have heard of a few people such as John Elder Robison with his book Look Me in the Eye, along with Dr. Temple Grandin who wrote multiple books on autism and animal rights as well as being a public speaker. Below I posted two of her books. I have a copy of her Thinking in Pictures . After doing some googling I was pleased to find even more books on autism written by authors that are on the spectrum themselves. I absolutely love that there are so many out there, and hope that one day mine will be out there as well. There can never be too many books on autism, and every writer is going to have their own thoughts and experiences with the autistic spectrum. ...
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Happy Autism Awareness Month!

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  Social Awareness / Social Difficulty Happy Autism Awareness Month!      Let’s talk about the enormous elephant in the room! The basis of autism is that it’s a social disorder. So it’s a given that there is going to be social awareness and social difficulty. No, I’m not talking about keeping up with the latest social trends, whatever that is. How do you even keep up with or even determine a social trend? I do understand that a trend is basically what people like the most, but how does that even get started?      Social awareness is being aware of your surroundings and others around you. When interacting with people, to be able to read body language and become aware of the individual’s intentions and feelings. This is something that I have gotten better at, but there are still times were certain things will go over my head. I sometimes get so stuck in my thoughts that I would lose track of where I have been.      This one t...
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Breaking Down the Spectrum

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  I want to talk more about the spectrum itself. In previous posts, I mentioned that autism is on a spectrum and that not everyone on the spectrum is the same as others. I found visual references that may help because just talking about it without visual references can become confusing mainly because there are multiple ways of looking at it. Before I begin I just want to say that I found these diagrams through google by searching “Autistic Spectrum”. There are many more if you are seeking more of an understanding. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Autistic-spectrum-disorders-adapted-from-17_fig1_343958142 This first one is the very first type of diagram that I was introduced to. When I was in middle school and high school the only way others described the spectrum to me is by describing, it as being on different levels, such as the diagram above. This makes me think of the different levels as different amounts. Higher functioning people with autism hav...
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