It's been a week, guess it's that time again. I seem to be doing kind of okay this last week, so I guess it must've been a good week.
There's been some progress on the church incident from a few weeks ago. I talked with the church official I mentioned last week, and what he didn't do in communication prior, he made up for when I went to discuss the matter on Thursday.
So I ended up giving him an idea of what my specific diagnoses are, and how that plays out into needing accommodations at times. We discussed the available side rooms, and he's going to elbow the budget team to see if we can get the service piped into the library, with an adjustable dial. That would make it functionally the same as the living room, which was the room I'd been in. That costs money, and they don't have a ton of it, but he'll do his best.
He also apologized on behalf of the church, which was thoughtful of him, though admittedly it cost him nothing. More notably, he's going to talk to the church staff who was involved in the incident, and see if he can't get an apology from them. Finally, there's apparently a committee being formed around accessibility for many kinds of needs, and he's invited me to be a part of that committee. I tend to be cautious about my time, so I told him to keep me in the loop about it. Hopefully as more details emerge, I can make a better decision... or at least lend my feedback to whatever decisions this committee ends up making.
In other news, Memorial Day happened. My spouse, Chris, was home, which made for somewhat uncomfortable work time. It's weird to have one person on vacation and the other having a normal work day. We didn't do much, vacation-wise, but he did come with me to exercise, which also meant going out to lunch with my dad afterwards. So that was nice.
Chris having vacation and being around here during my work hours reminded me of something I've been asking myself a bit over the last year... Namely, should I have vacations? Technically, this blog keeps me busy for most of the week, but it only updates 3 days per week. That makes me feel kind of lazy when it comes to taking days off, because it's not like it's a 40 hour week or anything. But that said, even part time workers get national holidays off. So it seems like I probably should have holidays off... but it's hard to convince myself of that.
I can't truthfully say to myself that I wouldn't like to have a holiday, and not worry about a blog post on thus and such day (like say, Christmas)... but I worry that breaking my flawless update record will end in procrastination and the blog falling by the wayside. Perhaps that's overzealous of me, but... I guess I'll have to chew on the idea more. One of the webcomic artists that I follow gives herself 6 sick days and 6 "relax" days per year. Her webcomic updates twice a week, and probably takes hours longer to make than my blog posts do. That philosophy seems like a nice, adult way to manage having a life and still keep yourself accountable, so I guess if I do adopt something, it'll probably look like that.
The last thing that was salient this week was more in my "fun" sphere of things than in my work and socialization zone. My spouse and I play an MMO together, and we wanted to do a particularly difficult part of the game. But we couldn't find a good group of people interested in doing it. A friend of ours in the guild, referred us to a particular group that we could try that difficult part of the game with. They accepted us, and the group turned out to be extremely competent. We completed the difficult content with... remarkable ease. It was a really cool experience.
It got me thinking. These particular people play this MMO at a near-professional level. They try (and succeed at) some of the hardest parts of the game, which require excellent reflexes, attention to detail, visual processing, coordination, and a host of other skills. The fact that I was allowed to tag along, and actually mostly pulled my weight, really makes me happy. Because I have shoddy visual processing and kind of meh reflexes, and I still managed to be pretty okay. This is in part because I worked hard to improve those things, and in part because I mostly knew the content we were trying to run. It also tells me that if I really wanted to be as good as those people, I probably could be. Which is itself pretty cool.
I really doubt I ever will be that good at the game, though. Becoming that skilled requires a tax of a whole lot of time and energy, and I am short on both of those. Also, becoming an elite gamer does not markedly make the world a better place, whereas educating about autism and disability issues... does. Hopefully.
There's been some progress on the church incident from a few weeks ago. I talked with the church official I mentioned last week, and what he didn't do in communication prior, he made up for when I went to discuss the matter on Thursday.
So I ended up giving him an idea of what my specific diagnoses are, and how that plays out into needing accommodations at times. We discussed the available side rooms, and he's going to elbow the budget team to see if we can get the service piped into the library, with an adjustable dial. That would make it functionally the same as the living room, which was the room I'd been in. That costs money, and they don't have a ton of it, but he'll do his best.
He also apologized on behalf of the church, which was thoughtful of him, though admittedly it cost him nothing. More notably, he's going to talk to the church staff who was involved in the incident, and see if he can't get an apology from them. Finally, there's apparently a committee being formed around accessibility for many kinds of needs, and he's invited me to be a part of that committee. I tend to be cautious about my time, so I told him to keep me in the loop about it. Hopefully as more details emerge, I can make a better decision... or at least lend my feedback to whatever decisions this committee ends up making.
In other news, Memorial Day happened. My spouse, Chris, was home, which made for somewhat uncomfortable work time. It's weird to have one person on vacation and the other having a normal work day. We didn't do much, vacation-wise, but he did come with me to exercise, which also meant going out to lunch with my dad afterwards. So that was nice.
Chris having vacation and being around here during my work hours reminded me of something I've been asking myself a bit over the last year... Namely, should I have vacations? Technically, this blog keeps me busy for most of the week, but it only updates 3 days per week. That makes me feel kind of lazy when it comes to taking days off, because it's not like it's a 40 hour week or anything. But that said, even part time workers get national holidays off. So it seems like I probably should have holidays off... but it's hard to convince myself of that.
I can't truthfully say to myself that I wouldn't like to have a holiday, and not worry about a blog post on thus and such day (like say, Christmas)... but I worry that breaking my flawless update record will end in procrastination and the blog falling by the wayside. Perhaps that's overzealous of me, but... I guess I'll have to chew on the idea more. One of the webcomic artists that I follow gives herself 6 sick days and 6 "relax" days per year. Her webcomic updates twice a week, and probably takes hours longer to make than my blog posts do. That philosophy seems like a nice, adult way to manage having a life and still keep yourself accountable, so I guess if I do adopt something, it'll probably look like that.
The last thing that was salient this week was more in my "fun" sphere of things than in my work and socialization zone. My spouse and I play an MMO together, and we wanted to do a particularly difficult part of the game. But we couldn't find a good group of people interested in doing it. A friend of ours in the guild, referred us to a particular group that we could try that difficult part of the game with. They accepted us, and the group turned out to be extremely competent. We completed the difficult content with... remarkable ease. It was a really cool experience.
It got me thinking. These particular people play this MMO at a near-professional level. They try (and succeed at) some of the hardest parts of the game, which require excellent reflexes, attention to detail, visual processing, coordination, and a host of other skills. The fact that I was allowed to tag along, and actually mostly pulled my weight, really makes me happy. Because I have shoddy visual processing and kind of meh reflexes, and I still managed to be pretty okay. This is in part because I worked hard to improve those things, and in part because I mostly knew the content we were trying to run. It also tells me that if I really wanted to be as good as those people, I probably could be. Which is itself pretty cool.
I really doubt I ever will be that good at the game, though. Becoming that skilled requires a tax of a whole lot of time and energy, and I am short on both of those. Also, becoming an elite gamer does not markedly make the world a better place, whereas educating about autism and disability issues... does. Hopefully.
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