Don't Dis Ability

  I'm finally starting an 'official' blog. I write all the time, I can't seem to help myself. When I don't it feels like the top of my head may blow off, and it's uncomfortable. Also, I think there may be an 'ick-factor' to cerebral detonation. SO, to be on the safe side, I just keep writing. I've written over 600 blogs, but on Myspace, so they don't count. I keep clogging my 'notes' section on Facebook with my random ruminations too. I wrote a nice, creepy book last year that I hope to get published this year, but more about that later. The point is, I write a lot.

    I created a blog last year, but I largely ignored it because it consisted mostly of me griping about dog-equipment failure, often involving squirrels, at least peripherally. Fortunately, the incidents of failure were few and far-between; unfortunately the coinciding blog entries were too. So, this is a re-vamp. Okay, technically a complete and total overhaul.

   My interests are so diverse that nailing down a topic was tough. It was suggested that I discuss disability and life, challenges etc. with a disability because I can speak to all of those things from personal experience. Aside from this intro, you probably will NOT hear much about disability. Well, I'll talk about my service dog, Murphy, a lot because he IS the center of the Universe after all. But not why I need him.

   There was a time I let disability define me. I've seen it a lot too; people so focused on what they can't do, what they believe their lives can't be, that they can't see the gifts that are right in front of them. I wasted years in this manner, feeling helpless and hopeless and trapped within a set of psychological and financial parameters that narrowed my experiences and my beliefs about the future to a suffocating degree. And then I read one of those stupid little sayings on Facebook. You know the ones; they are cliche and preachy and ever-present. This one was "What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today". I had probably read that several times before, but for some reason on that day, in that moment it made me think.

   No worries, I'm not going to come over all 'religious' here. I am Catholic, I do have a strong faith but I have no need whatsoever to shove it down anyone's throat. My point is, I started looking for things to be grateful for. The more I looked, the more I saw. I began to realize how fortunate I really am. The more I realized that, the more fortunate I actually became. The more I was able to see what I CAN do, the more excited I became by my life. I could finally envision a future for myself. The more I saw what that future could look like the more clearly I was able to see a way forward. You see where I'm going with this?

  So, essentially this blog is about moving forward and getting on with life. For me, that means giving my disability and the circumstances around it the same consideration that I give the scar on my knee from falling off my bike as a child. It's there, it will always be there, but I don't think about it much anymore and it certainly isn't what my life is about. So, to (loosely) quote comedian Stephen Wright: "Buckle your seatbelt, I want to try something. I saw it in a cartoon once, and I think I can do it..."
Wanna come with?