Category Archives: leaving a legacy

The struggle to be heard.

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To be “heard” is to be visible, to be acknowledged as valued and appreciated.

Today is the 55th birthday of my incredibly articulate late-diagnosed autistic son.  Today he posted about marking the completion of his having to date traveled 32,120,000,000 miles around the sun.

His writing is thoughtful, moving, honest. But between his autism and what looks like is going to be diagnosed as a bad case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the only place he can hope to be heard is over the internet. He really needs to write his autobiography, but that’s a challenge I don’t think he can find the “spoons” to master.
He  ends his post with this final poignant statement:

Thirty-two trillion miles is a long way to travel, and that doesn’t even include the miles accounted for by Earth’s rotation, let alone the rotation of our solar system around the galactic focus. That’s a lot of mileage I’ll be accruing even as my autistic and myalgic fatigue increasingly keeps me confined within a one-mile radius here in downtown St. Johns.

The passage of every mile, be it on foot or on orbit, subtracts a portion of life. I’ve already traveled a considerable portion of the way toward my death, and now I’m closing in on the reality that I mostly will move only as the planet carries me around the sun. So, then, maybe all of this is why I’m here, once again writing into the great and yawning abyss of the web: as my real geographies contract, perhaps I’m reaching—flailing, really—toward those ethereal, untouchable geographies.

For now, anyway. Until I quit on it again, or everything else up and quits on me. Which, at some point, it will, and must. As it will, and must,  for everyone.

So it goes.

Here we go again.

Happy Birthday, Bix. I wish I had the magic that could take away your pain –existential and otherwise.

It might be me.

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I’ve been searching to find out who might be the oldest continuing personal blogger in the U.S.  Not a blogger who hawks services or products or is any kind of influencer.  Rather, a female blogger who posts about her life and times.  My search has yielded no information. I have been blogging since 2001, starting at kalilily.blogspot.com.   Is there any woman out there older than I (84) doing the same thing?

Back in December of 2001, I blogged about why  I started to blog.  It’s worth reprising here:

So, there are some discussions going these days on about the purpose and value of weblogs. Oddly enough, the other night at my bi-monthly group meeting, I mentioned that I had begun a weblog, and I was asked to explain what that was and why I was doing it, and why I just wasn’t keeping a journal. As I’ve said, I’ve unsuccessfully tried keeping journals before and I write so much slower than I think that I got frustrated and quit. I can type almost as fast as I think (I got used to doing that at the job from which I retired last year, which involved mostly whipping out quick documents for others to share and claim as their own.) So, it’s easier to do it on the computer. And why don’t I just keep a journal on disk, I was asked. The truth is, I admitted, is that I’m used to writing for an audience. And I like having an audience. Even my poems are usually written with an audience (sometimes of one) in mind. It’s why I ballroom dance. I’m a performer at heart. I need ways to say to the world: this is who I am. Look at me. Pay attention. It seems to me that that’s at the heart of why everyone else who keeps a blog does so. In a world where we all have to live up to expectations and assume roles for survival purposes (our own and others) — caregiver, mother, employee, citizen — it’s so satisfying to have a place where one can BE who one is. Or in some cases, where one can BE who one wants to BE. It really doesn’t matter. We can create who we want to be or be creative with who we are. Either way, one has an identity, a voice. In a way, it’s kind of a new art form — or at least it can evolve in some cases into such. How cool is that!

 

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My son Bix tells me that blogs are back.  This blog never really went away; I just did.

The odd combination depression and the peculiarities of my personality negated any effort at creativity.  I just wanted to sleep; nothing caught my fancy.  But ending my brief (1 1/2 years) relationship and getting on more effective meds did the trick.  (I think that he ultimately hoped for companionship, while I hoped only for a final romantic adventure.  We were both disappointed).

But now blogging is back, my son says.  And because mine has never gone away, many of  my posts still get read when somebody googles a topic about which I posted.  For example, my son recently posted this:

Tfw you’re googling for what was in the Greedy Bastard at Mad Dog in the Fog and on the first page of results is a blog post by my mom referencing one of my own where I talk about heading down to an antiwar protest that I have no memory of attending.

That referenced post of mine was from October 2002.  Yup.  Once something can be caught by google, it’s there for eternity. It’s one way of getting a feeling of leaving some kind of legacy, I guess.

It’s almost October, and if I look back in this blog, I find that October is when I come to life creatively.  I am looking back on my life in general quite a bit these days — finally recognizing the times that I was my own worst enemy.

There is much to write about these days.  I wish it were 20 years ago and I could be back with those folks in the old blogging community and get into those ongoing conversations we would have about life, the universe, and everything.

But that’s OK.  I’ll just continue here anyway, because when I talk to myself, I tell the truth.