Monday 1 November 2010

Well, that was...interesting....

Now here's the odd thing. The handful of you who check in with me here know that my younger daughter lives with the label PDD-NOS, a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum. Today is Communication Shutdown Day (along with All Saints' Day and National Vegan Day, but never mind that), so the idea is to cut yourself off from the internet, or at least from Facebook and Twitter, so you can share that sense of isolation that someone on the autism spectrum faces every day.

I guess I'd have to be more addicted to Facebook than I am to experience a real sense of being cut off from humanity. I "tweet" about once a month and sadly, don't even get so many emails that I can't go without checking for a day. I'm also old enough to remember life when houses without PCs were the norm.

However, I do intend to NaBloPoMo this month for the fifth time, so participating in a computer-free day is a challenge. If I stayed up, I could simply post one stroke past midnight. NaBloPoMo is on Pacific Daylight Time, so my post would read "November 2nd" at my blog, and "November 1st" at NaBloPoMo.

Given that my constitution gave up on party hours years ago, though, I simply unplugged the computer at 9 pm last night and logged back on twenty-four hours later. That will have to do. Oh yes, and I did donate and "x"-ed out my profile picture at Facebook.

Did dropping out of the so-called social network teach me anything? Well, depressingly enough, I got a lot more done. Did it teach me more about the challenges of autism? Well, no. I live here with my daughter in the outskirts of Autismland (a suburb of Hades). Taking away the computer doesn't teach us more about rejection than we already knew.

4 comments:

chrissie_allen said...

Thanks for the information, grateful for the background on that Persephone. However I can well imagine that there is very little (if indeed anything) which a day like that could teach you.
Best wishes.

Lisa Rullsenberg said...

Hi there: fully with you. As an intermittant blogger, and an even more intermittant user of Facebook and Twitter, I doubt anyone online would even know I wasn't available.

I get that its a nice idea to createa day for 'isolation' but I can't imagine anything learns anything from the experience. However, it perhaps DOES help in terms of awareness raising.

THAT has to be good; I just wish you had a better situation in terms of full recognition and support for your lovely daughter.

hang in there and hope the month of blogging goes well.
(Plus: hi Chrissie!)

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you're back. You're one of only two blogs I read without wanting to scream "Pretension!". I enjoyed your last NaBloPoMo and miss the gaps in between. Incidentally, although I'm not computer illiterate, graduating in computer science, I've never found the urge to Facebook (is it a verb?) or Twitter, so easy for me.

Persephone said...

Oh chrissie, I still have so much to learn...

Lisa, we can always hope...

Peter, you are very kind. Glad to know you're out there.