The Okay-ish OT

The first time I went to a convention, I was in eighth grade. I forgot to buy my ticket ahead of time, so I ended up waiting in line for three hours. I bought way too much merch and barely had enough money for dinner the last night, and I think I still owe someone $5 for lunch. My friends and I went together, and we took part in the photos, the cosplay, and the cat-ear making panel. That being said, it has been a lot different going to conventions as an adult, especially with the knowledge of my autism diagnosis. Conventions can be a lot of fun, but they can also be pretty overwhelming. Tons of people crowded around each other, noisy props, lights, and audio feedback from microphones. It can be a lot to handle at once, so for me, planning was an important part of the process. I thought I'd share some advice on this topic for other autistic people interested in going to conventions, just in case any of my hacks might help. Autism Hacks for Conventions: 1. Hearing protection - Comic...

Today, I thought I'd share my thoughts on faith as an autistic person. This can look very different for a lot of people, but for me, my experiences as a Christian are shaped by my autism, and by the way that I believe that God has made me. In this portion, I'll be sharing some of my thoughts on several meaningful Bible verses on disability.  For some background, I grew up in a home where my parents loved God and loved each other. We went to church most Sundays, and even though I didn’t always love it at the time, since I didn’t have a lot of friends at church, I appreciate having that foundation today. When I was in middle school, my understanding of my faith became more concrete, and this is when I would call myself a Christian.  This continued into high school and college, where I grew in my knowledge of the Christian faith, but I still experienced struggles finding community, especially as an undiagnosed autistic person. It wasn't until college and difficulties related t...

  When I was first diagnosed with autism, one of my biggest issues was struggling to find information about autism that applied to me. Most resources out there catered to parents of five year olds, not adult autistic people curious to learn about themselves. A lot of these "resources" tended to treat autism as a scary thing, something to hide or fix, but once I started finding resources from autistic people themselves, that narrative changed. Instead of hearing that I was broken, I heard that my brain is different, that it needs different things, and that meeting these needs can go a long way for my mental health. I learned that my sensory needs had a big impact on my mental health, that there was usually a reason behind being anxious for "no reason."  By accepting myself, including my autism, I could better understand why I struggled, and do something about it, whether that meant wearing headphones, remove myself from overwhelming situations, investing in some fidg...

"By the way, I tend to use identity-first language when talking about autism, feel free to ask me about this later." I've done multiple presentations on autism, and this sentence was usually in there somewhere. While language surrounding autism wasn't usually the main topic of discussion, I felt it was important to at least mention that there was more than one way to refer to autism and autistic people.  What is identity first language? Identity-first language means stating the "identity" label before stating the "person" label. This could look like saying "Hispanic person," "Jewish person," or "Autistic Person." The alternative, person-first language, would be the opposite, saying "person with anxiety," "person of faith," or "person with autism." Most of my undergraduate classes would cite the importance of person-first language, saying that seeing the patient as a person was the most imp...

  At the beginning of this month, I moved away from home for the first time. I'd moved before, but always with my family, and moving 12 hours away was a big adjustment. Having moved more than 19 times in my life, I figured it would be easy, but it was more challenging than I thought it would be to uproot my life and move to an entirely new place. I thought I'd share about my experiences and offer some advice for others in the same situation. Because I was moving so far from home, I didn't get a chance to see my house in-person before moving, and with housing demands being as high as they were in a college town, I had to move quickly unless I wanted to be stuck in the dorms when grad school started, so I joined a housing group on social media and jumped on the first few apartments that were relatively close to my budget and didn't have 80 people already commenting about their interest. I started looking for housing about a month and a half before I needed to move, and fo...